Hong Kong premiere: October 6, 1983
Director: Tong Gaai
Stars: Derek Yee, Pai Piao, Liu Yu-Po, Ko Fei, Chan Shen, Kwan Feng, Ku Feng, Ai Fei, Dang Wai-Ho, Lee Hoi-Sang
Story Overview: Someone is killing the heads of the four most influential clans, and three friends find themselves in the middle of the trouble. When one of them is accused of the crime, they set out to solve the mystery, but soon find that the evidence leads them to the Shaolin Temple itself!
My Nutshell Review: A twisty revenge plot, a bit of a mystery, three friends standing together against a community that seems to have turned completely against them. Derek Yee is serviceable in the lead, Liu Yu-Po not quite everything one might want as a love interest, but some solid supporting work from a veteran cast. And some quite good, though not genre-defining, fight scenes. An otherwise slightly above-average Shaw Brothers movie that is really elevated by a superior performance from Pai Piao in a largely comic role. His best work ever, in my opinion, and not to be missed.
My Flickchart Score: 83% (What’s This?)
Watch it free on Amazon Prime here.
Director: Tong Gaai
Stars: Derek Yee, Pai Piao, Liu Yu-Po, Ko Fei, Chan Shen, Kwan Feng, Ku Feng, Ai Fei, Dang Wai-Ho, Lee Hoi-Sang
Story Overview: Someone is killing the heads of the four most influential clans, and three friends find themselves in the middle of the trouble. When one of them is accused of the crime, they set out to solve the mystery, but soon find that the evidence leads them to the Shaolin Temple itself!
My Nutshell Review: A twisty revenge plot, a bit of a mystery, three friends standing together against a community that seems to have turned completely against them. Derek Yee is serviceable in the lead, Liu Yu-Po not quite everything one might want as a love interest, but some solid supporting work from a veteran cast. And some quite good, though not genre-defining, fight scenes. An otherwise slightly above-average Shaw Brothers movie that is really elevated by a superior performance from Pai Piao in a largely comic role. His best work ever, in my opinion, and not to be missed.
My Flickchart Score: 83% (What’s This?)
Watch it free on Amazon Prime here.
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In-Depth Synopsis
In-Depth Synopsis
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After our showcase opening credits sequence (during which we see the Shaolin training with various weapons and techniques), we open on a road through a forested valley. A chief on horseback leads a troop of armed men, followed by two other horsemen, one of whom carries a banner, white trimmed in red, with golden writing on it: GOLDEN TIGER ARMED ESCORTS. The chief (Dang Wai-Ho) suspects an ambush ahead and sends his two horsemen ahead to scout. But it turns out that it’s already too late, and even as the scouts ride back the ambush is sprung. Several of the men are killed by a spear-trap before the assailants enter the fray. It turns out there are only four of them, dressed in black and green, with masks over their faces. They make quick work of the men on foot and turn on the horsemen. The two scouts are similarly dealt with fairly easily, but the chief puts up a little more of a fight, actually succeeding in disarming his foes. They use some sort of deadly palm technique to kill him anyway. This will be important!
Cut to a gambling house, where Qiao Yidou (Pai Piao) wins a big pot at dice and tips the croupier (Fung Ging-Man). Just then four armed men enter, led by Chief Fang Changfeng (Ai Fei), the head of Tianfeng Clan. He orders everyone except Yidou to leave. The Pit Boss (Ho Pak-Kwong) begs him to leave his business in peace, but Chief Fang slashes up his clothes to teach him a lesson. “Fang Changfeng,” Yidou says, “I really hate to be interrupted when I’m gambling. Don’t you know that?”
Chief Fang is unperturbed. “Let’s make a bet,” he says.
“I’m honored to have a chance to gamble with Chief Fang from one of the Four Big Families.” He indicates the table. “You place your bet first.”
Fang shakes his head. “Not this,” he says.
“Not this? Whatever you want, as long as it’s a bet.”
“I bet that you can’t locate Lei Xun within three days.”
“Lei Xun the Wanderer?...the chances of winning are too slim.”
Chief Fang turns to the crowd (who, despite his orders, have gone nowhere). “Listen, everyone,” he says with a smile, “gambling addict Qiao Yidou refuses to bet. What a joke!” He laughs, and the crowd laughs uneasily with him.
“Fine,” Yidou says. “I'm in.”
“The wager?” asks Chief Fang.
“One thousand taels of gold,” Yidou answers, to which Chief Fang rolls his eyes and turns away, “and if I lose I’ll cut off my own head.” This renews the Chief’s interest.
“Deal!” he says.
Yidou laughs and rubs his hands gleefully. “Pay up!”
“Why?” asks Chief Fang, confused.
“Chief Fang, you’ve lost. Lei Xun is in that room!” and he points. “Lei Xun,” he calls, “get out here! A certain Mr. Fang is handing out money!”
Now we’re inside the room, where Lei Xun (Derek Yee) sits at a meal with Ye Qinghua (Liu Yu-Po). He bears a sword in a sheath. She has unique weapons, two golden knives bolted onto her wristbands. Upon hearing Yidou’s words, he jumps out the window just as Chief Fang busts into the room. He asks Qinghua where Lei Xun is, and she answers “How should I know?” He reaches for his sword, but she throws one of her knives, which catches his sword-arm. In the subsequent confusion she herself jumps out the window as well, as Chief Fang calls after her uselessly.
Lei Xun walks through a forest but stops, sensing danger. Suddenly a rope hidden under some leaves seems to come to life, swirling about and finally wrapping around him. It isn’t tight, though, and he shakes it off, leaping atop a high rock. “Qiao Yidou,” he shouts, “stop playing games.” But he has leapt directly into another trap, and a black bag closes over him as Yidou swings down from a tree. “If you run away,” Yidou says, “I will never collect the thousand taels of gold from Fang Changfeng!”
Anyway, fortunately for the audience Yidou has spent the last month in the gambling house and doesn’t have any idea what’s been going on in the world, so Lei Xun has to explain to him once he’s cut himself out of the bag. There are Four Big Families in this story (the Tiger, Wind, Cloud, and Dragon Clans...more on these names in the next section). That opening battle we saw was the murder of the head of the Tiger Clan. Chief Fang is the head of Tianfeng (Wind) Clan, and suspects that someone is carrying out a vendetta against them (again, more on this in the next section), and he wants Lei Xun’s help. But Lei Xun doesn’t want to get involved, so he ran off. Yidou understands perfectly, or at least he understands the relevance from the gambler’s point of view: someone is going to kill Chief Fang, and Yidou must get Lei Xun to him before that happens so he can collect on his bet. Whatever happens after that is immaterial, but dead men don’t pay up. So he grabs Lei Xun and drags him along to Tianfeng Clan HQ.
The two arrive to find all Chief Fang’s men dead. The Chief staggers towards them, bleeding. Yidou rushes up and catches him as he falls. “Don’t die just yet! Lei Xun is here, give me my money!” he begs, but too late. The two friends argue, but when they hear footsteps approaching they fall over and play dead. Four men run into the room, the same four who attacked the Tiger Clan earlier (I mean, apparently...they are still wearing masks). As they pass, our heroes jump up and fight them. At one point the four manage to knock Lei Xun down and attempt their deadly palm attack on him; he dodges, and they hit the stone floor instead, hard enough to leave handprints. Our heroes recognize this technique: “Shaolin Jingang Palm?” they say in unison, as the villains escape.
Now another lord enters. This is Chief Lu (Ku Feng), leader of the Baiyun (White Cloud) Clan, who begins to examine the bodies. Each of Chief Fang’s men has an ugly hand-shaped wound on his sternum, but Chief Lu is mostly interested in the blade sticking out of Chief Fang’s back. It’s the same one Qinghua stabbed him with earlier. All three men know this, and there’s a short discussion of it. Chief Lu says that he’s heard that there’s a “special relationship” between Lei Xun and Ye Qinghua, who he accuses of being a witch. Lei Xun insists that she isn’t a witch, and that they are merely acquaintances, not lovers. The Chief remarks on the deaths of the leaders of two of the Four Big Families, and Yidou bets that the Baiyun will be next. A short scuffle ensues, which Lei Xun breaks up, saying they don’t want to fight. Chief Lu says that he has invited Chief Long of the Heilong (Black Dragon) Clan, so they can work out what to do in this situation, and wonders aloud whether Lei Xun is aiding the killer, who he assumes is Qinghua. Lei Xun says that she’s innocent, and points out the marks on the victim’s chests. One of the chief’s own men says, “Ah, Shaolin Jingang Palm!” but the Chief tells him to be silent. That technique is taught only in the Temple, and the Shaolin cannot possibly be responsible for these attacks. Yidou thinks the chief is blaming Qinghua because he’s afraid to confront the Shaolin. Our heroes leave, with Chief Lu’s admonition to stay away from Qinghua following them.
