Yao ming di xiao fang

The movie opens with the night time slaughter of an entire family except for the blind young lady. Tien Peng appears abruptly and offers shelter the lady and assumes the responsibility for revenge. The leaders of the martial arts world have a problem with this and hire killers to get him. Tien Peng also takes as student an orphan boy.

This movie serves as an example of what can result when plenty of money buys sets and costumes, the director has a real script, and the actors can both act and fight.

1979 was a prolific year, if not the most prolific year, for martial arts movies. I have over 150 movies in my collection for that year and I do not have them all. It can be problematic to fairly review these movies simply because of video quality. Very few of these movies, other than Shaw Brothers, exist in proper 16:9 format and high definition of at least 720. Watching a 3rd generation VHS copy of an Ocean Shores release can be tiring on the eyes and mind despite the plot, characters, or martial arts. The copy I have of "Love and Sword" is a "rarescope" DVD. It is widescreen and at least the quality of a laser disk (about 480 resolution I am estimating). Though not fully restored by any claim it is at least not an effort on the eyes and minds. This makes the slow moving parts quite tolerable because of the quality photography. Whereas the slow moving parts of a VHS are simply slow moving. That alone can change one's opinion and review of the movie.

This movie is melodramatic and slow moving at times yet I never reached for the fast forward. The fights were well done but I must criticize the brothel fight for poor focus and lack of power. Overall I rate it just above average for the year and genre.

While we are experiencing a wonderful restoration and re-release of some of the great HK kung fu flicks from the 1960 thru the 80's, the concurrently produced fare from Taiwan is still in a state of disrepair. None of the Taiwanese directors have much fame here in the US except for King Hu. Director Yu Kang Ping is a complete mystery to me except that he thought well enough of himself that he placed photographs of him directing the film during the opening credits.

The plot is firmly within the confines of the wuxia / martial world genre. A famous kung fu family is all massacred by masked assailants except for the blind daughter of the clan patriarch. She is sheltered by renown fighter Hsiao-Fang who has taken on the task of finding the killers and killing them. The leaders of the martial world are distressed by Hsiao- Fang's revenge and they hire super-killers to dispose of Hsiao-Fang. A young orphan comes across Hsiao-Fang rescuing an ambushed swordsman from highway robbers. The boy comes under the protection of Hsiao-FAng and moves into his hidden mansion where the young girl is living.

Yu Kang Ping certainly has a style to his direction and the film is lively despite the average plot line with it's twists and turns that didn't surprise me at all. The fighting is very stylized with lots of poses and the rhythmic movements from Peking Opera. Fights start at the drop of a pin but the interesting dramatic flourishes raise the film above a lot of others.

Unfortunately, like other Taiwanese films of the time, the print available is not very good and the video transfer doesn't help. Several scenes are very dark and the color is mushy. This looks like a transfer done about 20 years ago.

Recommended, especially if a new transfer comes out.