It’s truly a great time to be a Hong Kong martial arts movie fan right now. Most of the boutique labels have been getting in on the action, providing a wealth of high-quality releases of classic kung-fu and wuxia titles. What’s nice now, is that most of the major films have been covered, so labels are digging deeper into the extensive archives of studios like Golden Harvest and Shaw Brothers.
The latest unearthing comes from Eureka, who are releasing a pair of revenge movies made by Shaw Brothers in a set titled Exact Revenge: The Eunuch and The Deadly Knives. I’ve skipped over a couple of Eureka’s martial arts collections recently, due to being too busy, but I found myself regretting those decisions, so I found a way to squeeze this one in.
My thoughts follow.
The Eunuch (a.k.a. Gui tai jian)
Director: Teddy Yip
Screenplay: Lo Wei
Starring: Tsung Hua, Lisa Chiao Chiao, Pai Ying, Yang Chi-Ching, Wang Hsieh, Lo Wei
Country: Hong Kong
Running Time: 98 min
Year: 1971
The Eunuch centres around the ruthless and power-hungry eunuch Gui De-hai (Pai Ying), who, after surviving a royal assassination attempt, gets bloody revenge on the imperial family. His vendetta extends to the absent Prince Jin (Tsung Hua), whom he dispatches men to find and eliminate. However, Jin is fortuitously led by a staged kidnapping to Old Man Gong-sun (Yang Chi-Ching), an elderly but formidable pole fighting master, who takes him under his tutelage, thereby protecting him from Gui’s assassins.
Meanwhile, Gui faces an unexpected complication when his estranged father reappears after twenty years to reveal that Gui has a daughter (played by Lisa Chiao Chiao), a secret that could jeopardise his standing. Gui swiftly murders his father and attempts to have the girl killed to bury the truth, but she is rescued by the Old Lady of Green Bamboo Forest, also a skilled pole fighter. The two masters unite with their new students, preparing them for a confrontation with Gui, each student seeking their own form of retribution.
The Eunuch felt very much like a classic wuxia to me. You’ve got a lot of the standard elements – bloody swordplay, some wirework, deception, and a skilled old master (two here, in fact). It delivers everything you want from a film like this, though it’s not one of the strongest wuxia I’ve seen.
For one, it feels a little drawn out in spots, making for a slower-paced film than I’d have liked. It also has some narrative shortcomings. It’s not explained how master Gong-sun knew to save Jin from Gui De-hai, when the villain’s crimes had literally only just happened. The training of our heroes is skimmed over too, with the ‘special move’ used to eventually get the better of our villain feeling tacked on.
That’s not to say the story is sacrificed over the action though. A lot of time is spent on the central melodrama, and this is effective. Writer Lo Wei and director Teddy Yip certainly do a good job of establishing the fact that our villain is not a nice man. By the end of the film, he’s wiped out almost an entire family, including a small child that he throws onto a sword, he’s killed his own father and ex-lover, attempted to kill his own daughter and has been an all-around nasty piece of work.
The film is visually impressive too. It’s carefully framed and full of colourful costumes and production design, as you’d expect from a Shaw Brothers production.
The fight scenes are also decent. The choreography isn’t as spectacular as some of the better examples of the genre, but it’s well-executed. Sammo Hung crops up in one scene too, as a challenger during a martial arts contest.
All-in-all, whilst The Eunuch could have been a touch tighter and more original, it remains a solid revenge flick with a typical Shaw Brothers sheen.
Films: 
The Deadly Knives (a.k.a. Fists of Vengeance or Luo ye fei dao)
Director: Jang Il-ho
Screenplay: Chung Gwok-Hin
Starring: Ching Li, Ling Yun, Lily Li Li-Li, Ching Miao, Chen Yan-Yan, Chan Shen, Dean Shek
Country: Hong Kong
Running Time: 87 min
Year: 1972
The Deadly Knives (a.k.a. Fists of Vengeance) follows the story of young lovers Yan Zi Fei (Ling Yun) and Guan Yue-hua (Ching Li) as they return home, only to discover their families embroiled in a bitter conflict. Guan Yue-hua’s father, Guan Fun-lin, has aligned himself with the unscrupulous Japanese businessman Ogawa (Ching Miao), who seeks to seize control of the Yan family’s valuable forest land by any means necessary. Despite Master Yan’s steadfast refusal to sell, Ogawa intensifies his ruthless plotting, resorting to deceit, betrayal, and ultimately, brutal violence.