Now we’re at a restaurant, where live snakes are being butchered to make soup. I mean, it is what it is. Lei Xun eats while Yidou gambles, but they don’t stay long. Qinghua was supposed to meet them, and once it’s clear she isn’t coming, Lei Xun realizes that she must be going to retrieve her knife. The two race off to Chief Lu’s house, but just as he’s leaving Yidou stops and looks back at all those snakes, with a scheming smirk on his face.
We see Chief Long (Kwan Feng) examining the blade in question. He says, “Twenty years ago I suggested that it wasn’t enough to kill the Six Demons of Guangdong. We should also have gotten rid of their families. If only you had listened, these murders wouldn’t have taken place.”
Chief Lu gently scolds him. “Brother Long, you’re speaking in anger. We’re men of righteousness. We can’t just kill innocent women and children.”
Chief Long sighs. “As long as we find the witch’s daughter, Ye Qinghua, we can avenge Fang Changfeng’s death,” and Chief Lu nods.
Just then there’s a flurry of activity, as Qinghua helicopters into the room (I don’t know what other verb I could use for what she’s doing) and demands her golden knife. Chief Lu accuses her of the murder of Chief Fang, which of course she denies. Chief Lu orders his men to kill her. She fights the men off, carefully killing none of them with her remaining knife. Chief Long throws her other knife at her, and she flicks it aside into an attacker’s leg, then retrieves it. She accuses Chief Long of a cowardly attack, at which Chief Lu grabs a great notched scimitar from one of his men and declares that he will kill her himself. During the ensuing melee Chief Long draws a bow and arrow, and at his touch the arrow springs into flames. But just as he takes aim at Qinghua, a bunch of snakes fall on him! He understandably freaks out, drops his weapons, and starts swatting at the snakes. Chief Lu is bearing down on Qinghua when a bunch of snakes land on him as well, and he falls back. Qinghua looks up to see Yidou grinning at her from a high window. “Step back,” he calls, and then throws a whole sackful of snakes onto the Chief’s men. Lei Xun rushes in and grabs her as the men all dance around in a panic. The trio escape.
Now back to the woods, where Qinghua is angry at Lei Xun for not killing the Chief’s men. Lei Xun says he must find out the truth, and that it’s not safe for her to go wandering around, since she’s the prime suspect. She’ll be safe with Yidou. She asks why she can’t just go with him. Why is he always finding excuses to stay away from her? Lei Xun has no answer to this, and so simply sets off for the Shaolin Temple to try to find out what’s happening.
The Hall of Discipline at the Shaolin Temple, where monks who misbehave get tortured back to righteousness. We see all sorts of mean-spirited things going on, from monks praying in supremely uncomfortable positions to barefoot monks carrying an enormous urn of water on ground scattered with marbles. It is overseen by Master Kongxing (Lee Hoi-Sang), who appears to take unseemly pleasure from his work. He tells the four monks who work under him to make sure everyone continues their particular trials for at least two more hours while he’s away.
In the main sanctuary of the temple, Lei Xun is meeting with the Shaolin leadership, including the Abbot (Chan Shen) and Master Jianxing (Ko Fei), who is asking how he can be sure it’s Shaolin kung fu, since he doesn’t know the style himself. Kongxing, entering mid-discussion, agrees. There are many deadly palm techniques, taught by many different families, that could be responsible for the murders. Lei Xun insists that it was specifically Shaolin Jingang, which enrages Kongxing, who first orders him to leave and then tries to attack him. The Abbot says that he cannot believe that his monks were involved, and invites Lei Xun to return if he can find any actual evidence. Once he’s gone, the Abbot and Jianxing talk about how Kongxing’s reaction was too violent, even if the accusations were insulting. The Jingang Palm is unique, even if other styles do ape it, and they worry that there might be bad elements in the temple.
Yidou and Qinghua have found an interesting hiding place: the treasure room of Chief Lu’s own house! Yidou is coaching Qinghua as to how she might land Lei Xun. Basically he tells her to send mixed signals, to pique his curiosity. She says that she’ll try his method, but he’d better watch out for his head if it fails. Meanwhile, downstairs, Chief Lu arrives home with his entourage, but we notice that his door guards are wearing black masks. One of his men gives him the news that Lei Xun has gone to Shaolin, but Chief Lu declares this to be a misdirection. Once Qinghua is found, all the surviving supporters of the Demons of Guangdong will be rounded up. As he speaks, the masked doormen shut and lock the front door. Chief Lu notices this, then jumps to the balcony above where another figure is slouching out of the shadows. He attacks this figure with his great scimitar, but the enemy easily eludes him, and he realizes that it is in fact a monk! His three compatriots kill all the Chief’s men (by doing some weird crab-dance thing) while he battles the Chief above, finally felling him with that same deadly palm. This at last makes enough noise for Yidou to notice, and he runs to see what’s happening while Qinghua hides in the treasure room.
As he runs down one flight of stairs he sees the four killers rushing up the other and hides, then rushes to the side of the dying Chief Lu. Lei Xun arrives at this same moment. The Chief confirms that the killers were monks, and Qinghua, entering the room, says that there are four of them. They ransacked the treasure room while she was hiding there. She saw them and could identify them if she saw them again. At this, Chief Lu dies, and the trio determine to return to Shaolin.
We find the Abbot indignant. So what if Qinghua saw four monks? There are thousands of monasteries in the country. They weren’t necessarily Shaolin! Qinghua, meanwhile, is willing to storm the place and find the guys she’s looking for. The trio want all the monks to fall out for an identity parade, and the Abbot refuses. But Master Jianxing has an idea: if the trio can pass three tests, they’ll be allowed in to review the denizens of the Temple. These tests will be trials by combat, of course, and since the monks refuse to fight a woman, it’s gonna be up to the two guys. Yidou rolls his dice, which he always carries, to see who goes first, and it’s him. So he heads off to face the first test.
He must get across a fairly large room, past five monks armed with halberds, led by Jianxing. If he can reach the plaque on the other side of the room, he passes the test. The walls are lined with weapons, and he’s allowed to use any he likes, but he prefers his own sword, which looks like a knife but telescopes out. This is a very entertaining combat, though there isn’t much actual combat in it. Mostly, the monks preen (impressively swinging their halberds in carefully-orchestrated unison) while Yidou tries to stay away from them. A couple of times he even tries climbing pillars and crawling along rafters to reach the other side. At one point he uses an entire rack of halberds in an attempt to ram his way to his goal. After his sword proves ineffective against the monks’ halberds, he discards it and turns to his real weapon: his dice. He has two enormous ones tied to opposite ends of a short rope, and this he wields partly like nunchaku, and partly like a whip. Eventually, he lights fuses in them, and the monks (thinking he’s using explosives against them) flee, giving him space to reach the plaque. Afterwards, he shows them that the dice were only smoke bombs, and that they’re full of the smaller dice he gambles with. First test passed!
Now Lei Xun faces a similar test. He must make his way across a courtyard containing twelve monks (the 12 Jingang Warrior Formation, it’s ominously called) in order to pass. These monks are armed with staves called bo, though we discover during the fight that each can be broken down into a three-segment staff, or sanjiegun, as well. Incidentally, among the twelve are Elvis Tsui, Ma Chao, and Alan Chan, who are easy to spot because they’re the only ones who speak. Tsui seems to be their leader. Lei Xun starts the fight unarmed, which doesn’t seem fair, but the monks spend little time trying to beat on him with their staves, rather using them to create intricate webs around him; if they can bind him fast, he loses. After getting trapped in and escaping a bunch of interesting- and painful-looking positions, he steps back to take a breather. The Elvis Tsui character says that the Twelve Jingang Warriors have been unable to bind him, and that if he stops now his name will be well-known because of this unprecedented feat, but Lei Xun points out that his name is already well-known. He has, however, decided that it’s time to draw his sword. Now the combat heats up a bit, as the monks realize that they will need their more flexible sanjiegun to fight his sword. At this point Lei Xun really starts to take a beating, but ultimately makes it through via the time-honored tricks of throwing dust in his opponents’ eyes and darting between their legs. So, second test passed!
The Abbot points out that our heroes have been through a lot, and the third test will be put off to the following day to make sure they’re at full strength, so the trio retreats to a local inn for the night. There they meet Chief Long, who accosts Qinghua. “You wish to avenge the Six Demons?” he asks. “Come on, then! The entire Heilong Clan is here.”
