The Black Falcon
In 1966 Paul Chang Chung had starred in the Shaw
film “The Golden Buddha” that was clearly influenced by the James Bond
mania that was sweeping the world and a year later he pops up in this movie
and announces that he is Bond’s cousin! Of the leading men that I have
come across so far in Shaw’s stable of actors, I have to admit that Chung
is perhaps the best candidate for a Bond like role – good looking in a
masculine way, urbane, suave, at ease with the female sex and with some
physical grace. Of course if people have seen “The Golden Buddha” what
they may recall is how poor the fighting was choreographed – but from the
evidence of this film it seems Chung may have been embarrassed enough by
those scenes to go to work on improving his skills and his karate displays
in this film are not bad for a film from that period.
He works for a private detective agency – their
best man – and has all the attributes you would look for in the kind of
jobs he gets assigned – a karate expert, a master of the roulette wheel
(instead of Baccarat), able to sniff poison in a glass of wine and an agile
seducer of women. His agency is hired to track down and bring to justice
the Black Falcon gang – a mysterious group of criminals who appear to be
headed by a Mr. Tan Gongying whose whereabouts are unknown. Chung is told
to cozy up to his daughter in hopes that she will lead him to her father
– not exactly a painful duty as she is played by the glorious Jenny Hu
in a nice assortment of stylish fashions and dazzling smiles. He tries
an old fashioned tack – walk into a bar where she is sitting and show just
how tough he is by getting into a bar room brawl and breaking a lot of
heads open. She is impressed but he plays hard to get.
Later though when he picks winning numbers for
her at the casino and she has a pile of chips big enough to feed a horse
in front of her, she is as good as his – but little does he know that he
has been watched by the Black Falcon gang from the beginning and their
minions have been sending back live shots through miniature cameras to
the TV set back at headquarters. If only they had copy written that technology
and produced it they would be as big as Microsoft today, but no instead
they preferred being a secret criminal organization because that is so
much cooler and they get to kill their subordinates if they screw up –
try that at Microsoft (which of course some have accused of being a large
criminal organization that “kills” the competition). Silly people. Why
do all criminal masterminds miss the obvious? The way to rule the world
is through capitalism and monopolies.
So of course they make various ineffective attempts
to kill Chung with a gang made up of Wang Hsia (father of current actor
David Wong), Tien Feng, Ku Feng, Wu Ma, Helen Ma and other easily dispensable
bad guys. Whenever one of them gets knocked off by Chung, the second in
command, the kittenish and delectable Margaret Tu Chuan takes out her large
black ledger book and crosses their names out – you don’t become number
two by being disorganized! And the fact that she oozes out of her clothes
(off-screen) in front of her direct reports doesn’t hurt her position of
power either. Sadly, this intriguing actress – known by her nickname as
the “Wild Girl’, was to commit suicide within two years of this film with
her female lover. Though her appearance time in the film is fairly small,
she impresses with her deadly disguised as a cigarette holder blow gun
and her feline sexuality.
Overall the film feels like a bit of a weak cousin
to the films it tries to imitate – everything is there from car chases
to gun battles to beautiful girls in skimpy towels but it doesn’t really
have any zing to it. The pace of the film is a little slow and it provides
no electrifying moments, but it still remains a generally enjoyable action
film with a nice cast of lead and character actors. One element that is
missing that made “The Golden Buddha” so much fun is a campy mentality
with completely over the top villains. Sure these bad guys have their secret
lair and a huge Nazi like banner of a black falcon in the background and
even a little throne for Margaret to sit and purr on – but their only secret
weapon is the video transmitter, they have no futuristic uniforms and they
aren’t in the least bit competent. They try concocting elaborate plans
to kill Chung when a simple bullet to the head would easily be sufficient
but when they do finally try shooting him they miss badly, which may explain
the elaborate plans! By the end they are holed up in a two bedroom apartment
– a feeble end to the Black Falcon gang.
The film was directed by yet another import
from Japan - Takumi Furukawa (Chinese name: Tai Kao-mei) who had been fairly
successful back home working for the Nikkatsu studio - his best known film
was "Season of the Sun" (available without English subs on DVD) - before
directing he had been an assistant director under two greats - Kurosawa
and Gosho. He only made two films for the Shaw Brothers before returning
- this one and "Kiss and Kill".
My rating for this film: 6.0