In short: Deaf Mute Heroine (1971)

This is the second film directed by Hong Kong all-round talent Wu Ma (he acts! he directs! he sings! he choreographs action sequences! he writes!). It's a low-budget high-intensity wuxia about the titular Deaf Mute Heroine (played with grim determination by Helen Ma) whose hobby is to kill off the local bandit population and steal their ill-gotten gains.

When she kills Shirley Wong's brother, the bandit leader, gambling house boss and poison expert swears vengeance.

The Heroine survives the first of Wong's traps, but is wounded by a poisoned throwing dart. A simple dyer finds her and nurses her back to health. Of course, they fall in love. But when he can't borrow enough money for their wedding (and is too stupid to even tell his future wife about the problem), he lets himself get talked into some very ill-advised things by a colleague, leading his fiancé into another trap.

Deaf Mute Heroine is a film with an undeserved life as an obscurity that's hard to find in any form at all; even more difficult in a watchable form. It's worth every hoop you have to jump through to see it, though. Its production values may lie somewhere below the cost of a sandwich, but it makes up for what it lacks in well-built sets and costly props with a roughness and energy that's quite exhilarating. Nowhere is this more clear than in the fight scenes. Sure, I have seen much prettier choreography, but the rawness these scenes have fits the surprising amount of spurting blood and the basic brutality of the fights perfectly. Wu Ma certainly didn't lack ideas how to make the violence more interesting. The neat moments begin with our heroine being blinded by the sun reflected on enemy shields and instead using her foe's shadow to fight him and end with some creatively absurd sword jump moves in the grand finale.

Aesthetically the film has a grimy and dirty look that works well with Wu Ma's heavy use of handheld camera, zooms and every other technique mainstream film critics hate; all this makes for a very energetic film.

The acting doesn't let the viewer down either. Especially Helen Ma and Shirley Wong give their not very thoroughly developed roles depth through sheer presence. Not a small feat when you keep in mind that Ma doesn't even have any dialogue. Even the cliched love story works well and seems to be based on a natural attraction between two people who aren't used to be treated well by others.

 

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