“Do you think I could get rid of the Golden Tiger Clan, the Tianfeng Clan, and the Baiyun Clan all on my own?” she scoffs. “Chief Long, you think too highly of me.”
Lei Xun steps in and explains that the killers are in Shaolin Temple, and tells him about the trials they’re going through to find them. But Chief Long says that these killers are merely Qinghua’s accomplices, and the two start to fight. The rest of the Clan jumps in, but Yidou and Lei Xun hold them off. Qinghua gains the upper hand and launches one of her blades at Chief Long, who is saved only by Lei Xun knocking him down. Lei Xun asks the Chief to wait ‘til the following day, when he’ll be able to prove what he says, and because Lei Xun has just saved his life the Chief agrees. Yidou then tries to make everyone friendly by taking them in for a few drinks, and a few rolls of the dice.
The next day, Chief Long and his men accompany the heroes to the Temple to witness the third test. It’s the big set piece of the movie, and pretty impressive. The heroes find another courtyard, this one with a couple of dozen of those small benches that kung fu heroes so often use as props and weapons set out. Lei Xun and Yidou must climb onto these benches and fight the Abbot. First one to touch the ground loses. Jet Li, of course, would later take this same motif to absurd heights in the great Once Upon a Time in China II, but it works well here also. At the beginning of the fight, all the benches are on the ground, but as they go the combatants pile them higher and higher. Lei Xun and Yidou almost fall off many times. There’s a moment where Lei Xun starts breakdancing atop the tower, forcing the Abbot to jump over him again and again. The Abbot nearly falls off once, but is saved by landing on the heads of two monks and jumping back onto the tower. At this point he strikes a blow on the benches themselves that causes half the tower (the half our heroes are standing on) to collapse. Yidou falls to the ground, but manages to catch Lei Xun and keep him in the game. Then, when the Abbot jumps down to continue the combat, Yidou kicks the bench he intended to land on away. The Abbot is on the ground, Lei Xun is still on the benches...third test passed!
The Abbot is, of course, bound by his word. But there are so many monks in the Temple that he isn’t sure where to begin. Qinghua suggests that the most likely offenders are those who have broken the rules, so Kongxing, his four assistants, and the inmates of the Hall of Discipline are brought forth. Qinghua steps up and immediately identifies the four assistants! Kongxing goes into a rage at this. The four deny it, and drop to their knees to beg their master to listen to them. Kongxing, for his part, refuses to take Qinghua’s word. If his men are robbers and murderers, then surely the plunder must be in the Temple. He dares the heroes to search for it, and begins running around like a maniac, opening cabinets and smashing furniture. And when he smashes a particular table, a hoard of gold and jewels spills out.
Kongxing, now in a frenzy of despair, begs the Abbot to punish him, since he’s responsible for the actions of his subordinates. The four still proclaim their innocence, so he rushes and kills them, then (to save the honor of Shaolin) leaps head-first into a pillar, smashing his skull. A more dramatic suicide you’ll never see. The monks all drop to their knees in sorrow. Lei Xun apologizes to the Abbot, who simply says “Goodbye.” The heroes and Chief Long leave the Temple.
Now we see the Abbot alone before the shrine to Bodhidharma, praying aloud. “How could there be such cold-blooded killers among us? I believe there are traitors among us. I’m determined to find out the truth, or else he [Kongxing] has sacrificed for nothing.” The other monks enter behind him, and he turns to face them. Jianxing says that Kongxing sacrificed himself to save the honor of Shaolin, and there is no need for the Abbot to be so sad (I hope this is a bad translation, because that’s a dumb thing to say). The Abbot answers, “If someone is to be blamed, I’m the Abbot, and we had killers among us which I knew nothing about. I should be responsible. I ought to be the one to die.” He turns and kneels again at the altar, and we see that he has a small red object clasped in his hands. “Founder, I am no longer qualified to be the Abbot,” he prays. “Let me be.” Then he strikes himself a mighty blow to the forehead, blood pours from his mouth, and he falls dead. Once again, all the monks kneel and pray.
Now we’re back at the inn, where our heroes are having a rather muted victory dinner. Lei Xun in particular is too deep in thought to even respond to toasts. Qinghua accuses him of trying to think up excuses to leave her again, and he points out that he needs no excuse. He isn’t tied to her and can come and go as he pleases. As if to prove the point, he storms out. Yidou tries to keep the mood light by offering Qinghua another drink, but she starts throwing things at him and tells him to get out. She never wants to see either of them again. Yidou is inclined to argue, but Lei Xun, hiding just outside the door, beckons him to follow. He has questions. The killers wore masks when they fought them. And Yidou said they wore masks when they killed Chief Lu, as well. So how did Qinghua see them clearly enough to recognize them? And how did she know immediately to search the members of the Hall of Discipline? Yidou has no answer for these questions (which, frankly, should have been asked much earlier). Lei Xun suspects that Qinghua is involved after all, and that Chief Long is in danger. They set off after him right away.
A ghostly figure walks down the street in front of the inn where Chief Long is staying. And when I say a ghostly figure, I mean four or five people sitting on each other’s shoulders and covered by a white sheet, with a big weird mask on top. That thing’s gotta be upwards of twenty feet tall. It stops outside Chief Long’s window and screeches at him. He shoots it with one of his flaming arrows; all the people jump out from under the sheet, which collapses burning into the street. Another ghost, this one ordinary human-sized, cackles outside his door. He can see its silhouette on the (paper) door, and fires another burning arrow into it. The body, engulfed in flames, bursts through the door and flies at him. It turns out to be a dummy, manipulated from behind by one of the killer monks (who, of course, were not the ones killed at the Temple by Kongxing). A desperate fight breaks out between this monk and Chief Long, while the other three monks slaughter his followers outside and the entire inn begins to burn. Once all his men are dead, the Chief himself is thrown out the window, then each of the four monks stabs a limb with the barbed ends of the whips they’ve been using as weapons and carry him off that way, which looks super-painful. Lei Xun and Yidou arrive too late and find only the bodies.
Now we find Chief Long suspended by his wounded limbs, being approached by...Jianxing! He reveals that he’s really Ye Cheng, leader of the Six Demons (and Ye Qinghua’s father), long thought dead. We see a flashback of the ambush laid by much younger versions of Chiefs Lu, Long, Fang, and...whoever the leader of the Tiger Clan was. They never did bother to name him, did they? Anyway, we see that he was wounded by a spear and cast into a pit, but he managed to crawl his way out to find all his compatriots dead, including his wife. She was killed by Chief Long himself, with one of his flaming arrows. She was the last to go, and was left burning on the ground as the chiefs walked away victorious. All of this has been staged to not only give him revenge, but place him at the head of the Shaolin Temple. Thanks to the suicide of the Abbot, as well as that of Kongxing (who would have been next in line, which of course is why Qinghua implicated the Hall of Discipline in her accusation), Jianxing will certainly be the new Abbot, and will rule the martial world. After explaining all this, Jianxing hits Chief Long so hard with his staff that his body flies backwards, leaving his arms and legs still tied to the posts and rafters! So that’s that for the heads of the Four Big Families.
Qinghua walks in, sees the body, and congratulates her father on his revenge. He says that Lei Xun and Yidou are loose ends that need to be tied up, so she takes the four monks and sets off after them. We cut to the inn, where one of the monks tries to silently pick the lock to the pair’s room. But they aren't sleeping, and Lei Xun stabs him through the door. So right away, we’re down to three monks! The heroes and villians fight through the inn for a few minutes, until the unfortunate innkeeper comes to see what all the ruckus is about and Qinghua kills him. I mention this because the innkeeper is played by Wong Ching-Ho, and it seems like a waste to have him in the movie just for this. Anyway, the boys scold her for killing an innocent bystander, but she says that the so-called civilized clans are worse, and mentions her mother being killed by Chief Long as a particularly vicious act. She tells them that her father has arranged all of this to get revenge, and when they ask who her father is, she says, “You still don’t know? My father is now the abbot of the Shaolin Temple.” It turns out that she should have kept that information to herself.
Anyway, this is pretty good fight, Yidou vs. Qinghua and Lei Xun vs. the three monks. Along the way Yidou manages to slip a few sips of wine, which would be more effective if he’d been shown to be a drinker earlier. The only addiction he seems to have is to gambling. He’s getting the better of his fight, even wounding Qinghua in the arm, but Lei Xun is in trouble, so he breaks off to attack and disarm the monks (well, to knock their barbed whips away...they still have swords). At this point Qinghua attempts a sneak attack, launching her blades at the boys, but Lei Xun deflects one right back at her that strikes her in the heart. The monks, bereft of leadership, suddenly seem lost. Two of them are killed right away. The third attempts a Jingang Palm attack, but the boys stab him through his palms and into his chest, killing him. Poetic!
