This was very early in the Shaw Brothers wuxia
cycle and it shows in many ways. Shaw's main money makers were still historical
dramas and Chinese opera, but wuxia was digging in with Come Drink with Me,
Temple of the Red Lotus and The Twin Swords. The script for this was from
the man who was to take the wuxia film into a new excessively bloody direction,
Chang Cheh. The script is a bit of a mess and his signature is in it with
a few very violent scenes but even more in a weird scene where the hero and
heroine are getting out of their wet clothes with a blanket as a divider
and suddenly a Chinese opera song breaks out narrating their desire to tear
down the blanket and screw. This while a comrade is bravely fighting off
hordes of men to save a damsel in distress. Easily one of the more peculiar
scenes I have come across in a wuxia. The director is Sit Kwan more known
for his musicals, The Lark and Blue Skies, and it shows in the action choreography.
Not sure who was in charge of that, but it is slow and old-fashioned, though
there is plenty of it.
In fact, the film begins with a twelve-minute
mass action scene in which dozens of men are killed - some graphic severing
of arms in that. Six men have shown up at a temple to look for criminals.
Initially, it looks to be deserted but then an army of minions appear with
a monk leading them. No idea at this point who are the good guys or the bad
guys. Among the six is Chen Hung-lieh who was the villainous Jade Faced Tiger
in Come Drink with Me and the bad guy in dozens of other films. So, I assumed
the six men were the bad guys. Nope. The monk is a fake and he has lots of
minions to get killed - also Wu Ma and Fan Mei-sheng among his top men. It
is a good fight filled with traps and courage but by the end all six are
dead. But there is a seventh who was not there.
Wen Su-chen (Chiao Chuang) is the seventh
and he pretends to be a harmless student in order to stay at the temple and
study and to see what is going on. A lot is going on. There are loads of
women serving them and kidnapped women that are tortured and raped. The fake
monks kidnap the wife of Ku Feng who is there as a carpenter. RIP to Ku Feng.
He seems to show up in nearly every other Shaw film I watch. He was a great
character actor - generally as a villain but not always - and his many action
scenes are always a pleasure to watch. One of the great ones. His role here
is a small one as was typical at the time for him, but they were to get bigger
as the years passed.
Su-chen has to protect the Inspector and
his daughter from a corrupt governor who is in cahoots with the monks. The
daughter is played by Lily Ho. Looking quite plump in some shots. I think
she must have gone on a diet soon after because though she has no action
scenes here within a year, she would be the Angel with the Iron Fists. Two
other actresses with small parts would go on to become major players for
Shaw as well - Li Ching as the daughter of Ku Feng and Lili Li Li-li as the
maid to Lily Ho. There are some other actors who went on to fame later on
- Yuen Wo-ping as one of the monks, Simon Yuen also as a monk and Mama Hung
as one of the villagers. It isn't a great wuxia - Chiao Chuang doesn't have
much presence nor action skills, the three actresses have little to do and
the script looks to have been written in a hurry.
