Thursday, March 10, 2022

Deadful Melody (1994)

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 ChinaThe 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.

Deadful Melody is ultimately an entertaining, but unexceptional wire-fu film from the time when wire-fu was entering its first twilight—the wacky wire-fu film had reached its apex in 1993 and by 1994, only a few real important entries in the genre (Fist of Legend, Drunken  Master II, and New Legend of Shaolin) would make any sort of impact on the local box office. The action is entertaining and the story is easy to follow by genre standards; I haven’t mentioned the acting because I watched the English dub, which is quite bad, even by my (very) low standards. Still, as far as I’m concerned, Deadful Melody was 90 minutes well spent.

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