Twelve Deadly Coins
Director: Chui Chang-wang
Year: 1969
Rating: 7.0
This Shaw Brothers
wuxia film has a surprising amount of melodrama mixed in with a fair amount
of sword fighting. Sometimes at the same time. Seemingly inappropriate maudlin
conversations pop in at the most peculiar of times. The director Chui Chang-wang
already had a few very solid wuxia films on his resume - The Twins Swords,
King Cat, The Thundering Sword, Temple of the Red Lotus and The Silver Fox.
So he easily gathers the basic elements of a wuxia film together and provides
us with an enjoyable elegant and at times bewildering film that has echoes
of Shakespearian tragedy around it.
There is some good talent here in front
of and behind the camera. Lo Lieh and Ching Li star though neither
were as big stars as they would be in a few years - Lo Lieh looks quite young
and shiny. And they get support from Tien Feng, Wu Ma and Fang Mian. And
doing the action choreography are the legendary team of Lau Kar-Leung and
Tong Kai. Having these two doing your choreography is a stamp of approval.
The two of them first teamed up in 1963
for the film South Dragon, North Phoenix. Over the next decade they were
to team up constantly first in the Cantonese film industry and then for the
Shaw Brothers. Lau came from a kung fu family and had been working in films
for years already as first a stuntman and then as a quasi action choreographer.
I term it "quasi" because the term of action choreographer didn't come into
fashion until the 1960's and so he received no credits for it - it was more
of an informal thing - he would be on the set and help the actors plan their
action scene. Tong Kai came from a very different background - born into
an extremely poor family in Macau he moved to Hong Kong as a teenager and
at some point began studying martial arts under Yuen Woo-Ping's father, Yuen
Hsiao-Tieng. He began doing stunt work as well before doing choreography
in the early 60's.
They did dozens of Cantonese films which
as far as I know are mainly unavailable - I would be curious to see them
- because their choreography became more complex as time passed and I would
be interested in seeing the evolution. They choreographed one of the classic
non-Shaw Wuxia films that had a large influence on future films - The Jade
Bow in 1966. Run Run Shaw saw this and brought them into the Shaw orbit -
first on Red Lotus Temple - then on many of the Chang Cheh films, but until
the Cantonese industry died they continued going back and forth. When Leung
began directing in 1975 with The Spiritual Boxer the two of them went their
separate ways. When asked how they split up their responsibilities working
together, Tong Kai says that it was difficult to say - they did a bit of
both - but Tong Kai often focused on weapons while Leung did on martial art
styles. If you look at their work after they separated, Leung moved to physical
kung fu and very complex intricate choreography while Tong Kai stuck largely
with wuxia doing a number of films with Chor Yuen. Also, to Tong Kai's credit
is that he married Suet Nei, one of the Cantonese film industry's bigger
female action stars!
This one is strictly a sword fighting film
that is pretty basic with a bit of wire work and a few flying objects that
kill. Yuan Cheng Lieh (Fang Mian) walks into a village with one of
his eyes looking like it was clawed out by a crow and without rising a sweat
kills thirteen men using his flying darts. He is the bad guy and has the
black clad minions to prove it. And an adopted daughter played by Ching Li
who isn't exactly a sweetheart. He also has a 20-year grudge against Yu Jian
Ping (Tien Feng) who runs a security firm called the Twelve Deadly Coins
and a staff under him that includes Lo Lieh, his daughter (Cheng Wen-Ching)
and his number one man (Hah Myung-joong, which sounds Korean to me). Clearly
bloody encounter lay ahead and everybody gets in the action. What is peculiar
is how little the Deadly Coins come into play. And as for the weird dialogue
- picture this - Lo Lieh and Ching Li have magically fallen in love while
fighting each other and are tied to two posts with water pouring in and rising
fast. Lo "You are really beautiful. I mean seriously you are a knockout.
I wish we were not about to die because you look great." Ching Li "That is
very nice of you to say that. I wish we had more time together because you
have a sweet mouth". Lo "Maybe in the next life" gurgle gurgle - or close
enough to that.
