Against the Drunken Cat’s Paws (1979)

Against the Drunken Cat’s Paws (1979)
aka: No One Can Touch Her; 13 Bandits; Revenge of the Lady Warrior
Chinese Title: 醉拳女刁手
Translation: Drunken Fist Lady Tricky Hands

 

Starring: Chia Ling, Sun Chia-Lin, Kam Kong, Hsieh Han, Tong Lung, Yu Chung-Chiu
Director: Ting Shan-His
Action Director: Kam Kong, Man Lee-Pang, Tsai Chong-Chiu

I love this film's title. It ranks up there with the other English title to Jackie Chan's Drunken Master: Drunk Monkey in the Tiger's Eye. This film's other title, No-One Can Touch Her is also pretty sweet and tells us all we need to know about the film: lead actress Judy Lee is here to kick butt and chew bubblegum and well...you know the rest.

Just a little introduction on actress Judy Lee. Her real name is Chia Ling and she was born in Taiwan. She trained at a Peking Opera school, which I believe was the same one that the Venom Mob and Angela Mao Ying studied at. Thus, she had a vast knowledge of different kung fu styles, acrobatics, weapons, singing, dancing...the whole sha-bang-a-bang. She would go on to become a member of what I call the triumvirate of fighting female femme fatales during the 1970s, the other two being Angela Mao and Polly Shang Kuan Ling Feng. She was one of the few Asian actresses who continued to act after her marriage (it's custom for an actress to retire after marriage).

Her first film, Queen Boxer is considered a genre classic in virtue of the 20-minute finale in which she kills about 50 guys armed with knives and stuff. She would have very prolific career until the early 1980s. Her best films are generally considered to be Queen Boxer, The Crane Fighters, Iron Swallow, and this little treasure. This film also has something of a reputation for being one of the only movies to feature a woman performing drunken fist boxing.

Like many films made in Hong Kong/Taiwan, the plot is relatively simple made complicated by having far too many characters and subplots thrown in. Here we go: Chin-Lien (Judy Lee) is a drunken beggar who spends her days either getting drunk, practicing kung fu, or breaking into a nobleman's storage room to steal more wine (she's assisted by a little street urchin and her cat). We find out that she was the daughter of a prestigious kung fu master and bethrothed to a wandering kung fu expert named Lu. Her father had apprehended a gang called the 14 Demons, but was eventually killed when their leader, Wolf Fang, teamed up with the "2 Bullies" and the "Crippled Gang" to get revenge. Chin-Lien was blinded when a member of the Crippled Gang, the Five-Venom Dwarf, shot her in the eyes with a blowgun.

Anyways, her ex-fiancé shows up in town looking for her, but turns out to the be the target of the Crippled Gang. He befriends another pretty kung fu fighting female named Wang, who's the aforementioned nobleman's daughter, and they eventually get engaged. When Chin-Lien finds out, she goes over to the house and starts crying. Her crying ends up curing her blindness(wtf!?) and it turns out that the whole marriage business was just a ruse to get her out of hiding. They find out that the Crippled Gang, the 2 Bullies, and now the 14 Demons are in town and decide to continue with the fake wedding in order to draw their attention and get into a big kung fu fight.

It doesn't sound all that complicated, but I left a sub-plot involving Big Mallet (Kam Kong, Master of the Flying Guillotine), a mute carpenter. He spends most of the film getting abused by a royal official who's on the trail of the bandits. He turns out to be the long-lost son of the nobleman. He ends up playing a vital role in the final fights. Unfortunately, his scenes prior to the last fights really slow down the film, since they don't really have a whole lot to do with the rest of the film.

Anyways, the film for the most part belongs to Judy Lee, who steals practically every scene she's in. Judy's a great actress (she even won the Taiwanese equivalent to the Oscar once) and she plays lovestruck, sad, drunk and carefree, and a number of other emotions with great aplomb. Her action scenes are as graceful and acrobatic as they are fierce, and we get to see her use a number of styles, including the cat style and drunken boxing, as well as the pole and shuangdao (double saber) in her fights.

However, it's because Judy Lee is such a great actress and fighter that the final ends up letting the film down in a big way. For one thing, there are about six good guys taking on all the bad guys, and thus we get to see very little of her fighting in what should be a dramatic fight for her, considering that she's getting her revenge. Second, the final duel between her and Wolf Fang, whose identity will make sense if you follow all the fights, is less than two minutes long. I mean, it's kind of understandable considering that the finale takes up 15 minutes on the whole, but they should've shortened some of the other fights to make this last one really count.

Oh yes, for those of you who like to see dwarves get beat up, there's plenty of that here. I mentioned that one of the Crippled Gang members was named Five-Venom Dwarf. Well, he's really a dwarf and he spends most of the film blowing darts at people at inopportune moments. Well, he ends up getting beat up twice (plus shot at numerous times with a slingshot) by Judy Lee's little street urchin friend.

I really wanted to like this film more than I did. The story is a lot stronger than a lot of kung fu movies being made in the late 1970s and Judy Lee's Chin-Lien is a much more developed character than a lot of others in this type of a film. I also want to recommend whole-heartily any film that has such high-quality femme fu, a dwarf with a blowgun, a blind witch, a guy with a brass club where his arm should be, and a evil villain with wolf-like fangs. But my complaints with the finale really dampened my enthusiasm on the film as a whole. Nonetheless, it is a film that any fan of martial arts should check out.