Shaw Brothers

The Fastest Sword

Director Pan Lei came to Shaw Brothers studio after a career in writing. Before joining Shaw in the early 1960s, Pan had started his own literary journal in Taiwan, won awards for his writing and had begun writing and directing movies.

As Shaw Brothers' most literary director, it’s no surprise that Pan Lei’s first wuxia film, The Fastest Sword, spends less time on fighting and more time on talking. Instead of supernatural swords, magical stones and flying heroes, The Fastest Sword delivers a simple story done exceptionally well.

As China’s best swordsman, the arrogant and hot-tempered Ding Menghao (Lu Ping) is under constant attack by fighters lusting after his title. Ding’s speed and brute force always saves his life, but after he loses a bet with a wandering monk, Ding’s forced to spend the next three years learning humility and grace.

Once free, the now humble Ding can’t escape those that want his title. Even when he tries not to fight, his challengers end up dead. Vowing never to draw his sword again, he goes into hiding, but even then he can’t escape his most relentless pursuers.

Based on the US western The Gunfighter, The Fastest Sword deviates strongly from the usual wuxia script. Ding’s sword is a burden, and he looks positively pained whenever he’s forced to draw. The film’s final fight, usually a flashing blur of gleaming blades in typical wuxia, combines long slow-mo shots of fencing with close-ups of Ding’s distraught face. The result is an examination of the beauty and savagery of fighting, instead of a special-effects showcase.

Pan Lei never became a top name director at Shaw Brothers. After making over a dozen films in the late 60s and early 70s, he began producing and writing films with Lo Wei, director of some of Shaw Brothers' worst films. The pair started making films staring newcomer Jackie Chan. Whatever happened to that guy?

The Fastest Sword
Dir: Pan Lei
Released: December 11, 1968

The Silver Fox

The formula for Shaw’s revenge films was pretty simple — take one revenger, usually the child of a wronged martial arts master, and one revengee, an evil martial arts master, and add in a love interest and let the sparks fly.

Silver Fox starts off typically enough when evil Sima Chau (Huang Chung-hsin) kills his own father and cripples Wu (Tien Feng), his foster brother. Wu escapes with his infant daughter, setting the stage for bloodthirsty revenge.

But Wu only got hurt because he planned to steal from his foster father and enlisted Chau’s help. He’s far from a blameless victim; for the most part, he’s as cruel and unloving as Chau. When Wu’s daughter grows up, she takes revenge on Chau not out of a sense of love for her father, but out of duty and responsibility.

This is a pretty interesting set up, and could lead to interesting new ground as Wu’s daughter, Ching Ching (Lily Ho) and her love interest, Hsu Chun Wu (Chang Yi) try to fulfill their obligations and avenge a wrong where both parties were at fault.

Sadly, the movie never delivers; instead, one man is quickly redeemed for a touching conclusion and the complex struggle between Wu and Chau is dropped for the sake of simplicity. Disappointing.

But, if you’re willing to accept the film as a straightforward revenger instead of a failed attempt to break new ground, the result is quite satisfying. Lily Ho, who was usually cast in more modern roles, entertains as the petulant, arrogant Ching Ching. And the fights, choreographed by Liu Chia Liang and Tang Chia, live up to the pair’s reputation.

The Silver Fox
Dir: Hsu Tseng-hung
Released: March 13, 1968

Raw Courage

Not all Lo Wei films are bad. In March of 1968, Shaw Brothers released Dragon Swamp, a fun Lo Wei film full of insane super-powers and adventure. But, by August of that same year, Lo had reverted to form with Raw Courage, a mix of bland characters and a plot that’s too busy twisting to ever come to any resolution. Instead of a fun brain-bender, Courage is another Lo Wei time-waister that, even by the incredibly lax standards I use when watching Lo’s films, fails to be of much interest or make any sense.

As the Emperor of China faces imminent death at the hand of rebels, he entrusts his infant son to the hero Shangguan (Lo Wei, again casting himself as the kindly old teacher). When the rebels kill Shangguan (Lo almost always dies heroically within 15 minutes), the infant is taken up by his daughter, Xiu Yi (Chang Pei Pei), her suitor, Jin (Wu Fung), and their bodyguard, Zhou Feiyun (Yueh Hua).

The quartet roam the countryside, falling into one random scrape after another, fleeing the rebel assassins, who are led by a man with blue skin. Why is his skin blue? I have no idea. Either Lo figured that the audience would know why the villain was blue, and thus skipped the explanation, or he didn’t know himself.

The blue skin, and a set of almost cuddly-looking animal skins, are about the most interesting parts of Raw Courage, which fills the rest of its running time with one uninspired battle after another. Completely lacking in suspense or inventive choreography, the fights are little more than clanging wastes of time.