Yidou asks what they should do with the bodies, and Lei Xun says to bury them. When Yidou points out that they have no coffins, Lei Xun tells him to buy one if he’s feeling so humane. So Yidou walks over to Qinghua’s body and says, “We were friends. I’ll find you a good resting place.” He goes to pick her up, but she isn’t quite dead, and plunges her last blade into him. He staggers away and collapses into Lei Xun’s arms, saying “It’s better to be harsh” before he dies.
At the Temple, Jianxing is named the new Abbot (of course with a great show of false reluctance), and decrees that there will be three days and three nights of prayers for their dead brothers. Lei Xun buries Yidou, and places his dice and his telescoping sword on his burial mound. But then, on second thought, he takes the sword with him; better to avenge Yidou with Yidou’s own weapon. And now it’s back to the Temple for the big finale.
Jianxing is sitting alone in a small chamber off the main courtyard, praying over the dead Abbot’s body, when he hears his name being called. He walks outside to find Lei Xun carrying a large bundle wrapped in a white, bloodstained sheet. “I have a present for you, to congratulate you on your promotion,” he says, and unwraps the bundle which is, of course, Qinghua’s corpse. Jianxing mourns over her, and demands to know who killed her. Lei Xun tells him that he (Jianxing himself) did it. Qinghua was born innocent, and Jianxing forced her into a life of cruelty and set her on the road to a violent death. But of course Jianxing isn’t interested in philosophy. He tells Lei Xun that he nearly died, turned to Shaolin, and only set himself on revenge when he found that Bodhidharma was useless.
“Not so!” says a voice from behind him. It’s the Abbot, who of course wasn’t really dead. He faked it (shutting down his vital signs by manipulating his chi, and that red object we saw in his hand apparently contained the "blood" that he spit out) so he could find out who the traitors in his Temple were. Jianxing drops to his knees by his daughter, crying her name and saying that he has failed. But when the Abbot turns his back on him to thank Lei Xun for his assistance, Jianxing suddenly strikes the old man with his mighty staff of office and sends him flying across the courtyard. Now the fight between him and Lei Xun begins, staff vs. sword. Lei Xun has the best of this from the get-go, first slicing his enemy’s face, then cutting his abbot’s robes off of him, and finally stabbing him in the chest with the sword. But Jianxing is tougher than he thinks, snapping the sword in half and continuing the fight (against his now unarmed opponent) with the end of the blade still sticking out of him. Finally he pulls the blade out and throws it so that it pierces Lei Xun’s shoulder.
The fight eventually ranges back inside the Temple proper, and of course the other monks, seeing their brother under attack from an outsider, don’t wait to find out what’s going on. Soon Lei Xun is fighting the Twelve Jingang Warriors once again. But even they can’t withstand his righteous wrath, and when they form a human pyramid he manages to knock it down and attack Jianxing again while they try to regroup. However, just as he’s about to strike the mortal blow, the twelve switch again to their sanjiegun and begin seriously to injure him. He braces himself, blood pouring from his mouth and shoulder, for the final blow, when suddenly the Abbot calls “Stop!” Once again, he isn’t dead.
The Abbot informs the Shaolin that Jianxing is the villain, and that it’s time to clear the garbage from the Temple. Jianxing, facing certain death, tries one last time to exact revenge on the injured Lei Xun, but the Twelve spring into action and kill him with their sanjiegun. The Abbot thanks Lei Xun for his help, and as he staggers out of the Temple we see flashbacks to moments with both Yidou and Qinghua, remembering the good times and the bad, so that we know he will honor their memory. ANOTHER SHAW PRODUCTION.
Cut to a gambling house, where Qiao Yidou (Pai Piao) wins a big pot at dice and tips the croupier (Fung Ging-Man). Just then four armed men enter, led by Chief Fang Changfeng (Ai Fei), the head of Tianfeng Clan. He orders everyone except Yidou to leave. The Pit Boss (Ho Pak-Kwong) begs him to leave his business in peace, but Chief Fang slashes up his clothes to teach him a lesson. “Fang Changfeng,” Yidou says, “I really hate to be interrupted when I’m gambling. Don’t you know that?”
Chief Fang is unperturbed. “Let’s make a bet,” he says.
“I’m honored to have a chance to gamble with Chief Fang from one of the Four Big Families.” He indicates the table. “You place your bet first.”
Fang shakes his head. “Not this,” he says.
“Not this? Whatever you want, as long as it’s a bet.”
“I bet that you can’t locate Lei Xun within three days.”
“Lei Xun the Wanderer?...the chances of winning are too slim.”
Chief Fang turns to the crowd (who, despite his orders, have gone nowhere). “Listen, everyone,” he says with a smile, “gambling addict Qiao Yidou refuses to bet. What a joke!” He laughs, and the crowd laughs uneasily with him.
“Fine,” Yidou says. “I'm in.”
“The wager?” asks Chief Fang.
“One thousand taels of gold,” Yidou answers, to which Chief Fang rolls his eyes and turns away, “and if I lose I’ll cut off my own head.” This renews the Chief’s interest.
“Deal!” he says.
Yidou laughs and rubs his hands gleefully. “Pay up!”
“Why?” asks Chief Fang, confused.
“Chief Fang, you’ve lost. Lei Xun is in that room!” and he points. “Lei Xun,” he calls, “get out here! A certain Mr. Fang is handing out money!”
Now we’re inside the room, where Lei Xun (Derek Yee) sits at a meal with Ye Qinghua (Liu Yu-Po). He bears a sword in a sheath. She has unique weapons, two golden knives bolted onto her wristbands. Upon hearing Yidou’s words, he jumps out the window just as Chief Fang busts into the room. He asks Qinghua where Lei Xun is, and she answers “How should I know?” He reaches for his sword, but she throws one of her knives, which catches his sword-arm. In the subsequent confusion she herself jumps out the window as well, as Chief Fang calls after her uselessly.
Lei Xun walks through a forest but stops, sensing danger. Suddenly a rope hidden under some leaves seems to come to life, swirling about and finally wrapping around him. It isn’t tight, though, and he shakes it off, leaping atop a high rock. “Qiao Yidou,” he shouts, “stop playing games.” But he has leapt directly into another trap, and a black bag closes over him as Yidou swings down from a tree. “If you run away,” Yidou says, “I will never collect the thousand taels of gold from Fang Changfeng!”
Anyway, fortunately for the audience Yidou has spent the last month in the gambling house and doesn’t have any idea what’s been going on in the world, so Lei Xun has to explain to him once he’s cut himself out of the bag. There are Four Big Families in this story (the Tiger, Wind, Cloud, and Dragon Clans...more on these names in the next section). That opening battle we saw was the murder of the head of the Tiger Clan. Chief Fang is the head of Tianfeng (Wind) Clan, and suspects that someone is carrying out a vendetta against them (again, more on this in the next section), and he wants Lei Xun’s help. But Lei Xun doesn’t want to get involved, so he ran off. Yidou understands perfectly, or at least he understands the relevance from the gambler’s point of view: someone is going to kill Chief Fang, and Yidou must get Lei Xun to him before that happens so he can collect on his bet. Whatever happens after that is immaterial, but dead men don’t pay up. So he grabs Lei Xun and drags him along to Tianfeng Clan HQ.
The two arrive to find all Chief Fang’s men dead. The Chief staggers towards them, bleeding. Yidou rushes up and catches him as he falls. “Don’t die just yet! Lei Xun is here, give me my money!” he begs, but too late. The two friends argue, but when they hear footsteps approaching they fall over and play dead. Four men run into the room, the same four who attacked the Tiger Clan earlier (I mean, apparently...they are still wearing masks). As they pass, our heroes jump up and fight them. At one point the four manage to knock Lei Xun down and attempt their deadly palm attack on him; he dodges, and they hit the stone floor instead, hard enough to leave handprints. Our heroes recognize this technique: “Shaolin Jingang Palm?” they say in unison, as the villains escape.
