Deadful
Melody (1994)
Chinese Title: 六指琴魔
Translation: Six-fingered strings
demon
Starring: Yuen Biao, Brigitte
Lin, Elvis Tsui Kam-Kong, Carina Lau, Wu Ma, Lam Wai, Chung Fat, Siu Wing-Sang
Director: Ng Min-Kan
Action Directors: Meng Hoi,
Lee King Chu
One thing you can say about the wuxia films coming out of Hong Kong in the 1990s
is that they were distinctly Hong Kong films. They were made strictly for the
local box office (well, probably the local Asian box office, but still) and, as
a result, were free to be as weird, outlandish, and over-the-top as they
wanted, because local audiences were more or less used to this kind of thing. I
remember coming out Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon the first time I
saw it the theater (yes, I went to the theater three times to
see it) and listening to some middle-aged Caucasian couple asking themselves
why everybody was flying during the film. If something as run-of-the-mill as
people running up bamboo trees was befuddling to an uninitiated Western viewer,
than a film like this would probably make said viewer’s head explode.
Like most wuxia films of the 1990s, the plot to Deadful
Melody is a bit complex (although nowhere nearly as complex as
other examples of the genre). The movie begins with several clans of martial artists
surrounding the house of a family whose patriarch has abandoned the Martial
World, but has now come into possession of a deadly lyre…yes, a deadly lyre.
The lyre in question, when played correctly, can fire waves of energy that can
make people explode. Anyways, the man is about to give them the lyre, as he
doesn’t want any conflict. However, when they kill his friend and attack his
family, then things get violent. In the resulting conflagration, the man and
his wife are killed, their son disappears, and their daughter escapes with the
lyre.
Years later, the daughter has grown up into Brigitte Lin (Bride with
White Hair and Swordsman II) who somehow has become a) a master of
the lyre, b) a kung fu master, and c) filthy rich. I’m still not sure about that
last one, considering how she was orphaned and abandoned with no resources with
which to become rich…but there you go. Brigitte, who’ll now be referred to as
Snow, has hatched a plan to get revenge on the clans responsible for her
parents’ deaths. But she needs a way to lure them out into the open.
Enter Lui Lun (Yuen Biao, Hero ’97 and The Peacock King), a
young man who’s about to inherit his father’s escort business. Being young
and inexperienced in running a company, Lui Lun doesn’t exactly inspire confidence
in his father’s old friends. However, as luck would have it, Snow shows up his
door the same night he takes the company’s reigns, offering him an incredibly
handsome sum in order to transport the lyre somewhere. Apparently, despite
having disappeared for about twenty years, the lyre still has something of a
negative reputation among the people. Unfortunately for Lui Lun, he can’t go
back on his word and now must do as he promised.
As Lui Lun is starting his journey, news of the lyre’s reappearance soon
reaches the clans who showed up at the beginning of the film, notably the Ghost
Master (Lam Wai, who played the corrupt police chief in Project A II),
Fire Master (Wu Ma, who had supporting comic roles in most Jackie Chan, Sammo
Hung, and Corey Yuen films during the 1980s), Poisonous Witch (Siu
Wing-Sang), and some other master with six-fingers. Lui and his father, who
decided to accompany him for one last mission after finding out that the lyre
was involved, are soon set upon by bandits, interestingly enough by the son of
one of the clan leaders, who happens to be the person Snow wants Lui to deliver
the lyre to.
Among the people who are trying to get the lyre is a young, feisty
swordswoman named Tam Yuet-Wah (Carina Lau, Project A 2 and She Shoots Straight).
Tam is Fire Master’s main disciple and, just for the record, Fire Master is
decidedly less evil
than the other masters. Instead of attacking Lui outright, Tam plays the role
of an innkeeper in order to earn Lui’s trust, especially when the inn suddenly
fills up with would-be robbers and Lui decides that he needs to protect the
innkeeper as much as he needs to protect the lyre. Although Tam eventually
tries to steal the lyre while Lui is sleeping (only to be foiled by the
appearance of Snow, who is actually keeping close tabs on Lui’s mission), the
swordswoman soon finds out that she’s falling in love with the amateur escort.