And when all those fights are done, the prince is still in danger, the evil rebels are still in charge and the heroes are still on the run. But, hey, Lo’s 90 minutes are up, time to cut to the end credits.

Raw Courage
Dir: Lo Wei
Released: August 14, 1968

Death Valley

Lo Wei’s films are like the bargain frozen pizzas that you buy only because they are on sale and your next paycheck is for away. They may fill your stomach, but
they never truly satisfy. Lo was a competent screenwriter and director, capable of turning out films that kept audiences from going hungry, but few of his efforts did more than fill time at the movie theater.

Summons To Death, Angel With The Iron Fists, Madam Slender Plum — these and other Lo films are the cheap pizzas of the Shaw Brothers catalog. Death Valley fits in right along side them in the freezer case, a film full of the requisite swordfights, betrayals and manly friendships that never comes near the Chang Cheh style that it’s cribbing.

Yueh Hua and Chen Hung Lieh, neither of whom got many leading roles at Shaw, entertain as the swordsmen Chiu Yu Lung and Jin Fu, respectively. Both men are trying to avenge the death of Uncle Chiu (Lo Wei, who almost always appears in his own movies), who was poisoned by his sociopathic niece Chiu Jien Ying (Angela Yu Chien).

Padding out the film are double crosses, ambushes, fights and murders a-plenty; and it’s all topped off with some comic relief from Li Kun. All the ingredients are there, but they lack imagination and pizzazz.

Death Valley
Dir: Lo Wei
Released: October 11, 1968

Killer Darts

“You dare use the Killer Dart to kill?!” screams incredulous swordplay master Liou Wen Lung (Fang Mien), horrified that his student, Hu Chi Feng (Chang Pei Shan) has just used the clan’s secret weapon to kill a peasant woman. While I’m sure that he was mostly upset over Hu’s unchivalrous behavior, the statement still drips with irony. Why else would you call it the Killer Dart?

The angry relics of Liou’s violent but honorable past envelop the story of Killer Darts. After his evil student goes AWOL and his arch-rival, Chou Chiao (Ma Ying), vows revenge, swordsman Liou decides to settle down for a peaceful life with his son, Yu Long (Yueh Hua), and his adopted daughter, Yu Sien (Chin Ping), lone survivor of Hu’s murder spree.

The past, of course, never evaporates. Hu and Chou reappear, the latter sporting a sweet dart-shooting prosthetic arm, and cloud Yu Sien’s mind with thoughts of misguided revenge.

Director Ho Meng-hua never fully capitalizes on these themes of past transgressions and debts of violence. Only one or two scenes really capture the sense of ongoing tragedy that I think the film needed. Instead, the film is mostly a boilerplate swordplay revenge film, mixed with an occasional love story, that never really decides who its main character is.

But Ho does put his special effects experience, gained while directing the four “Monkey King” movies, to good use. The film’s well-choreographed fight scenes feature levitating bowls, lethal steak stakes and a plethora of killer darts, coins and arrows. Mix in some unique weapons—the film’s deadly prayer cymbals herald Ho Meng-hua’s 1975 film The Flying Guillotine—and the result entertains, even if it never really satisfies.

Killer Darts
Dir: Ho Meng-hua
Released: May 9, 1968

Sword Of Swords

A mostly unremarkable swordplay film, Sword Of Swords features some of Shaw’s most popular elements from 1968—Jimmy Wang Yu and swordplay—but little to differentiate it from the pack of swordplay flicks that was starting to flood the screen^ss1.

A filial son and student, Lin Jenshiau (Jimmy Wang Yu) is entrusted with an ancient, super-powered sword, much to the anger of bandit villain Fang Shishiung (Tien Feng), who conspires to destroy Lin, kill Lin’s family and steal the sword for his boss, Shang (Huang Chung Hsin).

Fang’s plan succeeds admirably; only Lin’s undying sense of honor pushes him past the barriers of tragedy, blindness and impalement. Lin’s remarkable endurance  is the highlight of one of the film’s best scenes; as his father (Yeung Chi Hing) beats him over the back with a stool, Lin stares off into the distance, unmoved and resigned to his ugly fate.

The film’s action scenes, choreographed by legends Liu Chia Liang and Tang Chia, are Swords's other redeeming point. While not of the quality that the duo would achieve in later films, the fights still feature tasteful wirework and dynamic gymnastics. The movie’s final fight scene, in which Fang unleashes one of the dirtiest tricks in film, is justly celebrated.

But these high points are few and far between, leaving the rest of the film to pad itself with whatever it can find. The result is an unsurprisingly middling film.

Sword Of Swords
Dir: Cheng Kang
Released: August 23, 1968

^ss1Of course, it’s hard to exceed excellent 1968 swordplay films Golden Swallow and The Bells Of Death.