Now another lord enters. This is Chief Lu (Ku Feng), leader of the Baiyun (White Cloud) Clan, who begins to examine the bodies. Each of Chief Fang’s men has an ugly hand-shaped wound on his sternum, but Chief Lu is mostly interested in the blade sticking out of Chief Fang’s back. It’s the same one Qinghua stabbed him with earlier. All three men know this, and there’s a short discussion of it. Chief Lu says that he’s heard that there’s a “special relationship” between Lei Xun and Ye Qinghua, who he accuses of being a witch. Lei Xun insists that she isn’t a witch, and that they are merely acquaintances, not lovers. The Chief remarks on the deaths of the leaders of two of the Four Big Families, and Yidou bets that the Baiyun will be next. A short scuffle ensues, which Lei Xun breaks up, saying they don’t want to fight. Chief Lu says that he has invited Chief Long of the Heilong (Black Dragon) Clan, so they can work out what to do in this situation, and wonders aloud whether Lei Xun is aiding the killer, who he assumes is Qinghua. Lei Xun says that she’s innocent, and points out the marks on the victim’s chests. One of the chief’s own men says, “Ah, Shaolin Jingang Palm!” but the Chief tells him to be silent. That technique is taught only in the Temple, and the Shaolin cannot possibly be responsible for these attacks. Yidou thinks the chief is blaming Qinghua because he’s afraid to confront the Shaolin. Our heroes leave, with Chief Lu’s admonition to stay away from Qinghua following them.
Now we’re at a restaurant, where live snakes are being butchered to make soup. I mean, it is what it is. Lei Xun eats while Yidou gambles, but they don’t stay long. Qinghua was supposed to meet them, and once it’s clear she isn’t coming, Lei Xun realizes that she must be going to retrieve her knife. The two race off to Chief Lu’s house, but just as he’s leaving Yidou stops and looks back at all those snakes, with a scheming smirk on his face.
We see Chief Long (Kwan Feng) examining the blade in question. He says, “Twenty years ago I suggested that it wasn’t enough to kill the Six Demons of Guangdong. We should also have gotten rid of their families. If only you had listened, these murders wouldn’t have taken place.”
Chief Lu gently scolds him. “Brother Long, you’re speaking in anger. We’re men of righteousness. We can’t just kill innocent women and children.”
Chief Long sighs. “As long as we find the witch’s daughter, Ye Qinghua, we can avenge Fang Changfeng’s death,” and Chief Lu nods.
Just then there’s a flurry of activity, as Qinghua helicopters into the room (I don’t know what other verb I could use for what she’s doing) and demands her golden knife. Chief Lu accuses her of the murder of Chief Fang, which of course she denies. Chief Lu orders his men to kill her. She fights the men off, carefully killing none of them with her remaining knife. Chief Long throws her other knife at her, and she flicks it aside into an attacker’s leg, then retrieves it. She accuses Chief Long of a cowardly attack, at which Chief Lu grabs a great notched scimitar from one of his men and declares that he will kill her himself. During the ensuing melee Chief Long draws a bow and arrow, and at his touch the arrow springs into flames. But just as he takes aim at Qinghua, a bunch of snakes fall on him! He understandably freaks out, drops his weapons, and starts swatting at the snakes. Chief Lu is bearing down on Qinghua when a bunch of snakes land on him as well, and he falls back. Qinghua looks up to see Yidou grinning at her from a high window. “Step back,” he calls, and then throws a whole sackful of snakes onto the Chief’s men. Lei Xun rushes in and grabs her as the men all dance around in a panic. The trio escape.
Now back to the woods, where Qinghua is angry at Lei Xun for not killing the Chief’s men. Lei Xun says he must find out the truth, and that it’s not safe for her to go wandering around, since she’s the prime suspect. She’ll be safe with Yidou. She asks why she can’t just go with him. Why is he always finding excuses to stay away from her? Lei Xun has no answer to this, and so simply sets off for the Shaolin Temple to try to find out what’s happening.
The Hall of Discipline at the Shaolin Temple, where monks who misbehave get tortured back to righteousness. We see all sorts of mean-spirited things going on, from monks praying in supremely uncomfortable positions to barefoot monks carrying an enormous urn of water on ground scattered with marbles. It is overseen by Master Kongxing (Lee Hoi-Sang), who appears to take unseemly pleasure from his work. He tells the four monks who work under him to make sure everyone continues their particular trials for at least two more hours while he’s away.
In the main sanctuary of the temple, Lei Xun is meeting with the Shaolin leadership, including the Abbot (Chan Shen) and Master Jianxing (Ko Fei), who is asking how he can be sure it’s Shaolin kung fu, since he doesn’t know the style himself. Kongxing, entering mid-discussion, agrees. There are many deadly palm techniques, taught by many different families, that could be responsible for the murders. Lei Xun insists that it was specifically Shaolin Jingang, which enrages Kongxing, who first orders him to leave and then tries to attack him. The Abbot says that he cannot believe that his monks were involved, and invites Lei Xun to return if he can find any actual evidence. Once he’s gone, the Abbot and Jianxing talk about how Kongxing’s reaction was too violent, even if the accusations were insulting. The Jingang Palm is unique, even if other styles do ape it, and they worry that there might be bad elements in the temple.
Yidou and Qinghua have found an interesting hiding place: the treasure room of Chief Lu’s own house! Yidou is coaching Qinghua as to how she might land Lei Xun. Basically he tells her to send mixed signals, to pique his curiosity. She says that she’ll try his method, but he’d better watch out for his head if it fails. Meanwhile, downstairs, Chief Lu arrives home with his entourage, but we notice that his door guards are wearing black masks. One of his men gives him the news that Lei Xun has gone to Shaolin, but Chief Lu declares this to be a misdirection. Once Qinghua is found, all the surviving supporters of the Demons of Guangdong will be rounded up. As he speaks, the masked doormen shut and lock the front door. Chief Lu notices this, then jumps to the balcony above where another figure is slouching out of the shadows. He attacks this figure with his great scimitar, but the enemy easily eludes him, and he realizes that it is in fact a monk! His three compatriots kill all the Chief’s men (by doing some weird crab-dance thing) while he battles the Chief above, finally felling him with that same deadly palm. This at last makes enough noise for Yidou to notice, and he runs to see what’s happening while Qinghua hides in the treasure room.
As he runs down one flight of stairs he sees the four killers rushing up the other and hides, then rushes to the side of the dying Chief Lu. Lei Xun arrives at this same moment. The Chief confirms that the killers were monks, and Qinghua, entering the room, says that there are four of them. They ransacked the treasure room while she was hiding there. She saw them and could identify them if she saw them again. At this, Chief Lu dies, and the trio determine to return to Shaolin.
We find the Abbot indignant. So what if Qinghua saw four monks? There are thousands of monasteries in the country. They weren’t necessarily Shaolin! Qinghua, meanwhile, is willing to storm the place and find the guys she’s looking for. The trio want all the monks to fall out for an identity parade, and the Abbot refuses. But Master Jianxing has an idea: if the trio can pass three tests, they’ll be allowed in to review the denizens of the Temple. These tests will be trials by combat, of course, and since the monks refuse to fight a woman, it’s gonna be up to the two guys. Yidou rolls his dice, which he always carries, to see who goes first, and it’s him. So he heads off to face the first test.
He must get across a fairly large room, past five monks armed with halberds, led by Jianxing. If he can reach the plaque on the other side of the room, he passes the test. The walls are lined with weapons, and he’s allowed to use any he likes, but he prefers his own sword, which looks like a knife but telescopes out. This is a very entertaining combat, though there isn’t much actual combat in it. Mostly, the monks preen (impressively swinging their halberds in carefully-orchestrated unison) while Yidou tries to stay away from them. A couple of times he even tries climbing pillars and crawling along rafters to reach the other side. At one point he uses an entire rack of halberds in an attempt to ram his way to his goal. After his sword proves ineffective against the monks’ halberds, he discards it and turns to his real weapon: his dice. He has two enormous ones tied to opposite ends of a short rope, and this he wields partly like nunchaku, and partly like a whip. Eventually, he lights fuses in them, and the monks (thinking he’s using explosives against them) flee, giving him space to reach the plaque. Afterwards, he shows them that the dice were only smoke bombs, and that they’re full of the smaller dice he gambles with. First test passed!
Now Lei Xun faces a similar test. He must make his way across a courtyard containing twelve monks (the 12 Jingang Warrior Formation, it’s ominously called) in order to pass. These monks are armed with staves called bo, though we discover during the fight that each can be broken down into a three-segment staff, or sanjiegun, as well. Incidentally, among the twelve are Elvis Tsui, Ma Chao, and Alan Chan, who are easy to spot because they’re the only ones who speak. Tsui seems to be their leader. Lei Xun starts the fight unarmed, which doesn’t seem fair, but the monks spend little time trying to beat on him with their staves, rather using them to create intricate webs around him; if they can bind him fast, he loses. After getting trapped in and escaping a bunch of interesting- and painful-looking positions, he steps back to take a breather. The Elvis Tsui character says that the Twelve Jingang Warriors have been unable to bind him, and that if he stops now his name will be well-known because of this unprecedented feat, but Lei Xun points out that his name is already well-known. He has, however, decided that it’s time to draw his sword. Now the combat heats up a bit, as the monks realize that they will need their more flexible sanjiegun to fight his sword. At this point Lei Xun really starts to take a beating, but ultimately makes it through via the time-honored tricks of throwing dust in his opponents’ eyes and darting between their legs. So, second test passed!
