Murky Shadows Over the Gorges (1985)

Murky Shadows over the Gorges (1985)
Chinese Title: 峽江疑影
Translation: Gorge River Mystery

 

Starring: Sun Jian-Ming, Zhang Xi-Ling, Chui Ngai, Wong Sau-Ping, Yu Da-Lu, Wang Jian-Jun
Director: Li Qi-Min
Action Director: Chui Ngai(?), Wang Jian-Jun(?)

 

Ah yes, yet another Mainland Chinese kung fu movie. Can’t get enough of them. When will I stop tracking these down, you ask? Probably not until after Christmas, when I will have (hopefully) gotten some other DVDs as presents and thus can indulge in kung fu movies NOT made in China (well, Mainland China).

Like the others, I watched this one without the benefit of subtitles. This one had a slightly more complex plot than the other films I had watched, so it was a bit challenging to figure out what was going on. Let’s see my notes on the film:

In the beginning of the movie, the Qings are taking people into slavery/servitude. A guy and his sister end up getting pushed over a cliff. She is rescued and is taken to be a servant somewhere. Some years later, there seems to be some sort of conflict between the local militia, appears to be being trained by an old guy with a mustache, and a peasant rebellion or something, led by a young man with awesome skills. When the daughter of the militia trainer is saved from the peasants by their leader, she falls for him. This incurs the ire of the lead member of the militia, who loves the girl, too.

In the second half of the movie, we learn that the daughter’s new boyfriend isn’t such a good guy after all (although I couldn’t figure out what his motives were). In disguise, he kills the father/militia trainer. The servant girl, who loved the lead member of the militia, discovers that the guy is no good. The jealous militia guy takes him on but gets killed. So it’s up to the daughter and the servant, who had been hiding her kung fu skills until now, to teach the guy a lesson. The movie ends on a rather sudden battle scene between the Qings and rebels and the fate of the surviving protagonists is ambiguous.

Before anything else, the scenery is absolutely gorgeous. The shots of the titular gorges and the river that passes through them are just compelling. You just can’t go wrong with those Chinese landscapes.

The fighting is only sporadic. The actors, however, are very talented. The guy who plays the lead character (the bad guy in disguise) is very good and has some awesome kicks. The others are very solid, too. The girl who plays the servant does some very good pa kua (baguazhang) at the end. There are prerequisite scenes of extras doing various weapons forms and stuff and they’re all very good. The last 15 minutes, which begins with a fight between the two male rivals and ends with the lead taking on the two vengeful women is pretty entertaining. Unfortunately, one of the principal fights, the lead vs. the militia leader, is filmed in the dark and basically impossible to see.