Sword of Emei (Review)
Sword of Emei
aka 峨嵋霸刀 aka E Mei ba dao
1969
Written by Wan Hoi-Ching and Ling Hon
Directed by Chan Lit-Ban
A Cantonese swordplay flick featuring a masked heroine, plenty of swordplay, piles of bodies, and one of the fastest paces I’ve seen in a Cantonese language feature from this time. Sword of Emei was a great surprise and a highly recommended action film. By 1969, the rails were starting to come off of the Hong Kong film insdustry, as pressure from the far superior Shaw Studios was making the local productions look like child plays. One way the industry tried to take up the slack was to push for some more adultish wuxia flicks, thus what would have probably been a slower female sworswoman (nuxia) film with a lot of gabbing in 1966 suddenly is a fast-paced action bonanza focused on one of the hot female leads of the time. And while it isn’t one of the Jane Bond flicks of the era, it does feature some of the plot tropes transplanted back to older China, along with the standard wuxia ideas like super swords and being noble bandits.
The main reason why this is so enjoyable is the pacing, so let’s give a hooray to action directors Han Ying-Chieh and Leung Siu-Chung for coming up with modern action film pacing 40 years ago! Sure, with the vast amount of action going on vs the probably minuscule shooting schedule, the action isn’t complex, and most characters get killed in a slash or two, but there is a ton of it and it makes up for the complex swordfighting that was still in its infancy at the time.
Sword of Emei was originally filmed in color, but the only released version I could find was a black and white vcd with a beat up print and burnt in subs (subtitles are rare on a lot of these films, so I’ll take what I can get!) thus explaining these blurry, blown up screencaps I have for you. According to the cast listings, there is an attempt to give some cross-national appeal with Mitr Chaibancha! Except I couldn’t spot him and didn’t even know he was supposed to be in this film until after it was over. Oops! Sammo Hung Kam-Bo is also somewhere among the many men slaughtered, but with all the carnage, he could be Guard #3 or Guard #343! So instead, let’s focus on the cast we know:
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The Blonde Hair Monster (Review)
The Blonde Hair Monster
aka 黃毛怪人 aka Yellow Giant
1962
Written and Directed by Wong Fung
The Blonde Hair Monster is a story from the pulp series Wong Ang the Flying Heroine Bandit. These tales originated in 1940’s Shanghai from intelligence worker Siu Ping (aka Xiao Ping), who used his stories to speak out against the social and economic injustices of the time, creating a hero to fight for the people. Siu Ping fled to Hong Kong as the Chinese Civil War intensified and the Communists declared victory. The Wong Ang character spoke to the citizens of Hong Kong just as she had to the citizens of Shanghai, and became big sellers in the 1950s. Wong Ang is a play on the word for Oriole, and thus is known as Oriole in several title translations.
Wong Ang fits the profile of the virtuous female fighter character. While not being a nuxia (swordswoman), she is set in modern day and works with modern tools to take on modern problems. The rich and the powerful who think they can get away with crimes meet their matches, and the innocent and forgotten find the justice they need in their lives.
Wong Ang’s popularity made it a natural that she would appear on the screen, with the first entries appearing in 1957 or 1958. The first known film was Shaw’s Oriole, the Heroine (also known as Miss Nightingale, the Flying Fencer), which starred Pearl Au Kar-wai as Wong Ang and Fanny Fan and Chiang Feng as her sidekicks. There is some uncertainty to the exact release date. Beginning in 1959, Yu So-Chow played her in a series of films, four featuring veteran female action star Wu Lizhu and Yam Yin as her two sidekicks. 1959 gave us How Oriole the Heroine Solved the Case of the Three Dead Bodies and How Oriole the Heroine Caught the Murderer. 1960 was the Year of the Oriole with four films: House No. 13, Apartment Murder, Miss Cranery Vs. the Flying Tigers, and The Story of Wong-Un the Heroine. The Breakthrough was released in 1961. The Blonde Hair Monster is the last of the Yu So-Chow Wong Ang films (and the last Wong Ang film period, unless you count Michele Yeoh’s Silverhawk!), though by now the focus had begun to shift to Connie Chan, who plays one of her sidekicks. Thanks to DurianDave from SoftFilm for his work compiling the list of films above.
My favorite part of Blonde Hair Monster is how the vcd is missing an entire reel of the film! Luckily for me, I tracked down a guy on YouTube who uploaded the middle chunk of a TVB broadcast of the film for some reason, and that middle chunk has the missing reel! That’s also why some of the screencaps look different. TarsTarkas.NET goes the extra mile to give you the review you deserve, because we care, when we’re not being lazy! What is even more weird is the TVB broadcast is also missing pieces that the vcd had. So I’ve put together an extended edition of The Blonde Hair Monster that just might be the most complete copy of the film in the world. And yet there still is no title card…
Because this film is obscure as frak and I had to composite it together, this review will be detailed and long. So, sorry if you aren’t into that sort of thing, but bully if you are! And for more, much more on the Jane Bond films that this is a prototype of, listen to the Jane Bond Infernal Brains Podcast!
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Categories: Bad, Movie Reviews Tags: Chan Hiu-Kau, Cheung Ying-Tsoi, Chu Yau-Ko, Connie Chan Po-Chu, Gam Lui, Hong Kong, Lai Kwan-Lin, Lam Liu-Ngok, Ling Mung, Lok Gung, Sai Gwa-Pau, Sek Kin, Siu Gam, Tang Cheung, Walter Tso Tat-Wah, We don't need no stinking subtitles, Wong Fung, Yu So-chau, Yung Yuk-Yi
