Xiang wei zhui hun bian (1969)
Action
It starts with the escort company robbery. Cut to a guy stops at a tea house, converses with the waiter (all exposition), then leaves. He sees a woman he briefly met at the tea house as she changes into different clothes. She is the daughter of the man he hopes will hire him. She challenges his skills and defeats him with her whip. He lays a trap for her but it is a case of mistaken identity of two women who look alike. He takes the wrong one against her will and they almost spend the night in an abandoned temple but she easily escapes. She goes to town where the mistaken identity continues. She talks to a man and reveals she is there for revenge for her father's death. The man was a bandit, now reformed, in the murderer's gang. He also talks to his wife and there is a flashback about twin sisters, rape, traitors and such. He gives our girl a map of the traps in the enemy's hide out.There is a lot of exposition in the dialog but the subtitles are impossible to read completely so details are lost. The main detail is that the whole revenge thing is complicated by becoming a family reunion.My copy is a digital file made from a VHS from South Korea. It has dual Chinese and English hard subtitles with Korean subtitles on top of them both. The subtitles are crowded and cut off with the 4:3 screen format.The man I admire most in the history of martial arts movies, Liu Chia-Liang, is listed as action director here, along with another Shaw Brothers employee, Tong Kai. Brother Lau Kar-Wing and actor David Chiang are also on the Shaw Brothers employee list. Since Shaw Studios did not believe in paying actors any more than necessary it was typical for its employees to take off to Taiwan and make a movie and some money in a week. This entire production seems to fit that. The result is a totally average martial arts movie. There are not enough fights and too much drama and dialog. The fights are just good enough compared to similar movies in 1969.I can only refer this movie to hard core fans of martial arts movies from the golden age 1967 to 1984. I rate it as a watch it once and forget it average production.
Director
Writer
Starring
Language:
Mandarin
Awards:
Country:
Hong Kong, Taiwan
Metacritic Score:
DVD Release Date:
Box Office Total: