Das unbesiegbare Schwert der Shaolin

Another great film by Shaw brothers, I would have actually given this movie 10 stars, but, some of the translations into English were off, and detracted from the story.

Yuen Chor is one of the lesser known Shaw kung fu directors, he also is one of the more prolific directors with over 120 films in a 36 year career. With the re-release of the Shaw library on DVD several reasons for his obscurity become clear. One, his films have some of the best art direction you can find in the kung-fu films of this era. Two, the films are always framed for full Shaw Scope wide screen. Three, he fills his films with lots of colorful characters. When these films were put on TV, most of the visuals were ruined and it's really hard for a non-Chinese audience to keep up with the parade of characters especially with bad dubbing.

This film contains a large number of main characters, about a dozen, although most of the film revolves around the hero played by Ti Lung. These characters keep returning to say something or advance the plot. That alone makes the film hard to watch. A Yuen Chor film where this isn't problem is the Magic Blade which has a similar number of characters but most show up for a scene and leave. The twists and turns of the plot just add to the mental exhaustion if you are not ready for it.

The pace of the film is good with a number of well choreographed fight scenes. There are some crazy super-human kung fu stunts. The film looks great and the actors all do their good usual work.

Chin Huan (Ti Lung) returns home to his brother after 10 years to defend his family against the mysterious Plum Blossom bandit whose identity is unknown. On his way, he becomes a friend of Ah Fei (Derek Yee); they both have a strong sense of honor and mutual respect for each other. When the local people suspect that Chin Huan himself could be the Plum Blossom bandit, because he is such a skilled fighter, Ah Fei defends him. Together they try to find the actual bandit.

This is a colorful and entertaining movie, well directed, and - quite rare - staged in a snowy landscape. Even the smaller characters, for example the drunken doctor, the Shaolin abbot and the master of poisons, are always interesting. Also the story has the unusual twist that the hero is fought most of the time by the good guys, as they mistake him for the villain, so instead of killing everyone, he often tries to avoid fights. Recommended!

The opening scene is like the opening scene of "Pursuit of Vengeance." Enter Ti Lung as Li Chin Huan and Fan Mei-Sheng as his assistant Chuan Jia. Ti Lung carves a doll and buries it in the snow. The back story is ten years ago he gave up his fortune and his woman to a man who saved his life. Next they encounter a man walking. Then at the tea house "Black and White Snake" attack an escort company. The man walking kills them and joins Ti Lung. They go off to the woods to drink and talk. Attack! Everyone is after the package – an armor useful against the Plum Blossom Bandit.

Yes there is too much going on in the movie and it is hard to follow. I thought the Plum Blossom Bandit's choice of colors annoying and now I call him the "Pepto-Bismol Bandit". I did find very fun the scene where all were starving but feared poison in all the available food.

This movie may have had a landmark first. At about 1:24:45 there is a physical, not a special effects, wipe. The actress goes behind a wall as the camera tracks to the right then the stuntman comes out from behind the wall and does the acrobatics all dressed as the actress. Was this the first time this effect was ever done? I'm surprised it was not done more often but maybe it was and I am just now noticing.

during shaw brothers in hong kong dominated the Chinese wuxia (martial arts/swordsmanship) genre, most of the films were shot inside of its gigantic studio with all the phony or fake props and scenes. it did not like what the Japanese samurai films that mainly used open-air natural surroundings to make their films more realistic, the studio arrangements were just when they were necessary. shaw brothers' studio just rigidly used the studio to shoot almost all of their films in this genre with fake silk flowers, dead trees, fake houses facades and etc. to do the shooting in order to avoid any unpredictable weather conditions in the south east asia. but this never changed shooting format also inevitably reduced those films' value so low that most of such films simply looked so unreal and so pretentious. during that era, most of the screenplays were adapted from the popular Chinese wuxia (martial arts) novels written by some of the popular writers from taiwan while china at that time was in the turmoil cultural revolution. but the adapted scripts were just way too pretentious with stupid dialog that never felt natural but strongly staged like Shakespearean dramas. one the famous directors in this genre was chu yuen, who used most of the novels written by gu long, a wuxia writer who was so famous in writing the most pretentious dialog and scenarios just like the staged plays. chu shot all such films in the studio with artificial lighting and fake props. all the fighting scenes either with fists or swords or any kind of weapons were heavily rehearsed and synchronized with man made sound effects. since they were shot in the studio, the lighting arranged from different angles also inevitably cast lot of different shadows on the fake ground or floors, actors usually would have so many shadows in different shades following them around. the synchronized fighting scenes with awkward sound effects, including the moronic ho hung from the never perfected dubbed voice-over to match their fake fightings simply further reduced their real values in movie making.

you have to watch the Japanese samurai movies to compare with the Chinese wuxia movies to know what were not correctly done by shaw brothers and their directors. because every scene, every spoken word of the dialog, even the moon in the night sky, just looked so fake. you have to force yourself to watch these movies as watching plays performed on the stage just like watch Chinese bejing operas.

this film was a horrible viewing experience, so pretentious and so fake in every way you could imagine.