Let’s go back to Snow a little. I mentioned that she was keeping close
watch on Lui. There’s a good reason for this: Lui may be a reasonably good
fighter, but he’s clearly no match for the supernatural powers of some of the
people out to get the lyre. Thus, when someone like Poisonous Witch for example
shows up trying to steal the lyre, Snow steps in without Lui realizing it to make
sure the lyre will make it to its destination. So, remember how I mentioned
that the son of the guy that Lui was supposed to deliver the lyre to had tried
to steal it earlier? Well, not too long after he did that, Snow decided to
teach him a little lesson about the dangers of stealing. Unfortunately for Lui
and his dad, when they present the lyre to Hon Suen (Chung Fat, Yes,
Madam and Rosa) and Mr. Hon finds his own son’s head in the box,
you can imagine things are not going to go well for them.
It’s a given that when watching a wuxia film from
the 1990s, you’ll probably be bombarded with an absurd amount of characters,
enough changing alliances to fill an entire trilogy, and lots of over-the-top
craziness in terms of action. Deadful Melody has some of that, although
thankfully it avoids making the plot so convoluted that you have to watch it
multiple times in order for it to make sense. There are a lot of characters,
but most of them are bad guys (the degree to which they are bad varies from
character to character) and there are few shifting alliances, but the story is
a lot easier to follow than, say, Swordsman or Kung Fu Cult Master.
Chinese wuxia films are generally based off of
existing wuxia novels,
or at least are steeped in genre conventions. I guess that one of those
conventions is that the story is, by law, obligated to have an ending that
ranges from bittersweet to soul-crushingly depressing. I find it interesting
then that Deadful
Melody has all the makings of a film that will end in such a
way, but actually foregoes the downbeat path for the most part, making the end
a lot more sweet than bitter, if you catch my drift. Throughout the film, Snow
is shown growing more and more obsessed with her quest for revenge against the
clan leaders, thus setting us up for a tragic death at the film’s climax. That
actually doesn’t happen. She actually gets her revenge and gets away with it,
which was rather unexpected. The only real bitter part about the ending is that
Tam doesn’t really get to declare her love for Lui, because her master is more
or less rendered an invalid for the rest of his days by the time the smoke
clears from the final showdown, and so she is obligated by duty to take care of
him. But even there it isn’t so sad because the subplot wasn’t developed a
whole lot and the script left it somewhat ambiguous as to whether Lui felt the
same way for Tam.
But enough about this. After all, we’re here for the action right?
This is A
Beautiful Film Worth Fighting For, right? Well, just an introduction to the
action: it’s choreographed by Meng Hoi and Lee King Chu. Most of my readers
will recognize Meng Hoi as being the lead actor in Hell’s Wind Staff and Buddha Assassinator and thus will know that Mr.
Meng is an accomplished onscreen acrobat and a respectable screen fighter.
Well, the man is also a very accomplished fight choreographer, having worked on
such old school classics as the loopy Kung fu vs. Yoga and kicking classic Death Duel in
Kung Fu. Back in the 1980s, Meng Hoi walked away with quite a few
nominations alongside colleagues Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and Corey Yuen for
best action design at the Hong Kong Film Awards, for films like Dragon Lord;
Ninja in the Dragon’s Den; The Pedicab Driver; Royal Warriors; and Yes, Madam!
Lee King Chu is best known for having worked alongside Lau Kar-Leung for
a number of his most beloved films, like Legendary Weapons of China, The Martial
Club, and Eight Diagram Pole Fighter. That should in and of
itself be a testament to the man’s ability to choreography legendary fights.
But wait! There’s more. He also choreographed License to Steal, one
of the best modern day action films of the late 1980s/early 1990s, featuring
the inestimable talents of Yuen Biao, Joyce Mina Godenzi, Collin Chou, AND
Billy Chow (how can you lose with a cast like that?). Most of his post-Shaw
Brothers career, however, was dedicated to low budget horror films, didn’t seem
all that befitting to a man of his caliber.
Like many wuxia films of the 1990s, Deadful
Melody is more a choregrapher’s film than an actor’s film in
terms of fight scenes. What I mean by that, of course, is that the success of
the set pieces depends more on the ingenuity of the action directors than the
physicality of the performers. The action here is not too different than what
you’d see in a Ching Siu-Tung film from the same era, like Butterfly and
Sword or something like that. It never quite goes as
over-the-top as some of the films of that era, but there’s lots of flying
people, some swordplay, a couple of brief moments of physical prowess courtesy
of Yuen Biao, and lots of exploding people. The film’s main calling card is the
Magic Lyre, which can reduce entire armies to mulch in a few seconds. There are
more optical effects present in this film than a lot of other wuxia films and
the set pieces are pretty fun, if not exactly memorable.
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