Nu ma fei sha

Duel in the Desert or its Chinese title Proud Horses in Flying Sand should tell you something about this movie. If the producers thought that this was a cool title, then they must be from another era.

I've seen this in English dubbed version, so I probably didn't get the true content of the movie, but even then, I could see that this movie had very little production value to it. Perhaps this movie was made for the mainland Chinese. The overall content only makes sense in this context, because even in 1977 nobody in Hong Kong would be impressed with this movie.

The movie is typical kung fu movie in that it's just a series of poorly done fight scenes. Most actors I've never seen before or since. They were able to hire Angela Mao, so why they didn't make her the center piece of the movie I have no idea. She gets third billings to actors with lot less on screen presence, and also does a poorly choreographed fight scenes.

There are much better produced movies starring Angela Mao and it's recommended that you spend time on them rather than on this one.

Angela Mao is the daughter of the owner of an inn where people from all over the country arrive to take part in a horse race that pays very well for the winner. However, the whole "race" thing is soon dropped, as all the characters turn out to have hidden purposes and goals. Those goals involve revenge and robbery, but don't ask me to tell you much more than that. I gave up trying to make sense of the plot after that point; hell, I even gave up trying to tell the characters apart! (their most distinguishing characteristic is that some of them have a mustache, and some do not). But what about Angela herself? She looks BEAUTIFUL as always, but has absolutely NO fight scenes until exactly 1 HOUR into the film, then she briefly dominates one guy and later participates in the climactic free-for-all. The emphasis in the fight scenes is on complex hand striking, blocking and locking techniques, however it's hard for the viewer to care when he or she has no idea who is fighting whom or why. I do think that Angela's character is meant to be a "bad" girl, which was probably rare for her, but not enough to make "Duels In The Desert" worth watching. Oh, and the shamelessly called "Special Edition DVD" from PanMedia is fullscreen, badly dubbed (though Angela's dubber has a sweet voice!) and probably transferred straight from a videocassette - there are even occasional "tracking" lines. (*1/2)