Nu xia hei hu die

THE BLACK BUTTERFLY (1968) is a swordplay adventure from Hong Kong's Shaw Bros. studio about a female fighter with a secret identity as the masked "Black Butterfly," who steals into wealthy homes and bandit lairs to make off with gold, jewels and other treasures, only to turn around and give them to the poor. In reality, she is Bao Zhu (Chiao Chiao), the daughter of a retired swordsman, Kwan Yee (Tien Feng), who has refused to give her the kung fu lessons he's been giving to the local boys, including his chief student, Xi Lang (Yueh Hua). As a result, Bao Zhu has secretly turned for instruction to a local drunkard known as Drunken Beggar (Yang Chi-ching), who is actually a kung fu expert believed to have died ten years earlier. Because she's supposedly never learned kung fu she's never considered a suspect in the Black Butterfly robberies. Conflict kicks in when a bandit gang whose gold had been robbed by Black Butterfly comes to town looking for her. Eventually, Kwan Yee and his students, joined by Black Butterfly and Drunken Beggar, have to confront the bandit gang at the gang's fortress, Five Devils Rock, in a big fight finale.

Given these plot elements and given the strong cast, director, and relatively large Shaw Bros. budget, this should have been a much better film. Director Lo Wei made quite a number of enjoyable Shaw Bros. adventures (e.g. DEATH VALLEY, BROTHERS FIVE, THE SHADOW WHIP) and he's got some of the best actors at the studio on hand, including Chiao Chiao, Yueh Hua, Tien Feng, Chen Hung Lieh, Ku Feng and Fan Mei-sheng. But none of it ever comes together in the right way. Too much of the film is spent on Black Butterfly robbing local rich men and having to fight her own father and his student, Xi Lang. There's no good reason for this and it puts off the confrontation with the bandit gang, which comes too late in the film to generate much suspense. And when the good guys finally amass for the big fight at Five Devils Rock, they are too few in number and too short on skills to pose a believable challenge to the army of bandits, yet that doesn't stop the (uncredited) fight choreographer from putting forth some of the most implausible fight action I've yet seen in a Shaw Bros. film.

For the record, the Black Butterfly is actually garbed entirely in purple.

Lisa Chiao Chiao plays a waitress by day and Robin Hood by night. She is the girl who rescued Jimmy Wang Yu just after he became The One-Armed Swordsman. She works at the teahouse on a lake. This is one of my favorite Shaw Brothers sets. It also appears in "The Jade Raksha" and "The Magnificent Swordsman".

If you are expecting a fight you will have to wait until about the thirty one minute mark. Lisa's stunt double then begins a fight against her father Tien Feng. The fight spreads out and continues for about ten minutes. I must complain the fights are disappointing in this movie. First of all the better formula is frequent short fights not few long fights. Second, when a small army surrounds the lone hero and hero escapes with a jump or a swing of the sword blows them all away, that fight sequence was overdue to be forgotten forever even in 1968.

There is no action director listed in the credits but many of the actors, particularly Hang Ying-Chieh (Bruce Lee's "The Big Boss") could have done the job.

This film starts with a stealthy bandit dressed entirely in purple sneaking into a wealthy man's house to steal all his gold and jewelry. Before leaving, he leaves behind an emblem shaped like a black butterfly to taunt his victim. This scenario repeats several times with other wealthy men also victimized. Soon after, the local magistrate hears rumors that a "Drunken Beggar" (played by Chih-ching Yang) is giving away large amounts of rice to the poor, prompting him to send a young warrior named "Liu Xi Lang" (Yueh Hua) to investigate. This investigation leads him to a local inn where a respected swordsman named "Kwan Yee" (Feng Tian) lives with his attractive daughter, "Kwan Bao Zhu" (Chiao Chiao). Initially, Xi Lang suspects the Drunken Beggar to be the criminal now known as "the Black Butterfly." However, after a subsequent burglary shows that this individual not only possesses great agility but also has mastered the art of swordsmanship, his attention shifts to Kwan Yee instead. Things change when two warriors working for a rogue warlord appear with the intention of humiliating Kwan Yee to settle an old score. Now, rather than reveal more, I will just say that this film started off well enough, but it soon became bogged down in one lengthy and repetitive action scene after another--much too lengthy, in my opinion. That being said, while I don't consider this to be a bad film necessarily, it's not one I would honestly care to watch again, and I have rated it accordingly. Average.