Fatal Claws, Deadly Kicks
a.k.a. Woman Avenger
I was so taken by the physical skills and impish
charms of Hsia Kwan Lee in The Leg Fighters that I wanted to check out
this, her most famous film. It doesn’t disappoint. In a film career that
seemingly only spanned a few years, her reputation has increased over the
intervening time. She lacks perhaps the intensity of Angela Mao, but she
is a pleasure to watch in action. As a graduate of the Lu Kwang Opera Troupe
(some of her fellow classmates were Venoms Lu Feng and Ching Tien Chee)
she obviously mastered acrobatics and performs some terrific flips, somersaults
and cartwheels – often moves that were doubled for other kung fu female
performers of the time. Entering this genre at the end of the seventies
was of course the worst possible timing - at the end of the kung fu period
and a few years before the girls with guns began – and perhaps this explains
her paucity of roles. I went back and watched her in Zu Warriors as Brigitte
Lin’s main subordinate and was surprised at how much more mature and serious
she appeared only a few years after this film.
Falling into that cathartic genre of female kung
fu revenge films, this one is among the best in terms of action and a focus
entirely on the female character played by Hsia. I would still have to
say my two favorites so far are Judy Lee in Queen Boxer and Angela Mao
in Broken Oath – which both have a kick in the stomach intensity and are
amazingly violent and highly satisfying. This film has nothing comparable
to the exhilarating mass slaughter of the final scene in Queen Boxer or
the pure hatred and determination that Angela exhibits in Broken Oath –
but it has a series of one on one duels to the death that continue to hold
surprises and to keep one’s attention. It looks to have a fairly low budget
as it seems many of the female kung fu films did.
The Shaw Brothers primarily focused on male
oriented characters in the seventies (wasting to a large degree in my opinion
the talents of actresses like Sharon Yeung Pan Pan and Kara Hui Ying Hung)
and though Golden Harvest did support Angela Mao – they too were basically
focused on male action stars. But there was a loyal if not huge audience
for female kung fu films and independent productions often from Taiwan
filled this niche by making quite a few of these lower budget films starring
Judy Lee or Polly Shang Kwan and others. The same trend can be seen later
in the Girls with Guns films – they tended to generally have much lower
production values than male action films – and were often made by independents
filling a demand – D&B really being one of the only main studios to
support this genre whole heartedly.
Anyway back to this film. It is revenge pure and
simple. In the opening scene Hsia is raped by a group of hooligans and
her husband is killed. She is found by a Buddhist nun and nursed back to
health. She convinces the nun to teach her kung fu – and promises not to
use her newly acquired skill to wreak vengeance upon those men. The promise
is broken quickly and often. She begins tracking them down (by switching
into a male disguise – a short haired wig that would fool no one as to
her gender!) one by one and dispatching them in intricately choreographed
fights – generally ending with a dramatic and unforgiving deathblow to
a main organ. I always enjoyed her impish confident grin that she would
display to her opponent just as she knew she had them sized up and their
demise was clearly in the cards.
Along the way she dispatches Wong Chi Sheng and
Mao Tao (Angela’s brother), but she saves her best against the final name
on her mental list – the ringleader Peng Kong (also the choreographer of
many of her films). The fights all pleasingly display different fighting
skills of Hsia’s – usually developed around her hands and long deadly legs
– but also using sticks. One of the more impressive moments is eight rapid
over the shoulder kicks to an opponent behind her. Some of the fight scenes
are almost too acrobatic, too choreographed as they clearly want to display
these skills of hers – but in reality no one would possibly fight in such
a style – but it looks great – almost a wushu gymnastic exhibit of perfectly
timed movements.
My rating for this film: 7.5
