Swordsman of all Swordsmen (1968)

Swordsman of all Swordsmen (1968)
Chinese Title: 一代劍王
Translation: Generation Sword King

Starring: “Roc” Tien Peng, Polly Shang Kuan Ling Feng, Chiang Nan, Tsao Chien, Miao Tian, Hsieh Han, Ko Yu-Min, Lu Shih
Director: Joseph Kuo
Action Director: Shek Chee-Bun, Pan Yao-Kun

Much of the world was in an uproar at the time the film was released, on October 6^th. The United States was up to its neck in the Vietnam War, having dealt with the Tet Offensive, the infamous My Lay Massacre (among others), and increasing opposition on the homefront. The Pullitzer Prize-winning photograph of the South Vietnamese military officer executing a Viet Cong officer in the street didn’t help things, either. Speaking of executions, that year also saw the assassinations of both Robert Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., not to mention John Gordon Mein, an American ambassador who was murdered in the streets of Guatemala.

Little of this is seen in The Swordsman of Swordsmen, a rather conventional wuxia film about revenge. A group of baddies led by Yun Zhongjun (prolific actor Tsao Chien, who played the owner of the titular locale in Dragon Inn) massacres the Cai household, stealing the family’s prized sword and leaving only the son, Cai Yingjie (Taiwanese regular “Roc” Tien Peng), alive. Cai grows up to be a master swordsman and hunts down his family’s killers, one by one. Along the way he meets a swordswomen, Flying Swallow (Polly Shang Kuan Ling Feng, in her sophomore effort), who’ll influence his mission in ways he doesn’t imagine.

So if King Hu was the John Ford of kung fu cinema, than Joseph Kuo would be the Delmer Daves, a freelancer who frequently wrote and produced his films, in addition to directing them. Once he took his place directing martial arts films in the late 60s, Kuo could be generally depended on to fill his films with rip-snorting action, while throwing a few wrinkles into conventional martial arts movie stories. In this movie, for example, we have the full set-up for a typical wuxia tragic ending, especially once we learn about Flying Swallow and her relation to the villains. The film goes barreling forward at full speed to a downbeat conclusion, but then pointedly does not do that. Instead, we have a series of decisions made by our hero in which he earns his title (i.e. the film’s title) not just by ruthlessly cutting down everybody in sight (although he does a lot of that), but by exercising mercy and restraint as well.

The action was a lot more satisfying here than it was in the two King Hu movies I talked about. Do not expect a lot from Polly Kuan, who was still training at this point. Nonetheless, the fight choreographers Shek Chee-Bun (The Gallant Knights and The Buddhist Spiritual Palm) and Pan Yao-Kun (who worked on King Hu’s A Touch of Zen) up the pace of the action. The one-on-one duels resemble those seen in Hollywood swashbucklers and are more energetic than Han Ying-Chieh’s Peking Opera approach to screen combat. Most of the action, however, is Roc Tien taking down a dozen men at a time whenever he confronts one of his targets. There are a few exaggerated moments, like Roc Tien catching a knife between his teeth and throwing it at an opponent several feet away. But for 1968, the action was fairly solid.