The Bells Of Death

First, some history. If this is already familiar, skip to the next paragraph. In 1960, Japanese director Akira Kurosawa made Yojimbo; four years later, Italian director Sergio Leone remade the film (without crediting Kurosawa) as A Fistful Of Dollars, which he followed with two sequels, For A Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, films that had immeasurable effects on film industries around the world.

This story is well known. Less studied are the ripples that followed this globe-crossing bit of cinematic cross-pollination, as directors the world round began to imitate the work of Leone and Kurosawa.

I’ve frequently talked about the Japanese influence on the Hong Kong industry, and Shaw Brothers in particular. But I’ve had no reason to bring Leone into the discussion^bd1. Until The Bells Of Death.

Early on in his quest to avenge the murder of his parents, Wei Fu (Chang Yi) pauses to remember the faces of the three bandits who killed his family and kidnaped his sister; the faces freeze against a blank sky, locking the killers' dirty, ugly grimaces in Wei Fu’s mind. Too call this scene “Leone-esque” would be understating the similarities. Throw in a dusty Spanish mesa and the shot could be placed in the middle of any Leone film without raising any suspicion.

Later, when Wei Fu meets his nemesises, taking them on in a series of fantastically moody and original set pieces, trumpets, intermingled with mandolin and fuzzed-out guitar, blare through the soundtrack. Just as no Leone film is complete without at Morricone score, no Leone reference is complete without a Morricone homage.

But director Yue Feng knew his film history. After 30 years in the industry, he was film history. So when Wei Fu discovers a severed foot outside of a village under the thumb of a power-mad bandit, Kurosawa’s Yojimbo gets its due.

Thankfully, The Bells Of Death is far more than a salute to Leone and Kurosawa; it’s a beautifully terse revenge movie, skillfully setting up the inevitable battles between Wei and the bandits then deliciously delivering the goods, without getting bogged down in side-plots or the romance between Wei and Xiangxiang (Chin Ping), the girl he saves from prostitution.

I’m continuously astonished by the flexibility of director Yue Feng. In two months, Shaw released as many Yue Feng movies: Spring Blossoms and The Bells Of Death. The first is a hydrogen-light romantic comedy, the last a moody, bloody revenge film^bd2. All Shaw Brothers directors (with the possible exception of Chang Cheh) had to handle any and all genres, but Yue Feng handled the changes with exceptional grace, releasing high quality films in nearly all the genres he touched.

The Bells Of Death
Dir: Yue Feng
Released: June 30, 1968

^bd1Law Kar, in his essay “The Origin and Development of Shaws' Colour Wuxia Century” (published by the Hong Kong Film Archive in their excellent The Shaw Screen) details the stew of world cinema influences that influenced these early swordplay films.

^bd2In the same two-month period, Shaw also released The Magnificent Swordsman, which credits Yue Feng as a co-director.

Spring Blossoms

Of all the marketing copy written for these Shaw Brothers releases, no sentence has been funnier, or more accurate, than this snippet from the cover of Spring Blossoms:

It’s a triple-decker romantic bus ride on a road to nowhere speeding toward a low bridge.

That pretty much sums up the whole film. Fast, bizarre, out-of-control and hurtling towards disaster. Spring Blossoms only avoids catastrophe by realizing, correctly, that no one cares if a romantic comedy makes any sense, as long as everyone ends up happily married.

Built on the movie law that single people want nothing more than marriage, and that parents want nothing more than for their daughters to marry doctors, Spring Blossoms never makes much sense, but satisfies the marriage quotient with ease.

In the Chen household, the three eldest daughters have married tenants and there’s hope that daughter number four, Jieyu (Shu Pei Pei), will marry their newest tenant, Wu (Yang Fang), a medical student from Singapore.

When Chen’s sister-in-law, Mrs. Zhao (Go Bo Shu), sees the marital possibilities of renting out a room, she immediately rents to Wu’s classmate, the spastic, bumbling lothario Yao (Chin Feng), in the hopes that he’ll woo her daughter, Jinglan (Essie Lin Chia).

The third, and never fully baked, layer of this cake involves Chen’s fifth daughter, Meiyu (Lily Li), and a classmate (whose father is Wu and Yao’s professor) trying to get their parents to marry, Brady Bunch style.

Love, of course, is guaranteed, if not exactly in the order you’d predict. Since attraction is a given, the movie never bothers to explain why these couples fall in love, they simply do, obeying the eternal laws of the screen.

The film fills out its very short running-time with slapstick comedy (It’s remarkable that Yao has lived as long as he has, considering that he chokes on everything he eats) and some polite satire of marriage-obsessed mothers, which allows Go Bo Shu to play her standard role—the unpleasant, scheming mother—to comedic effect.

Spring Blossoms is light enough to lift a dirigible, but it’s still a fun comedy. The bus may be on a ride to nowhere, but at least the passengers entertain.

