Vengeance! (1970)

Vengeance! (1970)
Aka: Kung Fu Vengeance
Chinese Title: 報仇
Translation: Revenge

 

Starring: David Chiang Da-Wei, Ti Lung, Wang Ping, Alice Au Yin-Ching, Ku Feng, Yang Chi-Ching, Wong Ching-Ho, Chuan Yuan, Hoh Ban, Chan Sing, Wang Kuang-Yu, Cheng Lei
Director: Chang Cheh
Action Director: Tong Gaai, Yuen Cheung-Yan

 

Some time ago, I posed the question on an online forum devoted to martial arts cinema as to whether or not Vengeance! represented an early entry in the so-called “Basher” sub-genre of martial arts film. One user proposed the idea that it was not, but instead was simply a wuxia film of the sort Chang Cheh had been making—take Have Sword, Will Travel and One-Armed Swordsman for instance—that had been transplanted into the Republic Era of Chinese history. You see, Vengeance! was released in May of 1970, placing it almost squarely between the release of Cathay Studio’s From the Highway and the Shaw Brothers’ The Chinese Boxer. The former is considered to be the first “modern” kung fu film, or in other words, one that focuses on open-handed combat based around Chinese martial arts. The latter is the first “basher” film, which is more or less the same thing, but with longer, drawn-out fights. The Chinese Boxer set the template for subsequent kung fu films moreso than its counterpart from the Malaysia-based Cathay Studios.

Like those two films, Vengeance! is set during the Republic Era circa 1920. The film features subplots that revolve around the continuous conflicts between Chinese warlords, characteristic of the aptly-named Warlord Era (1916 – 1928). That places it more in line with From the Highway, which also features those elements. Empty-handed combat figures into some of the fights, but the biggest set pieces involve knife fighting. This especially goes for the climatic bloodbath, considered by many to be one of the best fight sequences dedicated to film. So is this a kung fu movie that predated The Chinese Boxer, which gets most of the credit? Or is it swordplay drama that happens to take place in the 20^th century?

The plot in its general contours is extremely simple. Guan Yulou (King Eagle’s Ti Lung) is a Peking Opera actor whose flirtacious wife is the object of desire for the local kung fu teacher, Feng Kaishan (Ku Feng, of Duel of Fists and Avenging Eagle). After Guan humiliates the latter in front of his students, Feng turns to the local crime boss Jin Zhiquan (prolific actor Yang Chi-Ching, who racked up more than 300 film credits during his four-decade career) to help him get back at Yulou. They set up an ambush at a teahouse, which results in a vicious knife fight ending in Guan getting his eyes stabbed out and dying of blood loss. Exit Ti Lung stage right. Guan’s wife (Alice Au in one of her final roles) promptly becomes Feng’s lover, although we learn that she gets discarded surprisingly quickly.

Guan’s brother, Xiaolou (David Chiang, of Have Sword, Will Travel), shows up in town an unspecified amount of time later hellbent on revenge. He causes a ruckus at the Peking Opera and murders Master Feng at his hideout. However, upon learning that other people were involved, he finds himself a pawn in the conflict between the local Warlords. While all this is going on, he finds time to reconnoiter with his old love, Hua Zhengfang (Wang Ping, of Tiger Killer and Jackie Chan’s The Magnificent Bodyguards). Chang Cheh often gets flack for including lots of homoeroticism in his films, but this film is surely one of his more heterosexual movies: it is implied that Xiaolou is regularly banging Zhengfang up until the fateful final encounter.

This is one of the best movies to see Chang Cheh’s craft as an artist. During Guan Yulou’s last stand at the tea house, Chang juxtaposes scenes of Guan fighting with hatched embedded in his gut with scenes of Guan’s Peking Opera performance, in which his character fought a losing battle while his abdomen was covered in stage blood. The finale, which sees Guan Xiaolu fighting off an entire mansion filled with knife-wielding baddies while dressed in an immaculate white suit is an obvious inspiration for the final shoot-out of John Woo’s The Killer, in which Chow Yun-Fat is dressed similarly. Likewise, the white clothing reflects the characters’ purity of purpose and makes for stark contrast with the villains’ blood they’re spilling. Much like John Woo would do more than a decade later, Chang Cheh knows how to use slow motion to accentuate the violence.

Chang Cheh regular Tong Gaai, alongside relative newcomer Yuen Cheung-Yan, handled the action duties. Tong Gaai had learned Peking Opera and martial arts from Yuen’s father, Simon  Yuen Siu-Tin. One might then assume that the two men would work reasonably well together. Yuen Cheung-Yan (look for him in a cameo as an armed policeman during the climax) was part of the infamous Yuen Clan, which included his more well-known brother Yuen Woo-Ping (who shows up alongside a pre-fame Chen Kuan-Tai as Master Feng’s bodyguards during the hotel sequence). The action sequences tend to work better when they revolve around dagger combat; the other hand-to-hand fights tend to be less interesting. It is clear that Tong Gaai was still trying to figure out how to adequately portray open-handed fighting onscreen; Tong’s forté had always been weapons combat.

An early fight has Ti Lung fighting off an entire school of fighters with two pieces of the school’s signboard—it is a grave insult in Chinese culture to break a school’s signboard. David Chiang later has a fight with a pair of thugs in the restroom of an opera house (and later in the rafters of the same establishment) and that is where everybody’s inexperience shows. While Chiang had ample experience as a fight instructor and stuntman, his skills were nevertheless limited compared to those of his contemporaries and it is painfully obvious in these early fights. These fights work on the level of a Hollywood western barfight, complete with wild haymaker punches and low, off-balance kicks.

The cast and crew are indeed tread surer ground once the characters start wielding knives, considering that wuxia movies had been everybody’s bread and butter prior to Vengeance! The big climax is the film’s most memorable set piece. It begins with a huge melée, pitting David Chiang and Jin Zhiquan’s lackeys (look fast for a young Fung Hak-On among them) and the Generalissimo’s men. Betrayal is afoot, however, and Chiang soon must turn his sights on his ally, too. Dozens of stuntmen and extras do the dance of death as Chiang stabs, slashes, and hacks his way through one man after another, heroicially shirking off the wounds his body accumulates in the process. By the end, the villain’s mansion is a giant mausoleum filled with the cadavers of the guilty. While Chang Cheh and company would one-up this sequence two years later in The Boxer from Shangtung with an even more impressive final slaughter, the result here is still awfully impressive.

In the end, Vengeance! is the missing link between Shaw Brothers wuxia films of the late 60s and the open-handed kung fu movies that The Chinese Boxer would set the stage for. It is a transition film, including elements of both groups of movies. As stated, the fight choreography flounders in some respects, but there is enough carnage on display in other set pieces that the film stands on its own. And Chiang gives a determined performance, backed by Chang Cheh’s strong direction and solid Shaw Brothers production values. The end result is a must-see for all fans of the genre.