As the tensions escalate and the Yan family faces increasing threats, Yan Zi-fei is forced to take up arms. His determination to avenge his family’s honour leads him on a path of violence that forces him to confront even those close to him who have been corrupted by the Japanese financier.
Released after Fist of Fury in Hong Kong, The Deadly Knives is clearly trying to replicate that film’s success by tapping into its anti-Japanese sentiment and using a lot of hand-to-hand combat rather than purely swordplay. This was also a time when Golden Harvest were stealing Shaw Brothers’ thunder in the world of martial arts filmmaking, and after the studio had lost some of its talent, such as King Hu, to the Taiwanese industry. So the Shaw Brothers were trying to regain their footing in the Hong Kong filmmaking scene.
This being early in the hand-to-hand martial arts movie boom, The Deadly Knives is somewhat of a ‘basher’, i.e. a kung-fu film with less authentic, graceful moves. However, the fights are still energetic and often quite elaborate in terms of number and range of moves. The fights get better as the film goes on too, building to a suitably action-packed finale. The choreography came from the great Yuen Woo-Ping and his brother Yuen Cheung-Yan. It was early in their careers as fight directors, so it doesn’t reach the heights of their later work, but it’s still got better action than a great many films of the era.
The film is nicely shot too, with some artful compositions and plenty of slick camera movement. Most notably, there are some very impressive tracking shots within some of the action scenes.
There’s a ‘love square’ that drives much of the story in the first half or two-thirds. This, added to the family conflict and Romeo and Juliet aspects of the story, helps add weight and drama to the standard revenge plot that forms the spine of the film.
There’s more nudity than most martial arts films of the era, with a pair of rape scenes proving pivotal to the story. This latter aspect causes the film to be much darker and more brutal than most. It doesn’t shy away from the psychological impact of such an act either.
The western genre can be seen as an influence here too. Not only is the story of greedy landowners causing conflict familiar from a lot of classic oaters, but the film culminates in a classic one-on-one duel that could easily be placed in a dusty American desert town setting.
So, The Deadly Knives is another classic revenge story, but one told with grand drama and thrilling violence.
Films:
Exact Revenge: The Eunuch and The Deadly Knives is out on 16th June on Blu-Ray in the UK, released by Eureka as part of their Eureka Classics series. The films look great, with rich colours and clean, crisp prints. The Eunuch looks perhaps a little too clean though, as it has a slightly plastic look. It might just be the heavy make-up and artificiality of the Shaw Brothers production though. There’s no English dub on The Eunuch, if that’s your audio track of choice. I’m happy with just the Mandarin, personally. These tracks are good for the era, though the common harsh ‘s’ sounds were more noticeable on The Deadly Knives.
SPECIAL FEATURES
– Limited Edition [2000 copies]
– Limited edition O-card slipcase featuring new artwork by Grégory Sacré (Gokaiju)
– Limited edition collector’s booklet featuring new writing on both films in this set by writer and film critic James Oliver and East Asian cinema expert Camille Zaurin
– 1080p HD presentations of both films
– Original Mandarin audio tracks
– Optional English dub for The Deadly Knives
– Optional English subtitles, newly revised for this release
– New audio commentary on The Eunuch by action cinema experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema
– New audio commentary on The Deadly Knives by Frank Djeng (NY Asian Film Festival)
– Falling Leaves, Flying Daggers – new video essay by Jonathan Clements, author of A Brief History of China
Mike Leeder and Arne Venema provide a commentary over The Eunuch. It’s business as usual for the guys, but that’s not a bad thing. The pair deliver a fun but informative commentary that delves into the history of the cast and crew, as well as offering their thoughts on the film and some personal anecdotes here and there.
Frank Djeng provides a commentary over The Deadly Knives. Like with Leeder and Venema, I may as well copy and paste my reviews of Djeng’s commentaries, as he always delivers the goods with deep dives into the backgrounds of everyone involved with the films, as well as providing some cultural context.
Jonathan Clements discusses The Deadly Knives in a video essay. He talks about what might have inspired its anti-Japanese story before providing some general analysis. It’s an intriguing, intelligent piece.
In the booklet, there’s an essay by James Oliver about The Eunuch, discussing the prevalence of such characters in Chinese history before looking at the film itself. Camille Zaurin writes about The Deadly Knives. They look at the dire straits Shaw Brothers were in at the time of the film’s production, before delving into the film and its qualities.
So, Eureka have put together a fine package for a pair of enjoyable, under-appreciated revenge films from Shaw Brothers. Fans should certainly pick it up.
Disc/Package: