Hands of Death (1974)

Hands of Death (1974)
Aka: The Tongfather; The Notorious Bandit
Chinese Title: 大惡寇
Translation: Big Bandit

 

Starring: Roc Tien Peng, Tien Ho, Yi Yuan, Pan Chang-Ming, Wang Yung-Sheng, Shih Chung-Tien, Chen Hung-Lieh, Hsueh Han, Lu Shih, Shan Mao, Kang Kai, Tsai Hung, Luo Bin
Director: Roc Tien Peng
Action Director: Yu Tien-Lung, Wang Yung-Sheng

 

Hands of Death marks Taiwanese star Roc Tien’s first attempt at taking up the directorial reigns. He tries to do something noir-ish in what is otherwise a typical anti-Japanese chopsockey opus. Unfortunately, Tien is not much of a director—or a writer for that matter—and the final product is indistinguishable from the likes of Infernal Street and The Big Fight.

The story follows a pair of Chinese agents, played by Roc Tien and Tien Ho (of Wanderer with Nimble Knife), who are assigned to stop an opium smuggling ring. Where are they sent to? I don’t know; the film never tells us. What are their names? I am actually not sure about that either. What are their backgrounds? No such luck there. Do they have any motivation outside of their jobs? Nope. None. In any case, the two end up in a generic Japanese-occupied town where the local crime bosses and a Japanese karate master are vying for control of the opium trade. Our heroes kill the bad guys one by one until they reach the final boss. The film ends. That’s that.

Roc Tien wanted to do something stylish, but there’s more to style than watching your character sit around smoking cigarettes. We learn nothing about how the inner workings of the opium trade as run by the Japanese, nor do we learn anything about how the Chinese authorities tried to deal with it. The entire film is just Roc Tien smoking, the bad guys talking, a fight breaking out, and then rinse and repeat. There are a handful of moments where the film threatens to get interesting. Before the climax (heh!), there is a sex scene between the main villain (frequently Taiwanese baddie Yi Yuan) and some tart. There’s almost nudity on display, but Roc Tien thought it would be more interesting to see Yi Yuan locking lips. He was wrong. There’s another cracked sequence where the Japanese soldier who patrols the town forces random Chinese laborers to serve as his chair. That scene ends with our heroes killing and eating his dog. No, I am not making this up.

Yu Tien-Lung (of Infernal Street) and Wang Yung-Sheng were responsible for the choreography in the film’s copious fight scenes. Wang is known in fan circles for his superlative work on The Mystery of Chess Boxing. This film is obviously not up to the standard of Wang’s magnum opus, nor is it up to par with Yu Tien-Lung’s film, which we already covered. Some of the earlier fights with Roc Tien suffer from too many cuts and close-ups, which felt like artificial ways to make his character look unbeatable. I was starting to feel that Roc had not improved his fighting skills since The Big Fight, but he does better in the later fights. His kicks are higher and his handwork is more assured. Everybody else does a fair job with their fights, but there is nothing here that cannot be seen in other, better movies from the early 1970s. The movie also promises a fight scene with a vengeful woman (The One-Armed Boxer’s Cindy Tang Hsin), the girlfriend (or wife or sister) of one of the Chinese crime bosses, and a bunch of men armed with hatchets and katana. That fight is over in less than thirty seconds. Skimping on the promise of hardcore female fight action is a no-no around these parts. And unfortunately, so is Hands of Death.