Will Rogers
said, "I never met a man I didn't like". I could basically say the same thing.
Not about men, but "I never met a Wuxia I didn't like". There are great ones
and there are mediocre ones, but I like them all to some degree. I enjoy
the sword play, the wire and trampoline work, the heroics, the horses and
often the presence of a female fighter. In this film there are three of them.
This is short and sweet coming in at 77 minutes and most of that is action.
It has a huge body count of black clad villains with their faces covered
(so that the same actors could die on numerous occasions I expect) and they
don't spare the red dye. Blood comes spilling out like an accident at a ketchup
factory - in gushes at times or just leaking out with a thrown sword through
their body. I hope the Black Tiger Gang had taken out a group Life insurance
policy for their wives and children. Not many will be returning home for
dinner.
A fortress is under siege and after three
months ready to fall. The General decides to go down fighting but has two
of his best men lead the women and children out of the fort and escape with
a treasure box. This took place 20-years ago, Now, they have settled in a
small community but both men who led them out and the treasure disappeared.
The female head (Lin Jing) of the community has just been mortally wounded
by the Black Tigers while searching for the daughter of one of the two men.
This is Qing Qing (Shu Pei-pei). Before she dies, the leader sends out her
three best warriors to find her. They are all women who practice their martial
arts skills by catching birds in flight - Ming-chu (Ching Li), Xiao Lan (Helen
Ma) and Ying (Wen-ching).
The Black Tigers are also looking for Qing
Qing and it goes back and forth. They kidnap her and then a passerby Ying-lung
(Chang Yi) rescues her. He introduces himself to the gang as a student of
the Da Law School - to which they break out laughing - some law school as
he has developed a four-bladed weapon that can kill multiple people at once.
Then the threesome kidnaps Qing Qing from him thinking he is a Black Tiger
and then him from them and so on. And swarms of Black Tigers show up to be
sword fodder. The only disappointment is that Shu Pei-pei who has been in
plenty of wuxia films as a fighter, has no skills and does nothing useful
as people are being killed all around her. I thought everyone in a wuxia
film could fight. Isn't that a rule? Very basic wuxia but that is good enough
for me. Tien Feng, Wang Hsieh and Cliff Lok are also in this and the director
is Hsu Tseng-hung who has some very solid wuxia films on this resume as well
as Zatoichi and the One-Armed Swordsman.
