Come Drink with Me (1966)

Come Drink with Me (1966)
Chinese Title: 大醉俠
Translation: The Great Drunkard

Starring: Cheng Pei Pei, Yueh Hua, Chen Hung-Lieh, Lee Wan-Chung, Shum Lo, Fung Ngai, Han Ying-Chieh, Wong Chung
Director: King Hu
Action Director: Han Ying Chieh

This film was released on April 7th, 1966, a time of worldwide tumult. President Lyndon B. Johnson and recently announced the continued US presence in Vietnam to quell the spread of communism, with the number of American troops deployed reaching 190,000 in January. Conversely, thousands of Buddhist monks were holding manifestations in Saigon, South Vietnam against the oppressive policies of the far-right government. The Vietnam War becomes the subject of protests in the USA in late March. Earlier that month, race riots had broken out in Watts, Los Angeles, less than a year after the infamous Watts Riots had transformed that area into a combat zone.

The African continent was a hotbed for bloody coup d’états, with the governments being overthrown in Nigeria, Ghana, the Central African Republic and Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso). Outside of Africa, the nation of Syria was also hit by a cout d’état, and, much closer to Hong Kong, Indonesia’s violent conflicts between the Communist Party and the military—which had come to a head the year before when an anti-communist purge resulted in a half million deaths—ended with General Suharto ousting President Sukarno, who ushered in a right-wing dictatorship known as the New Order.

Come Drink With Me was Beijing-born director King Hu’s third film and first martial arts film. It is generally considered to be the first modern martial arts movie, bringing with it artistic sensibilities absent in the cheaper Cantonese wuxia potboilers that oversaturated the Market. In other words, this was King Hu’s Stagecoach released amidst a sea of cheap B-movie Westerns. It was a box office hit and set off actress Cheng Pei Pei’s career and made King Hu into one of the most respected martial arts filmmakers of all time.

The story is quite simple. Set in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), a governor’s son (Wong Chung) is escorting some incarcerated bandits to prison. His caravan is attacked by the rest of the bandit’s army, led by the sinister Jade Tiger (Chan Hung-Lit), second-in-command to the leader, who’s awaiting execution. The bandits massacre the soldiers and take the governor’s son hostage, sending a ransom letter to the governor: free our leader and we’ll release your son. On the case is Golden Swallow (Cheng Pei Pei, of The Shadow Whip and Dragon Swamp), the governor’s daughter and a supreme martial artist in her own right. Golden Swallow finds some unexpectant assistance in the form of a Drunken Knight (the late Yueh Hua, who also starred in Cave of Silken Web and Green Dragon Inn). The Drunken Beggar is actually a powerful martial artist who’s hiding from his past, which eventually comes back to confront him a final time.

Today the female action star is at a strange impasse in Hollywood. Nearly every time a big-budget action film with a female star (or stars) comes out, politics and social justice posturing takes first stage, and accusations (some unfounded, others not) are made that Hollywood is “once again” pushing its progressive, feminist, anti-conservative agenda. At the same time, the Media and denizens of the internet champion said film as if it were the “line in the sand” in the battle of the sexes, the turning point of traditional Hollywood inequality against woman. In recent years, comic book films involving strong female characters have largely come out winners at the box office, although non-comic films are more hit-or-miss—Salt (2010) and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) were successful, while a reboot of Charlie’s Angels (2019) and an all-female reboot of The Ghostbusters (2016) were less so.

Let’s jump back 54 years to Come Drink with Me. Director King Hu cast ballarina Cheng Pei Pei in the lead role as the badass swordwoman Golden Swallow, who plays the role just the right balance of no-nonsense sword-swinging vigor and feminine sensitivity. The movie rarely points out that “Yes, Golden Swallow is a woman” and never once says, “No, a woman shouldn’t be this good at martial arts nor should be a fighter in any capacity.” In fact, during the clímax, the strongest members of Golden Swallow’s entourage are a band of female swordswomen protecting Golden Swallow’s brother. The only time Golden Swallow’s gender really matters is a brief scene at the temple fight when her dudou, or bodice, is exposed, eliciting snickers from her opponents; and later on, when Golden Swallow has been pierced by a poison dart, and Drunken Knight asks her permission to suck the poison from the wound, which is above her breast.

At no point do gender politics play a role in the story, and, if they do, they are subtle enough that one would have to peel several layers from the story to see them. Especially interesting is that Cheng Pei Pei was far from the first actress to be cast as a swordwoman in these films. Other actresses like Josephine Siao Fong-Fong had been playing action heroines in low-budget wuxia films since the 50s and 60s. I find it fascinating that a culture often criticized for its misogyny and stereotyped by submissive and subservient women would produce powerful female cinematic heroines at a time when Occidental studios’ portrayal of women in period adventures were spunky princesses and queens at best, and useless damsels in distress at worst. And almost 60 years later, Hollywood still can’t be counted on to consistently make movies about ass-kicking women in which the sex appeal of the character in inherent in the type, instead of pushed into the foreground and shoved down our pants.

With regards to ass-kicking, the action here was provided by Han Ying-Chieh, who’d be best known to mainstream fans for choreographing the non-Bruce Lee fights in The Big Boss  and Fistof Fury, and who would square off against the Little Dragon himself at the end of The Big Boss. Much like Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao, Han Ying-Chieh received his training through a Peking Opera School, where he studied from age 9 to 18. He worked as a stuntman in films and did martial arts and acrobatics demonstrations before eventually graduating to fight choreographer. His action here strongly reflects both his own Peking Opera Training and director King Hu’s fascination with the art form, not to mention Cheng Pei Pei’s background as a dancer. At best, the action feels like a Peking Opera interpretation of a Japanese samurai film, with there being an emphasis on building tension and  developing strategy before moving in for the blow.

There are some stylistic flourishes and techniques that require suspension of disbelief. The final fights between Drunken Knight and the Abbot feature blasts of qi, or inner energy, realized through them firing compressed air at each other. There a number of times that the characters have super reflexes and can deflect darts and other projectiles with minimum movement. This sort of wuxia superhuman power approach has Always been a part of the literature, although King Hu wisley has it complement the fighting instead of define it.

Another interesting part about the film is the violence. The film is surprisingly bloody for a movie made in 1966. Italian Spaghetti Westerns like The Man With No Name trilogy and Japanese chambara films started pushing the bar for violence at the time, so I imagine they were one of the major influences on King Hu at the time. Here we get to see a few people emit geysers of blood after getting stabbed, including a crying child[1] who took a dart to the eye(!). The final duel between Drunken Knight and his enemy is rather bloodsoaked, with the former’s face covered in blood by the time the two are finished wailing on each other.

---

[1] - The child is played by a very young Tony Ching Siu-Tung, who’d go on to become one of Hong Kong’s most innovative and critically-acclaimed action directors.