It felt
so good to come across another Cheng Pei-pei film from Shaw Brothers and
they let her go off in a flurry of revenge and killing. And singing. Director
Ho Meng-hua had primarily helmed dramas and the four fantasy Monkey King
films before he switched gears and did a series of wuxia films with female
heroines. Pei-pei was still luxuriating in the glow of Come Drink with Me
and this film certainly plays on that but making her even more ruthless.
There is a scene early on in an inn where you could easily mistake her for
Golden Swallow as she sits at a table and then has a friendly joust with
Tang Ching with teacups. There is an enormous amount of sword action in this
one and the minions are cut down like grass on a summer day. The sword play
is not elegant - basic banging, cutting and blood spurting. Bodies strewn
everywhere.
It begins in song. A song of vengeance done
in opera style. The Jade Raksha is kind enough to sing the tune that cuts
through the night like a knife to let them know she is coming. Be ready to
die. She is after the Yan family for killing her family when she was a child.
Which is why the smart ones kill the children too. She knows it was one of
the Yan Brothers but not which one. There are twenty of them. And their many
men. When the film begins, she has just killed number 18 and put their heads
up in the town square as decorations with a note that says the Jade Raksha
is responsible. But no one knows who the Jade Raksha is. Certainly not that
attractive woman having tea at a table. But discreet she is not and surreptitiously
throws nuts at men talking discourteously about Jade. Another man at a table
notices this and catches one of the nuts in his chopsticks. This is Tang
Ching passing through town with his own mission of revenge. He sits with
her and after some maneuvering is certain she has to be Jade. He is right.
Two more Yans to kill. And all of their minions. Doesn't killing innocent
people bother you, Tang asks. Nope.
The next one is a little tougher as he lives
in a well-protected compound. But after some terrific fighting, leaping and
running across roof tops she seems cornered until Tang who had followed her
is able to save her. For that favor, she of course tries to kill him. Killing
tends to be her first impulse. But after a drawn duel in the forest the next
day, she is kind of smitten with this man who can equal her in martial arts.
At one point in the duel, he balances himself on a twig high in a tree. So
does she. My kind of man she seems to think. But they each have their own
revenge to sort out first.
Her to kill the final Yan (Yang Chi-ching)
and him to find and kill the man who murdered his father twenty years previously.
Sweet. They have that in common too. The film bifurcates between these two
paths till they come together again. It gets complicated when he saves a
blind father (Ku Feng) and his pretty daughter (Wong Ching-wan) from the
men of the last Yan who think she is the Jade Raksha because she sings. Everyone
thinks Yan is a good man, helping the poor - little do they know he is the
most evil of all the Yans with enough traps in his home to catch and guillotine
any killer. It gets fun. Pei-pei runs across water at one point and later
cuts down bamboo stalks and uses them to pole vault across a huge chasm.
Definite Olympic winner.
