First,
I want to say how sad I am to hear the news of the death of Cheng Pei-pei.
She is a real favorite of mine ever since I saw her for the first time in
Come Drink with Me. It came as quite a surprise. She seemed indestructible.
The first true Woman Warrior of Cinema. From Come Drink with Me, she made
women warriors seem realistic with her grace, speed and implacable expression.
No scene was more enduring than her sitting quietly in the inn in Come Drink
with Me waiting for the men to attack her. Stoic and deadly. After many wuxia
films for Shaw, in 1971 she left to raise a family for two years and when
she returned it wasn't to Shaw. Following in her footsteps was Taiwanese
actress, Shih Szu. Like Cheng Pei-pei she was a dancer turned into a martial
artist. Cheng Pei-pei's final film for Shaw was The Lady Hermit and Shih
Szu was her protege in it. Cheng plays the Lady Hermit and takes on Shih
Szu as her pupil. A nice send-off for Cheng Pei-pei and an introduction to
many of Shih Szu. Shih never had the presence of Cheng Pei-pei - too small
and cute to ever look like she could kill you in the blink of an eye, but
she had a run of successful films before her star began to fade in the mid-1970s.
In this film - directed by Griffin Yueh
Feng in one of his last films in a career that lasted forty years - it appears
for much of it that it is her film to star in but then weirdly in the final
fifteen minutes hands it over to Yueh Hua for most of the killing as she
disappears from it only to return for the final few minutes. It really made
no sense considering the previous 60 minutes in which she does her share
of slicing and dicing. In fact, the film opens with her killing the three
Tung Brothers after she sends an invitation to them. Very polite. Please
come so that I can kill you. They accept and refer to her as the most famous
assassin in the martial arts world. She tells them she is doing it for 50
taels, but where this fits chronologically into the rest of the film is a
mystery. It almost looks like an add-on when they realized they had screwed
her out of the big finale. Or that the 80-minute film was not long enough.
But the real story begins with her as a little girl named Li Bao Zhu. Her
father Li Kuo was one of the Four Jiangman Heroes but they have all retired
- his Dragon Sword style was legendary.
Hunchback Liu Tuo (Fan Mei-sheng) swaggers
into town and plays nice to her father, telling him that he holds no grudge
that Li killed his older brother twenty years before. Well, we have seen
enough wuxia films to know that revenge is always on the front burner. No
one ever forgets even if it was generations ago. Blood for blood. He asks
Li Kuo if he will teach him the Dragon Sword to which Li tells him he has
retired and can't. Liu of course won't let that stand and comes to his house
at night to fight him. Li easily bests him but lets him live and turns his
back on him. Liu delivers a blow that will kill Li within a few days but
Liu not knowing this promises to return in ten years. Why ten years - because
by then the little girl will have time to become a master swordswoman and
her little male cousin will grow up to be Yueh Hua, a master of the Iron
Fan.
And she goes off to train at a temple with
Chan Shen, the Mad Monk, and one of the other Heroes. She returns in time
for Liu's return looking like a hobo and a male one at that. On the way back
of course, she kills a bunch of bad guys to establish her bonifides and to
acquire the nickname, The Young Avenger. It is a messy film narratively but
has some decent action choreography. Nothing fancy - sword on sword or sword
on Iron Fan - but it is always a pleasure to see Shih run a guy through.
At one point her cousin lets a man go and she says screw that and runs out
and kills him. This clearly wasn't a big production and doesn't rank that
highly in the Shaw wuxia films, but even the mid drawer Shaw wuxia films
are fine by me.
