The Opium Trail
Director: Wong Fung
Year: 1973
Rating: 6.0
AKA - Deadly China Doll
"I am going to kill all of you" said to a large group of men are sweet words
to fans of old kung-fu films and we get to hear them uttered twice in this
film. And in fact everyone is killed. The old-fashioned way. Bludgeoned to
death with fists and kicks to various parts of the body. This one stars Angela
Mao and Carter Wong in an action packed martial arts film that has a slightly
more complicated plot than many of the "You killed my father, now I will kill
you" revenge plots that proliferated the kung-fu genre at the time.
Deadly China Dolls is the American MGM re-titling of The Opium Trail as
it was called in Hong Kong and is the version I am stuck with, dubbing and
all. As it runs 92 minutes I expect there wasn't much if any cut out - not
even the gratuitous nude scene near the beginning. Angela Mao is of course
legendary - one of the first female action stars along with Polly Shang-kuan
and Judy Lee to headline action films - but it is Angela Mao who became the
best known of them - possibly because she was in a Bruce Lee film and had
Golden Harvest behind many of her best films.
A lot of her filmography is hit or miss - some terrific films but there
is also a fare amount of low budget dross made outside of Golden Harvest
in which Mao gets into only a few brief fights. The ones to look for are
Hapkido, Broken Oath, Lady Whirlwind, The Fate of Lee Khan (King Hu), When
Taekwondo Strikes and then there are the two rather fun ones she made co-starring
with George Lazenby - Stoner and A Queen's Ransom.
This one isn't as good as those but you can't complain for lack of fighting.
The action choreography is fairly basic as it tended to be back in those early
days of the kung-fu film - choreographed by Chan Chuan who choreographed a
few of her films. She gets three good fights in this and one of them is one
of "I am going to kill all of you" scenarios. Along for the ride is another
stalwart of kung-fu films - Carter Wong who generates the charisma of a piece
of wet firewood but he must have been popular back then considering how many
films he starred in. I have never quite gotten his popularity, but you put
up with him because he often appeared with Angela and Polly.
The town of Tsin-tsin is basically a one street town though it does have
eight brothels - not much else to do I expect - but things get very busy suddenly
when Wong comes into town looking for revenge against Boss Scarface Wu (James
Nam). At the same time Boss Wu has made a deal with the Japanese (this taking
place in the 1930's or so though oddly with very few guns available) to help
traffic opium safely through his town and on top of this is the Big Boss
of the region Chai (Yi Yuan) who wants to steal the opium. Angela is just
a simple serving girl in a teahouse who is really working for the Chinese
underground. Many dead bodies later all is resolved satisfactorily for Angela
Mao fans. I had never seen this one and was happy to come across it.
