A Girl Fighter (1972)

A Girl Fighter (1972)
Aka: Girl Boxer
Chinese Title: 女拳師
Translation: Female/Woman Boxer

 

Starring: Polly Shang-Kuan Ling-Feng, Roc Tien Peng, Luo Bin, Ko Hsiang-Ting, Lui Ming, Ko Hsiao-Pao, Tsao Chien, Chan Wai-Lau, Wan Chung-Shan, Miao Tian
Director: Yang Shih-Ching
Action Director: Pan Yao-Kun

 

One of the unwritten rules of “basher movies”—kung fu movies made in the early 1970s in the wake of the success of The Chinese Boxer—was that most of them would take place in the Republic Era, and occasionally in modern times. A lot of that has to with the general cheapness of the production and the ability to save money on costumes, wigs, and complex sets. Exceptions were few. The most notable was The Prodigal Boxer (1972), which was set in the Qing Dynasty and was about Chinese folk hero Fong Sai-Yuk. Even more strange was A Girl Fighter, starring Taiwanese martial arts diva Polly Shang-Kuan.

Kuan had gotten her start in the wuxia genre in the late 1960s with films like Dragon Inn and Swordsman of All Swordsman. She stayed generally busy throughout the 1970s until her career waned in the final year of the decade. In any case, she was a prominent figure during the Basher Period, stuck around for the coming of Shapes, was there for the resuscitation of wuxia pian in the late 1970s, and even delved a little into Brucesploitation (in films like Magnum Fist). What makes A Girl Fighter unique is that it certainly feels like a wuxia pian (especially with its Ming Dynasty setting), but much of the fighting is open-handed, and yet it doesn’t quite reach Basher levels of crudeness in terms of choreography.

The movie begins with a couple enjoying some peaceful time together…until the unheralded arrival of a scoundrel named Chin Teng-Chiao (Luo Bin, of Swordsman at Large and Wang Yu, King of Boxers). Chin Teng-Chiao is the son of the richest and most influential man in town, so the little butthole thinks he can do whatever he wants, such as raping the daughter-in-law of the Liu family patriarch. When she puts up a struggle and her In-Laws step in to defend her, Chin just kills the entire family and that’s that.

Well, not quite. The magistrate, Hsu Chung-Huan (Ko Hsiang-Ting, of Struggle for a Vengeance and Fists for Revenge), and his advisor (Lui Ming, of Lightning of Bruce Lee and The Female Chivalry), have received an order from the capital to bring Chin Teng-Chiao in to be judged for his crimes. The problem is that this particular city does not have an actual police force. One assumes that law and order was maintained via private security funded by Chin Zhan-Peng. And since one assumes that Chin will not give up his son, the question of “Who will take responsibility for the job?” arises.

The question is answered by the arrival of a young lady named Sima Muyong (Polly Shang Kuan, of Seven to One and The 18 Bronzemen). Sima offers to bring in Chin Teng-Chiao. After dispatching a quartet of the magistrate’s guards in a display of her martial prowess, Magistrate Hsu figures that she’s as good an option as any other and gives her the job. It doesn’t take long for Sima to track Chin Teng-Chiao to a brothel and interrupt his merrymaking with a prolonged kung fu thrashing. She ultimately arrests him and takes him into custody.

But that is where things get complicated. Elder Chin (Tsao Chien, of Dragon Gate Swordsman and Chinese Kung Fu and Acupuncture) initially sends his flunkies to bribe the magistrate into letting his son go. But the issue has already reached the Top Brass, so even if Magistrate Hsu wanted to, there’d be no getting around that. However, the trial will not be held in town, but in the city of Zhending, which is located a few towns over and across the Black River. That means that Elder Chin has more than enough opportunities to ambush Sima Muyong and her men as they transport their prisoner through the countryside. And even if they do get that far, an attack by Chin’s men on the magistrate’s hall results in the theft of the Official Stamp, which means that Sima Muyong will have no way to prove who she is once (and if) she arrives.

Sima is undaunted, however, and soon takes the journey with six guards on her team. They are waylaid in the forest by Chin’s men, led by Chen Tianba (Chan Wai-Lau, of Showdown and The Fearless Hyena). They almost lose Junior Chin in the scuffle, but he is picked up by a wandering swordsman named Keng Tan-Hsin (Roc Tien, of The Samurai and The Tongfather). We later learn that Keng is the nephew of Liu Patriarch, and wants to kill Chin Teng-Chiao himself. But before he can do that, another entity shows up and steals Chin Junior. This new guy is Dong Qiming (Miao Tian, of Chivalrous Robber Lee San and Crazy Nuts of Kung Fu), a member of the guard from the destination town. He also wants to ensure that Chin arrives safely to his trial. In any case, they eventually all meet up an inn in the next town. It isn’t long, however, before Ching Zhan-Peng and his men have the entire place surrounded.

If you watch enough of these films like I do, you end up surprised when you see connections that you never saw before. For instance, the 1977 wuxia movie Green Dragon Inn is essentially a remake of A Girl Fighter. And that film also starred Polly Shang Kuan Ling Feng. There was a bit of a role reversal: Yueh Hua played the heroic captain and Polly Kuan played the vengeful niece of the murdered family, but the story for both films is essentially identical, including a prolonged sequence of the good guys and the prisoner trapped in an inn by the bad guys. The main difference is, like the title implies, this is Polly Shang-Kuan’s movie through and through. In Green Dragon Inn, she had to share the screen with genre veterans Yueh Hua and Lo Lieh. Here, she dominates practically every fight sequence there is, and the film is better for it.

The action was staged by Pan Yao-Kun, best known for the other half of the duo that gave us A Touch of Zen. He was pretty busy in Taiwanese cinema during the late 60s and early 70s, although he seemed to get less work as guys like Tommy Lee, Alan Chui, Robert Tai and Chan Muk-Chuen rose to prominence. He did make something of a comeback in the 1980s, even contributing to the superior action sequences of Young Hero of Shaolin 2. He does some okay work here, probably superior to the fights he did in Polly Kuan’s Rider of Revenge the previous year.

The action is mainly made up on group melees, often with the characters fighting with swords, with the exception of Polly, who mainly uses her bare hands. By this point, Polly had gotten her black belts in three different styles (karate, tae kwon do and judo) and it’s all on display here. Her blocks, punches and kicks are all performed with crispness. I could see the age yuke (high block) and moves that I myself performed back when I did karate. The fighting is interesting, because part of it is typical wuxia sword-slinging stuff, but then you have all these empty-handed fights as the title implies. This was pretty rare for a film with a wuxia setting back in 1972. And the moves and techniques are more genuine than the film’s basher contemporaries, so A Girl Fighter does feel like an outlier. The main problem with the action is that it is performed a bit slow: some of the speed and intensity that you’d find in the best bashers of that era is lost in favor of giving Polly Kuan’s skills a proper demonstration. The other problem with the action is Roc Tien (as usual), who is okay when he’s wielding a sword, but clumsy looking when he’s not. But there’s enough pure unadulterated Polly on display that I’m willing to forgive Roc’s awkwardness and Pan Yao-Kun’s lack of intensity with the hand-to-hand choreography.