The Abbot points out that our heroes have been through a lot, and the third test will be put off to the following day to make sure they’re at full strength, so the trio retreats to a local inn for the night. There they meet Chief Long, who accosts Qinghua. “You wish to avenge the Six Demons?” he asks. “Come on, then! The entire Heilong Clan is here.”
“Do you think I could get rid of the Golden Tiger Clan, the Tianfeng Clan, and the Baiyun Clan all on my own?” she scoffs. “Chief Long, you think too highly of me.”
Lei Xun steps in and explains that the killers are in Shaolin Temple, and tells him about the trials they’re going through to find them. But Chief Long says that these killers are merely Qinghua’s accomplices, and the two start to fight. The rest of the Clan jumps in, but Yidou and Lei Xun hold them off. Qinghua gains the upper hand and launches one of her blades at Chief Long, who is saved only by Lei Xun knocking him down. Lei Xun asks the Chief to wait ‘til the following day, when he’ll be able to prove what he says, and because Lei Xun has just saved his life the Chief agrees. Yidou then tries to make everyone friendly by taking them in for a few drinks, and a few rolls of the dice.
The next day, Chief Long and his men accompany the heroes to the Temple to witness the third test. It’s the big set piece of the movie, and pretty impressive. The heroes find another courtyard, this one with a couple of dozen of those small benches that kung fu heroes so often use as props and weapons set out. Lei Xun and Yidou must climb onto these benches and fight the Abbot. First one to touch the ground loses. Jet Li, of course, would later take this same motif to absurd heights in the great Once Upon a Time in China II, but it works well here also. At the beginning of the fight, all the benches are on the ground, but as they go the combatants pile them higher and higher. Lei Xun and Yidou almost fall off many times. There’s a moment where Lei Xun starts breakdancing atop the tower, forcing the Abbot to jump over him again and again. The Abbot nearly falls off once, but is saved by landing on the heads of two monks and jumping back onto the tower. At this point he strikes a blow on the benches themselves that causes half the tower (the half our heroes are standing on) to collapse. Yidou falls to the ground, but manages to catch Lei Xun and keep him in the game. Then, when the Abbot jumps down to continue the combat, Yidou kicks the bench he intended to land on away. The Abbot is on the ground, Lei Xun is still on the benches...third test passed!
The Abbot is, of course, bound by his word. But there are so many monks in the Temple that he isn’t sure where to begin. Qinghua suggests that the most likely offenders are those who have broken the rules, so Kongxing, his four assistants, and the inmates of the Hall of Discipline are brought forth. Qinghua steps up and immediately identifies the four assistants! Kongxing goes into a rage at this. The four deny it, and drop to their knees to beg their master to listen to them. Kongxing, for his part, refuses to take Qinghua’s word. If his men are robbers and murderers, then surely the plunder must be in the Temple. He dares the heroes to search for it, and begins running around like a maniac, opening cabinets and smashing furniture. And when he smashes a particular table, a hoard of gold and jewels spills out.
Kongxing, now in a frenzy of despair, begs the Abbot to punish him, since he’s responsible for the actions of his subordinates. The four still proclaim their innocence, so he rushes and kills them, then (to save the honor of Shaolin) leaps head-first into a pillar, smashing his skull. A more dramatic suicide you’ll never see. The monks all drop to their knees in sorrow. Lei Xun apologizes to the Abbot, who simply says “Goodbye.” The heroes and Chief Long leave the Temple.
Now we see the Abbot alone before the shrine to Bodhidharma, praying aloud. “How could there be such cold-blooded killers among us? I believe there are traitors among us. I’m determined to find out the truth, or else he [Kongxing] has sacrificed for nothing.” The other monks enter behind him, and he turns to face them. Jianxing says that Kongxing sacrificed himself to save the honor of Shaolin, and there is no need for the Abbot to be so sad (I hope this is a bad translation, because that’s a dumb thing to say). The Abbot answers, “If someone is to be blamed, I’m the Abbot, and we had killers among us which I knew nothing about. I should be responsible. I ought to be the one to die.” He turns and kneels again at the altar, and we see that he has a small red object clasped in his hands. “Founder, I am no longer qualified to be the Abbot,” he prays. “Let me be.” Then he strikes himself a mighty blow to the forehead, blood pours from his mouth, and he falls dead. Once again, all the monks kneel and pray.
Now we’re back at the inn, where our heroes are having a rather muted victory dinner. Lei Xun in particular is too deep in thought to even respond to toasts. Qinghua accuses him of trying to think up excuses to leave her again, and he points out that he needs no excuse. He isn’t tied to her and can come and go as he pleases. As if to prove the point, he storms out. Yidou tries to keep the mood light by offering Qinghua another drink, but she starts throwing things at him and tells him to get out. She never wants to see either of them again. Yidou is inclined to argue, but Lei Xun, hiding just outside the door, beckons him to follow. He has questions. The killers wore masks when they fought them. And Yidou said they wore masks when they killed Chief Lu, as well. So how did Qinghua see them clearly enough to recognize them? And how did she know immediately to search the members of the Hall of Discipline? Yidou has no answer for these questions (which, frankly, should have been asked much earlier). Lei Xun suspects that Qinghua is involved after all, and that Chief Long is in danger. They set off after him right away.
A ghostly figure walks down the street in front of the inn where Chief Long is staying. And when I say a ghostly figure, I mean four or five people sitting on each other’s shoulders and covered by a white sheet, with a big weird mask on top. That thing’s gotta be upwards of twenty feet tall. It stops outside Chief Long’s window and screeches at him. He shoots it with one of his flaming arrows; all the people jump out from under the sheet, which collapses burning into the street. Another ghost, this one ordinary human-sized, cackles outside his door. He can see its silhouette on the (paper) door, and fires another burning arrow into it. The body, engulfed in flames, bursts through the door and flies at him. It turns out to be a dummy, manipulated from behind by one of the killer monks (who, of course, were not the ones killed at the Temple by Kongxing). A desperate fight breaks out between this monk and Chief Long, while the other three monks slaughter his followers outside and the entire inn begins to burn. Once all his men are dead, the Chief himself is thrown out the window, then each of the four monks stabs a limb with the barbed ends of the whips they’ve been using as weapons and carry him off that way, which looks super-painful. Lei Xun and Yidou arrive too late and find only the bodies.
Now we find Chief Long suspended by his wounded limbs, being approached by...Jianxing! He reveals that he’s really Ye Cheng, leader of the Six Demons (and Ye Qinghua’s father), long thought dead. We see a flashback of the ambush laid by much younger versions of Chiefs Lu, Long, Fang, and...whoever the leader of the Tiger Clan was. They never did bother to name him, did they? Anyway, we see that he was wounded by a spear and cast into a pit, but he managed to crawl his way out to find all his compatriots dead, including his wife. She was killed by Chief Long himself, with one of his flaming arrows. She was the last to go, and was left burning on the ground as the chiefs walked away victorious. All of this has been staged to not only give him revenge, but place him at the head of the Shaolin Temple. Thanks to the suicide of the Abbot, as well as that of Kongxing (who would have been next in line, which of course is why Qinghua implicated the Hall of Discipline in her accusation), Jianxing will certainly be the new Abbot, and will rule the martial world. After explaining all this, Jianxing hits Chief Long so hard with his staff that his body flies backwards, leaving his arms and legs still tied to the posts and rafters! So that’s that for the heads of the Four Big Families.
Qinghua walks in, sees the body, and congratulates her father on his revenge. He says that Lei Xun and Yidou are loose ends that need to be tied up, so she takes the four monks and sets off after them. We cut to the inn, where one of the monks tries to silently pick the lock to the pair’s room. But they aren't sleeping, and Lei Xun stabs him through the door. So right away, we’re down to three monks! The heroes and villians fight through the inn for a few minutes, until the unfortunate innkeeper comes to see what all the ruckus is about and Qinghua kills him. I mention this because the innkeeper is played by Wong Ching-Ho, and it seems like a waste to have him in the movie just for this. Anyway, the boys scold her for killing an innocent bystander, but she says that the so-called civilized clans are worse, and mentions her mother being killed by Chief Long as a particularly vicious act. She tells them that her father has arranged all of this to get revenge, and when they ask who her father is, she says, “You still don’t know? My father is now the abbot of the Shaolin Temple.” It turns out that she should have kept that information to herself.