Spring Blossoms
Dir: Yue Feng
Released: April 19, 1968

Gun Brothers

Stock villains make the screenwriter’s job easier; they strip out all that pesky exposition and get straight to the meat. No audience member wonders why the bad guys are bad, they just are. Stock villains make for quick moving, if somewhat lazy filmmaking; white hats versus black hats, with none of that irritating grey.

In American WWII movies, screenwriters could always rely on Nazis to fill the role of stock villains. Hong Kong never fought the Germans, but their films had the Japanese to take the Nazis’ place.

The white hat of Gun Brothers is Chi Yiu Tun (Ling Yun). Although he’s called “gun brother” in the subtitles, that’s a confusing mistranslation, as no one knows that Chi Yu Tun even has a brother (this is important later on). Maybe the translators were trying to suggest that Chi Yu Tun is so good with guns that he must be related to them. Regardless, the more literal translation, “Bandit with a thousand faces,” is far more logical after Chi takes out an entire Japanese base with a pistol and a suitcase full of disguises.

When not gunning down entire battalions, Chi dates the daughter of the collaborationist governor, evades the grasp of Inspector Ma Tak Li (Tien Feng) and plots the next steps of his one-man resistance. But when he falls into a trap set by Ma, Chi’s face is scarred and his cover is blown. On the run, he hides out with his circus acrobat friends.

Yes, circus acrobat friends. My guess is that Chi was supposed to be an ex-circus performer, earning a living as a trick-shot gunman. But if anyone in the movie ever explained that bit of backstory, it didn’t make it into the subtitles.

Waltzing in from stage left comes the films deus ex machina, Chi’s so-far-unmentioned twin brother, Chi Yiu Nam. Apparently, no one else knows about Yiu Nam either, because when he assumes Yiu Tun’s identity no one stops to think, “Hey, could he be that twin brother who was studying abroad?” Inspector Ma, who’s certain he slashed Yiu Tun across the face, can’t explain why the playboy’s face lacks a scar.

Logic is abandoned, as are several of the film’s sub-plots, in the pursuit of patriotism and victory over the Japanese and their collaborationist friends. None of it makes much sense, and the script consistently takes the laziest route possible. But, oddly, that doesn’t make the film less fun. Good guys win, bad guys lose, stuff blows up real nice. Lazy is not the same as bad.

Gun Brothers
Dir: Chen Kang, Wu Jiaxiang
Released: February 21, 1968

Hong Kong Rhapsody

What a difference a day makes. Or, in this case, what a difference 8 years makes. From Shaw’s early, somewhat clumsy attempts at Western-influenced musicals—like 1960’s Les Belles—the studio’s efforts evolved into accomplished, stylish and entertaining films like 1968’s Hong Kong Rhapsody.

While I’m sure some of the improvement was due to experience, much of the credit belongs to Japanese director Inoue Umetsugu and his style-obsessed crew. Umetsugu’s first picture for Shaw Brothers was 1967’s beauty-fest Hong Kong Nocturne. While this follow-up (released a year to the day after Nocturne) isn’t as enjoyable as its predecessor (mostly thanks to the lack of Lily Ho, Cheng Pei Pei and Chin Ping), it’s still an admirably frothy piece of eye candy.

Playboy magician Chen Tzu-hsin (Peter Chen Ho, or “Romeo” as the trailer calls him) cares for and then falls for the showbiz-inclined orphan Chang Hsiao Ping (“Lovelorn” Li Ching). After a bit of breaking and entering, a lot of partying and a fair amount of lying, Chang finds herself the adopted granddaughter of miserly Lin Chin-fu (Yeung Chi Hing) and the member of an up-and-coming troupe of singers and dancers. Chen, on the other hand, discovers that he loves Chang, but can not have her for fear that his gigolo reputation will bring down her budding career.

There’s quite a bit more to the plot, including a group of blackmailers (Helen Ma, Angela Yu Chien and a guy with a Hitler mustache), a string of celebrity cameos (Lily Ho, Chin Ping and Margaret Hsing Hui) and a scrawny, stuttering villain (Wei Ping-Ou) trying to steal Lin Chin-fu’s fortune. But all of these plot details are given only the briefest attention—they get in the way of the dancing!

Although they lack Nocturne’s color coding, the musical numbers of Rhapsody are still glamorous, fun and slick. Some of the special effects used to clone Li Ching into a dozen dancers are less than effective, but the film’s grand finale more than makes up for earlier defects.

Armed with a better plot, a wider selection of songs (why does Peter Chen Ho only repeat one song throughout the entire film?) and more notable actresses, Nocturne remains a far better film than Rhapsody. But both are grand examples of Shaw Brothers at the top of their musical game.

Hong Kong Rhapsody
Dir: Inoue Umetsugu
Released: February 8, 1968