Journey of the Doomed
I have to admit that this 1985 Shaw film wasn’t
at all what I was expecting. I was hoping for a low grade non-thinking
action film with some fun female kung fu fighting. Now the film has a bit
of that – certainly the non-thinking part - but it overshadows the limited
action with surprisingly big gulps of nudity and sex. In fact, the first
thirty minutes of the film seemed like a poor kissing cousin to ”Intimate
Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan” before it went off into a different,
rather dull direction. Certainly director Cha Cheun Yee went on later to
make a decent girls with guns film, “In the Line of Duty V”, but really
made his mark later in his two sly takes on triad life, “Once Upon a Time
in Triad Society I and II”, but very little of this future talent is displayed
in his lackluster debut. The worst thing about this is that the film begins
with promise – even if not the kind I was expecting – but then makes a
terrible decision by focusing on the two dullest characters in the film
while allowing the interesting ones to fade away or stay off screen.
The Scent of Women is the hottest bordello in
town with oodles of young good looking women, but of course you can never
have enough and so the Madam forces one of her young servants to lose her
virginity to a customer – but no need to worry – they give her a drug that
actually makes her all hot and bothered and ready for action. Shui-erh
is also a servant girl/adopted daughter and she doesn’t appreciate what
has been done to her friend and throws a poisonous snake on the guy. This
begins a series of events that leads to general disaster. Needing money
for compensation, the Madam goes to the Emperor’s next in line for the
throne brother (Tony Leung Ka-fai in a very small role) and tells him that
Shiu-erh is the illegitimate daughter of the Emperor – born to a courtesan
many years before. Shiu-erh quickly becomes a political pawn as the brothers
want to make use of her – Tony to embarrass his brother and the Emperor
for the hungry earthworms.
Tony sends a message to the Three Knights – Max
Mok, Candice Yu and Ku Kwan-chung – to find the girl and bring her to him.
The Emperor on the other hand recruits Alex Man and his two female killers,
Kara Hui Ying Hung and Li Tien-lang (daughter of director Li Han-hsiang)
to take care of her permanently before a scandal breaks out. An added complication
is that Alex and Candice Yu have feelings for one another and he tries
to convince her to look the other way so that he can complete one last
high paying job for the both of them. The two assassins go to the bordello
but decide that it's a lot easier to just kill everyone than trying to
figure out which one is Shui-erh – and thankfully for the male viewers
they go during bath time and so most of the women are running around screaming
and bleeding in a state of undress. Most are also soon dead except our
heroine who escapes and soon runs into a fisherman who helps her out of
a jam. He is played by Stephen Tung who was later of course to go on to
become one of Hong Kong’s best action choreographers – at this time though
he seems very skinny and not the stuff of a hero – which may explain of
course why he ended up focusing on choreography.
Up to this point the film has been somewhat entertaining
in a seedy way, but at this juncture it takes a dreadfully bland detour
as Tung and Shui-erh hide out in the woods and set up house – and have
sex – and cook and have sex and eat and have sex (hey, there's not a lot
else to do in the woods). I noticed that the actress (Fu Yin-yu?) who plays
Shui-erh has the Shaw standard tongue out during the sex act trait – sort
of like when Michael Jordan used to dribble a basketball - it makes me
wonder if this was taught in the Shaw acting classes (“no – a little further
out and with a bit of a curl”). All is tranquility in this loving household
– so much so that I half expected the music – that is quite awful in its
own way by playing a bunch of 70’s smaltzy love tunes – would throw in
“Our House” from Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young:
Our house, is a very, very, very fine house
With two cats in the yard
Life used to be so hard
Now everything is easy 'cause of you
Instead of two cats though they have a mute female
(Emily Chu in a very early role) and love is all around. Of course sooner
or later you know trouble will find them and it does. The film has some
action – though not nearly enough – Kara does her thing for a while and
then there is a big all over the place kind of fight at the end which was
pretty silly, but a well-needed jolt to stay awake by that time. This film
was made very near the end of Shaw's days as a film production company
before they slid full time into television production - and the film's
lack of a well-thought out script and the mediocre film sets reflect this.
My rating for this film: 4.5