Anyway, this is pretty good fight, Yidou vs. Qinghua and Lei Xun vs. the three monks. Along the way Yidou manages to slip a few sips of wine, which would be more effective if he’d been shown to be a drinker earlier. The only addiction he seems to have is to gambling. He’s getting the better of his fight, even wounding Qinghua in the arm, but Lei Xun is in trouble, so he breaks off to attack and disarm the monks (well, to knock their barbed whips away...they still have swords). At this point Qinghua attempts a sneak attack, launching her blades at the boys, but Lei Xun deflects one right back at her that strikes her in the heart. The monks, bereft of leadership, suddenly seem lost. Two of them are killed right away. The third attempts a Jingang Palm attack, but the boys stab him through his palms and into his chest, killing him. Poetic!
Yidou asks what they should do with the bodies, and Lei Xun says to bury them. When Yidou points out that they have no coffins, Lei Xun tells him to buy one if he’s feeling so humane. So Yidou walks over to Qinghua’s body and says, “We were friends. I’ll find you a good resting place.” He goes to pick her up, but she isn’t quite dead, and plunges her last blade into him. He staggers away and collapses into Lei Xun’s arms, saying “It’s better to be harsh” before he dies.
At the Temple, Jianxing is named the new Abbot (of course with a great show of false reluctance), and decrees that there will be three days and three nights of prayers for their dead brothers. Lei Xun buries Yidou, and places his dice and his telescoping sword on his burial mound. But then, on second thought, he takes the sword with him; better to avenge Yidou with Yidou’s own weapon. And now it’s back to the Temple for the big finale.
Jianxing is sitting alone in a small chamber off the main courtyard, praying over the dead Abbot’s body, when he hears his name being called. He walks outside to find Lei Xun carrying a large bundle wrapped in a white, bloodstained sheet. “I have a present for you, to congratulate you on your promotion,” he says, and unwraps the bundle which is, of course, Qinghua’s corpse. Jianxing mourns over her, and demands to know who killed her. Lei Xun tells him that he (Jianxing himself) did it. Qinghua was born innocent, and Jianxing forced her into a life of cruelty and set her on the road to a violent death. But of course Jianxing isn’t interested in philosophy. He tells Lei Xun that he nearly died, turned to Shaolin, and only set himself on revenge when he found that Bodhidharma was useless.
“Not so!” says a voice from behind him. It’s the Abbot, who of course wasn’t really dead. He faked it (shutting down his vital signs by manipulating his chi, and that red object we saw in his hand apparently contained the "blood" that he spit out) so he could find out who the traitors in his Temple were. Jianxing drops to his knees by his daughter, crying her name and saying that he has failed. But when the Abbot turns his back on him to thank Lei Xun for his assistance, Jianxing suddenly strikes the old man with his mighty staff of office and sends him flying across the courtyard. Now the fight between him and Lei Xun begins, staff vs. sword. Lei Xun has the best of this from the get-go, first slicing his enemy’s face, then cutting his abbot’s robes off of him, and finally stabbing him in the chest with the sword. But Jianxing is tougher than he thinks, snapping the sword in half and continuing the fight (against his now unarmed opponent) with the end of the blade still sticking out of him. Finally he pulls the blade out and throws it so that it pierces Lei Xun’s shoulder.
The fight eventually ranges back inside the Temple proper, and of course the other monks, seeing their brother under attack from an outsider, don’t wait to find out what’s going on. Soon Lei Xun is fighting the Twelve Jingang Warriors once again. But even they can’t withstand his righteous wrath, and when they form a human pyramid he manages to knock it down and attack Jianxing again while they try to regroup. However, just as he’s about to strike the mortal blow, the twelve switch again to their sanjiegun and begin seriously to injure him. He braces himself, blood pouring from his mouth and shoulder, for the final blow, when suddenly the Abbot calls “Stop!” Once again, he isn’t dead.
The Abbot informs the Shaolin that Jianxing is the villain, and that it’s time to clear the garbage from the Temple. Jianxing, facing certain death, tries one last time to exact revenge on the injured Lei Xun, but the Twelve spring into action and kill him with their sanjiegun. The Abbot thanks Lei Xun for his help, and as he staggers out of the Temple we see flashbacks to moments with both Yidou and Qinghua, remembering the good times and the bad, so that we know he will honor their memory. ANOTHER SHAW PRODUCTION.
* * * * * * *
A NOTE ON THE FOUR BIG FAMILIES:
The film doesn’t do a great job, at least in the English subtitles, of handling the names of the four clans. Lei Xun lists them at one point in English: Tiger, Wind, Cloud, and Dragon. Those English names will never be referred to again. Instead Chinese translations of the names will be used: Heilong, Tianfeng, and Baiyan (the Golden Tigers never get a translation). Also, of course, we never learn the name of the Golden Tiger Chief, killed in the first post-credit sequence, which is too bad. But just for you guys (well, and to settle my own curiosity), I did a little research.
Chief Lu’s clan is the Baiyan, which translates as “White Cloud.” Why his clan isn’t the one that dresses in white I couldn’t say. Chief Long’s clan is the Heilong, which means “Black Dragon.” This is the one that got me started down this path, actually, because I remembered that the Pinyin name for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is Wo Hu Cang Long, which made me think that Chief Long’s name was a dragon reference, so I had to check that.
Anyway, yes, on to Chief Fang. His clan is called the Tianfeng Clan, and I could not find a translation of “tianfeng” as a single word (apparently, if the two syllables are divided into two words, it’s a personal name). But “feng” definitely means “wind,” and as far as I can tell the full name means something like “sweet wind,” or it might be “heavenly wind,” though I certainly wouldn’t want to bet anything very valuable on that translation. Because so much depends on the tones used, Chinese words that look identical to Westerners often have multiple meanings, but “tian” stands out even in that company as having a zillion possible definitions.
Finally, the Golden Tiger. It would feel weird for that to be the only clan without a Chinese name. I mentioned before that I’m trying to learn Mandarin, but I confess that I haven’t made much progress yet. Nevertheless, I think I can say with fair confidence that the first clan, the Golden Tiger, would have been called Jin Laohu if the film had bothered. I tried to compare the actual Mandarin characters with the banner they carry, but it fluttered too damned much in the breeze, so I couldn’t be sure. And of course nothing will tell us the name of the Golden Tiger Chief, which is annoying.
I’ve already used this research to edit my synopsis, which means that if you’ve read that without seeing the movie you have no idea how confusing that all was originally (or how messy the original synopsis was because of it). If I’d just kept quiet about it nobody would ever have known! While we’re at it, Baiyan is an administrative district in Guangzhong, and Heilong is a Chinese river (the world’s tenth longest), for what it’s worth. Aren’t you glad you read this far? Could you have lived another day without that information?
BEST THING ABOUT THE FILM:
Pai Piao. He’s the comic sidekick in this, but really overshadows Derek Lee’s hero. Yidou is one of my favorite Shaw Brothers characters ever, and Pai Piao’s best performance. He is unflappable but not aloof, funny but never a fool, cynical yet undone by his own compassion. He is a complex and fascinating character in a genre that all too often downplays characterization, sometimes even in its best films, and he really adds something special to this. I almost lose interest in the movie once he’s dead; in fact, I considered making his death the “Worst Thing About the Film,” but thought it was too much to have one guy responsible for both best and worst.
SHAWISMS:
The Flying Carpet is back again! Here it’s at the HQ of the Baiyan Clan. Chief Lu is killed right on it!
The studio loved to have people, when fighting as a team, get themselves into weird formations. Think of the 18 Buddha Attack from the last film I covered, Shaolin Prince. We see it in this one with the Shaolin climbing onto each other to form a human pyramid or locking their weapons together to use them in concert, but the weirdest thing is what three of the four rogue Shaolin do while wiping out Chief Lu’s clan: they lie on their backs, join arms, then spin around, fly into the air, and kick their enemies to death. Does that sound ridiculous? Well, that’s why the next heading is out of order.
WORST THING ABOUT THE FILM:
That weird three-man formation mentioned above, when Ku Feng was killed. It looks ridiculous. It would be way too unsteady to endow the participants with any exceptional strength (in fact, it would tend to cancel out ordinary strength!). Also, it was being used against men carrying pole arms. Those guys should have had no trouble at all hanging back a little bit and chopping off legs while never getting in range of being injured themselves. I can suspend disbelief to super-human levels, but even I am thrown off a little by this silly sequence.
