Tie luo han

THE IRON BUDDHA (1970) has more slaughter, pillage, plunder, and bloodshed in its first 20 minutes than many Shaw Bros. movies have in their entire length. The villain here, Xiao Tianzun, is a real bad guy. He's guilty of attempted rape in a pre-credits sequence, and rape and mass murder in the 15 minutes following the credits, as he kills a celebrated kung fu master and his daughters and slices through an entire school of students with his Evil Poisonous Sword, sticking around long enough to watch as the wounded students kill themselves to keep from suffering the lethal effects of the poison. A truly formidable villain, he smiles a lot and seems to really enjoy doing evil. He's played by Huang Tsung-hsin, who usually played lower-level bad guys working for somebody else. He played a hero in one Shaw Bros. movie I've seen, THE MAGNIFICENT SWORDSMAN, also reviewed on this site, and was quite a change-of-pace character there. But he's so good as the main villain here that I don't understand why he wasn't used this way more often. Unless I just haven't seen those films yet. Other Shaw Bros. films I've seen him in include: ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN, THE ASSASSIN, DRAGON SWAMP, VALLEY OF THE FANGS, A TASTE OF COLD STEEL, SWORDSWOMEN THREE, THE LADY PROFESSIONAL and THE SWIFT KNIGHT.

The film's hero, Luo Han (Ling Yun), is the sole surviving student and he now has to track down Xiao Tianzun and avenge his master. He soon learns that the only antidote to the Evil Poisonous Sword is something alternately called Precious Knife and Hulong Knife that's supposedly in the possession of a retired palace guard who's now in hiding. In the course of it all, Luo Han helps a pretty damsel-in-distress, Peony (Fang Ying), and gets into a fight with Master Geng and the staff of his corrupt security bureau. It was never clear to me why Master Geng (Chen Hung-Lieh) goes after Luo Han, other than some vague tie to the villain. But, no matter, it just means more great fight scenes. The villain, Tianzun, even comes up with an ingenious strategy of fooling the hero, who doesn't know what Tianzun looks like, into thinking he, Tianzun, is a relative of Tianzun's victims and even gives him advice for finding the knife. Tianzun's plan is to trick the knife out of the hero's possession once he's found it. Finally, it all comes down to a showdown between Luo Han and the Precious Knife vs. Tianzun and his Evil Poisonous Sword.

The fight scenes are frequent and mostly involve multiple combatants. When he doesn't have a sword, the hero uses karate chops and kicks. The hero is played by Ling Yun, who appeared in SIX ASSASSINS, FIVE TOUGH GUYS and KILLER CLANS, among many others. The fights were staged by Han Kuo and Chu Yuan Lung. Han Kuo is only credited with two other films on the Hong Kong Movie Database, THE GOLDEN KNIGHT and THE CRIMSON CHARM. Chu Yuan Lung turns out to be an alternate name for none other than Sammo Hung, who went on to become a great kung fu star and director in his own right.

Overall, this may not be the most complex swordplay film I've seen from Shaw Bros., but it's short (84 min.), filled with action, and never once flagged.

It opens with an attempted rape scene. Villian, Xiao Tian-Zun (Wong Chung-Shun), is stopped and scarred with an "X" by Master Liu and then let off with a warning. After the opening credits three years have passed and the worm has turned. Our villain stops Master Liu and his two daughters. The master is ill and cannot stop the rapes and murder this time. Our villain also has a poison sword he uses to kill all but one of the students. Before dying the student names the villain to eldest brother. I smell a revenge plot.

Cut to bandits attack a caravan. Our hero Luo Han, played by Ling Yun, comes to the rescue. He fights off the bandits - or maybe they just fled from his silly hat. Really, that hat takes the silly hat prize.

The fights are typical of the time when actors were actors and only the stunt men did martial arts. This means mostly sword fights since the actor need only swing around the sword and the stunt men come forward, touch blades, then fly back in every direction. This can be done effectively if the actor demonstrates power, the stunt men have good focus and timing, and the fights are short and frequent. That was done well here.

There is no iron nor buddha anywhere in this movie. The title may have something to do with the hero's nickname. At about 1:13:48 I spotted Sammo Hung as one of Xiao's thugs. I'm sure he was also the villain's stunt double. He has credit as the action director and was 18 years old at the time. What were you doing at age 18?

I highly recommend this movie for fans of martial arts movies from the golden age 1967 to 1984. I rate it above average. It is on my rotation to watch again every five years or so and I've watched it three times already.