The impressive feature debut from Tsui Hark (Seven Swords, Zu: Warriors from Magic Mountain) that kick started the Hong Kong ‘new wave’ of the 80s…
A series of murders all seem linked to pages of a book by Fong (Lau Siu-ming, The Sword, Project A II, A Better Tomorrow II), a celebrated scholar, which detail the strange case of butterfly murders at Castle Shen.
A printer offered the pages is found dead, and soon more bodies are turning up, seemingly killed by butterflies. The mystery gains the interest of self-appointed martial art guardians the Tien Clan, and their leader Tien Fung (Shutang Huang, Five Shaolin Masters, Jiang Hu) lead them to the castle, joined by the spirited Green Shadow (Michelle Mee, Ten Tigers Of Shaolin, Crazy Hustlers) (who sure puts the wire in ‘wire fu’).
They find it almost completely deserted, save for Shen (Chang Kuo-chu, Let’s Make Laugh) himself, his wife, a few servants, and Fong – who turns out to have had nothing to do with those pages – hiding in caves underneath the castle. Soon they’re all dropping like, well, butterflies, and a mysterious other party dressed in black armour seems to be behind it all. One of a vicious group known as the Thunders, it’s not long before two other members “Thousand Hands” Li Kim (Tino Wong Cheung, Blood Brothers, Heroes 2) and “Magic Fire” Kwok (Eddie Ko, Heroes Shed No Tears, The Sword, Swordsman III: East Is Red) join him. But who’s side are they on?
Even now, after more than 25 years, Tsui Hark’s debut feature is something of an oddity, an impressive attempt to do something different with the swordplay genre film. Put within the context of cinema from Hong Kong in the late 70s it’s yet more incredible, being so unlike anything released at the time, when Shaw Brothers productions still ruled, and kung fu comedies like those by Jackie Chan were just beginning to become popular.
It’s not just how it breaks free from the studio confines that dominated the screen, ditching that yellow, glossy artificial light for the real world. Even the sets for the caves are more realistically lit than you might expect, with moody cinematography and well composed shots.
With hindsight, one can see the central theme of what he would later call ‘reality wuxia’ coming to the fore. These martial artists may have incredible strength, but it seems more bound in our world than ancient novels. Green Shadow uses wires attached to hooks, rather as Batman might, to scale wall and roofs. Fights consist more of wrestling moves than the ‘buddha’s palm’. The costumes are deliberately less sumptuous than those of Shaw Brothers movies, almost tawdry in comparison, with a definite reference to more contemporary fashion. (The distinctive black armour design is quite unlike anything else.) There’s even mention of an uncompleted gun, hinting at a modern world attempting to crash in.
Hark would return to some of these ideas in films like The Blade, Seven Swords and his production of Ringo Lam’s Burning Paradise. (Notably, he would also return to the claustrophobic environment of caves in the later of those two movies.)
It’s a deliberate shunning of that Shaw Brother approach, and the visual language they used, which by the late seventies had become such a parody of itself that the films looked more dated and staged than they had even a decade before. This film has far more in common with those of the West than its counterparts, and as such helped kick start the so-called ‘new wave’ of the 80s. Directors like Patrick Tam and Ching Siu-tung would follow with The Sword and Duel To The Death respectively. But perhaps the real key to transforming the future of Hong Kong cinema was transposing some of these techniques to a recognisable image of it’s own city, when the ‘heroic bloodshed’ genre was born.
Hark takes the core premise of a wuxia pian story and reimagines it as a murder mystery. The lead character Fong is, unusually, just an ordinary man with no martial arts skill. He’s a writer cum detective who provides the viewer an introduction to the martial arts world with a voiceover narrative that wouldn’t have been out of place in film noir. The butterfly attacks definitely pay homage to Hitchcock’s The Birds, as well as a multitude of insect related horrors of the 70s (just what was with that, anyway?)
Yet perhaps the biggest surprise is not how much Hark wants to change, but rather how much reverence Hark pays towards the wuxia pian folklore. The interplay between characters and their motives remains unchanged from the original novels and books of old. Much of that respect seems to come from his fascination with martial art novels, more fully explored in his adaptation of Lee Sau-Man’s Zu: Warriors from Magic Mountain.
Hark also had a great appreciation, for King Hu, the legendary filmmaker of the 60s who made an indelible mark on cinema with Touch Of Zen. It colours his use of outside locations and studios shot more realistic than studios, which would also influence Patrick Tam. Then there’s the use of a strong female role reflected in the casting of Michelle Mee as Green Shadow, a memorable feisty character able to hold her own against male opponents, echoes Golden Swallow in Come Drink With Me. It’s amazing to think that during the 70s such roles were all but lost under the Zhang Che and Bruce Lee led machismo that dominated HK cinema, and the fact that Mee was unable to capitalize on a great performance like this in her career says it all really.
Even the plot references the main premise of Dragon Inn, with its subterfuge between different fractions all trapped within the confines of an isolated building. Hark would later repay the debt, producing both a remake of Dragon Inn and one of King Hu’s last films, Swordsman (though that production became rather fraught).
Sadly the second half devolves into a more straightforward swordplay movie, jettisoning the suspense for more run of the mill endless combat sequences. Here the film becomes a victim of the often abrupt editing, creating often confusing sequences that aren’t helped by bewildering subtitles.
Gimmicks are thrown in seemingly for the sake of it, like the ‘magic fire crow’ who acts like a stick of dynamite on wings. It all leads to a rather unsatisfying conclusion that doesn’t fulfil the promise of the first half. But it’s a brave move for producer Ng See-yuen, still enjoying the success of Drunken Master and Snake In The Eagles Shadow.
It might be far less successful than The Sword or Duel To The Death but this is still an important step in Hong Kong cinema worth tracking down for any serious Hong Kong movie fan.
DVD details
Distributor: Mei Ah (Hong Kong)
The Mei Ah DVD was a welcome release for a film that had previously been tough to get hold of in any format. There had been a VCD without English subtitles, and an extremely scarce LaserDisc.
That said, despite claiming to be remastered, this release still shows a lot of imperfections, particularly in the daylight where a yellow smear flickers throughout. The night time/cave scenes, however, still hold a lot of detail. It's also difficult to tell whether the editing was always so abrupt and confusing, killing the music at full volume, or that's a trait of print available to them.
Extras are, as you might expect, pretty minimal, but it's just great to finally have this film at last!