NITPICKING:
The Golden Tiger Clan really didn’t use very smart tactics in that opening battle. First all the footmen get wiped out without intervention by the three horsemen (the Chief and his two main guards). That might be excusable, since only three of the assassins were dealing with the footmen while the last attacked and held off the other three Tigers, but what happens next? Do all three attack the assassins, making for a manageable four-on-three battle? No. The Chief simply stands there watching while his two guards attack. Each is individually outnumbered two-to-one, and that ends up being decisive as each is killed by one assassin while attacking another. And of course this finally leaves the Chief to fight all four alone, long odds for anyone. He does put up a bit of a fight, more than anyone else has, even disarming his opponents. But of course he had no allies left to take advantage of this weakness, and they kill him. Whoever choreographed that fight should have done a better job.
!?! !?! !?!
It’s weird that everyone immediately assumes that someone is out to kill the heads of the Four Big Families. They’re already thinking it when the Golden Tiger Chief is killed. But he was leading an armed escort carrying a large gold shipment! Isn’t that more likely to be a simple robbery than a grudge? Robberies were committed at the scene of the second and third attacks as well, and I admit that by that time the assumption had become pretty reasonable. Once you have three victims it makes sense to figure out what they have in common, but you can’t do that when there’s only one victim. It turns out that everybody jumped to the right conclusion, but they’re still jumping to conclusions.
!?! !?! !?!
If you ever wanted to see a live snake being butchered, this is the film for you! I myself could have lived without it. But the studio did occasionally kill animals (usually chickens) in their productions, which is unfortunate. The animals are food and would have been killed anyway, but I’m not sure it needed to be on screen.
!?! !?! !?!
Jianxing specifically says, when he’s about to kill Chief Long, that he wants his death to be slow. Ten seconds later he’s dead. Is this an error in translation? Did he really say “messy” or “painful”? Because it was those things, but “slow” it certainly wasn’t. You don’t get a slow death by tearing a guy’s limbs off.
!?! !?! !?!
Qinghua carefully explains everything that’s happened to Lei Xun and Yidou, then says she has to kill them because they “know too much.” Well, whose fault is that? If she’d just kept quiet there would have been no way for anyone to identify Jianxing as the mastermind (everyone who remembers Ye Chang is dead), or consequently herself as an accomplice, and both might have survived the film. Jeez, she has a Bond villain’s inability to keep her damned mouth shut.
!?! !?! !?!
How on Earth did Lei Xun manage not only to just walk right into an inner sanctum of the Shaolin Temple, but to do it carrying a human corpse? That seems unlikely, given how much trouble he had getting in there earlier. Is it part of the Shaolin mourning process to have no goddamned guards whatsoever?
!?! !?! !?!
Right after the Abbot has turned out not to be dead, he walks past Jianxing to talk with Lei Xun, and in so doing turns his back on this man who is responsible for dozens of deaths, has been driven completely mad by the desire for revenge and now has a new target for that revenge (Lei Xun’s impassioned speech aside, he did kill the man’s daughter), and has proven to be a capable and deadly fighter. The Abbot doesn’t die for real because of this, but it isn’t for lack of trying.
!?! !?! !?!
Speaking of Jianxing, man, he takes a ton of killing. Lei Xun runs him through with a sword, then delivers something very like the Deadly Palm attack to him, then stomps on his chest with all his weight. Any of these three wounds might easily have been fatal, aside from numerous lesser injuries suffered in that battle. It finally takes multiple stab wounds from the Shaolin themselves to bring him down. This isn’t a complaint, of course. I like a hard-to-kill villain. Just wanted to mention it and this seemed like a good spot.
THOUGHTS:
THOUGHTS:
I’m not sold on Liu Yo-Po. In the first place, she doesn’t have the physical skills to play this part. She does none of her own stunts and little of her own fighting in this. Watch her scenes and notice how often the camera cuts just as she does something cool. Her stunt double had to work awful hard on this film. But you forgive that for an actress who’s bringing a high level of performance to the part, and I’m not sure she does. She’s just not a sympathetic character, and we need her to be. We need to be invested in these three friends, but she keeps us at a constant distance. She never does anything we can really cheer for. She never has a moment of warmth, compassion, or vulnerability. And you might say, “Well, why should she? Are you only expecting her to show these qualities because she’s a woman?” to which I say, “No. Pai Piao shows all of these qualities, and we love him. We should love her as much.” When she turns out to be a villain, we’re only bothered by it because Yidou and Lei Xun, the characters we do care about, are bothered.
Although, perhaps I should alter that statement. Yidou is bothered. Is Lei Xun? Derek Yee doesn’t give a great performance, either. Part of that seems to be the way his character is written. He never regards Qinghua as anything other than a nuisance, which makes us wonder why he keeps her around. He should have been written as a man divided between his desire for her and his desire to remain free. And even if he wasn’t written that way, Derek Yee should have played him that way, but he isn’t a subtle enough actor for that.
So, the two main characters could have been better-cast. It’s more of a problem with Liu Yu-Po, in my opinion. The movie can survive Derek Yee’s stoicism, that sort of thing is commonplace with action heroes, though we might wish that someone with personality (Gordon Liu, say) had been cast in the part. Liu Yu-Po is harder to get around, because the weakness of that performance affects the overall narrative of the film. I should love Qinghua so much that I myself am injured when she turns on Yidou and Lei Xun. The audience should feel as betrayed as the characters do. I realize that Kara Hui can’t be in every movie, of course, and Lily Lee was too old by this time, but the Shaw stables were full of actresses who could have created a fun, sympathetic character while also pulling off the action (or at least doing it better than this). If Kara Hui is off the table, why not Yeung Ching-Ching, or my own first choice Lin Chen-Chi?
But neither performance is really bad, just ordinary, and they don’t wreck the film. Pai Piao as Yidou is so good that these problems are pretty well smoothed over. I've already written above about how much I love him, but it bears repeating that Yidou is among the most-entertaining and best-realized characters in the studio’s history, and really stands alone as a comic sidekick. Much as I love Lam Fai-Wong or Hsiao Ho, they were never quite this much fun.
The supporting cast is strong. Chan Shen and Lee Hoi-Sang are always reliable, of course, as are Ku Feng and Kwan Feng. Philip Ko Fei’s Jianxing is a good villain, as well. It was a surprise to me when he turned out to be behind the murders. In part, of course, that’s because the film defies the expectations of Shaw Brothers fans with the casting: when we see Lee Hoi-Sang, who has played so many poisonous characters, wearing those imposing false eyebrows and seeming to draw sadistic pleasure from the suffering of the monks he’s disciplining, it seems obvious that he’s somehow involved. When he turns out to be innocent, it’s shocking in a way that it wouldn’t be to someone less familiar with the studio. Of course, that also means that Ko doesn’t get much screen time openly playing the villain, which is too bad. Still, he’s pretty fearsome, a good match for Lei Xun in one-on-one combat, able to convey grief and rage ably. His plan seems to have flaws, but many of these disappear upon closer inspection. The assassinations of his enemies would have gone more smoothly if his daughter hadn’t been an automatic suspect, for example, but once it was clear that the heads of the Four Big Families were his targets, it was perhaps inevitable that she would be. And I think we have to assume that her already-existing friendships with Yidou and Lei Xun were designed by her father to see that she had protectors who would stand with her against the clans.
It still might seem that involving Lei Xun was a mistake, since ultimately it would lead to his death, but Lei Xun was necessary for his plan to work. Simply killing the four Chiefs was obviously no big deal; he, his daughter, and his four rogue Shaolin were far better fighters than the men they were hunting. But he also wants to be the Abbot of the Shaolin Temple, and in order to elevate himself he needed a committed investigator on the case, someone both willing and able to stand up to the Temple and call them to account. Once that happened, Qinghua’s testimony would ensure that blame would fall on Kongxing, one of only two men above him in the Temple hierarchy, eliminating him and leaving the other superior, the Abbot himself, in a shameful position. In fact, Jianxing might have relied too much on Lei Xun. If he and Yidou hadn’t passed the tests allowing them to enter the Temple, it’s not clear that his plan would have succeeded. And he shows off plenty of fighting skill in the big final battle. As I mentioned above, he is a difficult man to kill, and I like that in a villain.
I like also that final shot, of Lei Xun walking out of the Temple with memories of both Yidou and Qinghua playing in his head. It shows that he will not forget them, neither of them. It indicates that he has forgiven Qinghua, and counts her among her father’s victims. Again, if we felt more strongly the attachment between the two characters it would be a lot more effective, or if forgiveness had been a major theme throughout the film, but it’s still a nice note to end on.
So, we don’t have a real classic here. We have a film with several good, even very good, elements and a few very ordinary ones, which is elevated by one great element, the character of Yidou and his portrayal by Pai Piao. I would argue, in this context, that this is enough to make Shaolin Intruders a must-see for any fan of the studio. But of course your mileage may vary. If you think this truly is a classic, or conversely that its flaws sink it, lemme know in the comments!
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