It has been a while since I delved into my pile of unwatched Shaw Brothers films but the mood hit me tonight and I picked this one almost at random. I wanted one of their lesser known films though and I got one - but it shouldn't be. It is  pretty good but in a genre that is for the most part unfamiliar to Shaw films - a detective mystery. They had plenty of crime films but usually involving the triads or grungy gangs being chased by the cops. This is a private eye trying to solve the murder of an old girlfriend that takes him down some sleazy alleys, titillating clubs, cheap women and solid action. It should have been a Mike Hammer film getting revenge for the death of his old girlfriend. The detective in this one - or the actor - just doesn't have the heart of a killer and looks much too respectable for his profession.


The man who directed it is credited as Mu Shih-chieh but his real name was Murayama Mitsuo, another director imported from Japan. I took a look at his Japanese filmography and didn't recognize any of the titles other than The Invisible Man vs The Human Fly (1957) but many of the titles suggest he made a lot of crime films in Japan. He only directed three films for Shaw - this one, A Cause to Kill which is another murder mystery and Hellgate which I can find nothing about but the poster looks like it is another crime film. Murayama brings in that sharp visual Japanese style and a few dollops of perversion and nudity.


It starts of great - Li (Shirley Wong) is taking a shower and her lover (Chang Pei-shan) lies in bed and turns on the radio to a rocketing guitar song. She comes out to find him dead in bed with blood and the phone doesn't work. She tries to get out the door but a man with a knife is waiting for her and so she runs back in and tries to climb from the balcony and dies - but not before she gets to a phone and calls her old boyfriend Chang (Ling Yun) to come get her. By the time he does, she is dead. He happens to be a detective with a girlfriend/secretary (Lisa Chiao Chaio) and he swears he will find who is responsible - even if he has to sleep with woman like the busty Tina Ti and the sultry mouthed Angela Yu-chien. You have to do what you have to do. When the cops get there the dead body in the bed is gone.


His investigation takes him to numerous bars and clubs - two of particular interest. A horse-racing club - but not with horses but with scantily clad women riding scantily clad men and whipping them - with a few girls losing their clothes. The prize may be heroin. Another club is a variation of the old key wife swapping parties but in this case it is men masked like Zorro who walk down a hallway where arms are coming out of the wall dangling keys. They call it the Secret Journey. Chang picks one and nearly gets a kiss full of potassium cyanide for his trouble. A big shootout at the end. Mike Hammer would have loved this. It comes in at a neat 77 minutes.