Chor
Yuen is at his most fanciful and capricious in this entertaining and off-beat
Shaw Brothers wuxia. It is filled with his typical delightful artificial
sets, sword fights choreographed by Tong Kai, loads of villains, mysterious
women, heroic men and even a few zombies just for the hell of it. And in
the end, it really makes no sense but that is just fine. It was fun getting
there. I always wonder that when the set designers get assigned to one of
Chor's films if they are thrilled with the challenge of creating his unique
vision or if they all go, oh no, not again. Just make sure we have all the
fog machines on the lot. The beginning is confusing as these wuxia
stories can be throwing out enough names so that you need a scorecard, but
it soon settles down to just general confusion. Basically, it feels like
everyone is trying to kill someone.
First up in the line-up is Lady Fang (Lily
Li) or as her friends call her Man Junkie for her habit of going to bed with
any man in pants or without. She is taking a bath and is soon surrounded
by a group of rogues leering at her. She doesn't seem to mind and asks them
if the King of the Left-Handed Sword, Hua Pin, is around. At the name they
jump in fear and like magic there he is killing a few and chasing the rest
off. I only steal from the rich and will kill villains who exploit the poor,
he declares. Good for him. He should be an interesting character in this
film. A few minutes later she hits a few vital points and paralyzes him and
tells him she will be back to unfreeze him in a week or so. Except that is
the last we see of him. he may still be waiting. A lousy role for Norman
Chu. I have no idea what that was about really,
But the gist of the film is the Deer Cutting
Sword - made from nine different kinds of iron and it can cut through anything.
It took Xu Ruzi (Tang Ching) years to make and he thinks it is time to pass
it on to the best swordsman in the Boxer World. The two top men are Lian
(Lau Wing - Emperor Chien Lung in that series of films) and Xiao (Ti Lung),
but everyone knows that it will be awarded to Lian because he is from a good
family while Xiao is a lone wanderer. Class prejudice. Everybody and
their sister want that sword though because it will make them number one
in the hit parade of the Boxer World. The Four Lien brothers (one being Yune
Wah) are bringing it to Lian when they are attacked by a slip of a man -
who is in fact a woman and she gets the sword from them. She is Little Lord
played by Candy Wen. I am not familiar with her but she is wonderful in this
film and in real life she was the sister of Yuen Qiu - the landlady in Kung
Fu Hustle. They are both still acting.
It gets nuttier - Little Lord pretending
to be a small boy tries to kidnap the wife of Lian (Ching Li) at an inn but
Xiao is nearby and saves her, they go to her cousins and finds them all dead
except her older cousin - who it turns out wants to rape her while Little
Lord watches. Best is when all the martial artists officially enrolled in
Boxing World have been convinced that they have been shrunk to the size of
a puppet and are stuck in Puppet World. Little Lord shows up again and says
they want to kill them because "We think people are jerks". She has a point.
Not mentioned so far is that literally a fight breaks out about every five
minutes. Everyone is kung-fu fighting. Not ranked that high among Chor Yuen's
films but it is solid fun with a very good cast.
