Two swordsmen, the absurdly straight and knightly Shadow Tsai (Tien Peng) and the rather more dubious Black Dragon Fung (Tong Wai) are fighting a duel for the title of "Sword King" as well as the possession of a blade called the "Purple Light Magic Sword". Fung wins the fight, but only because Tsai is so fair that he isn't willing to strike down his enemy while he can't see his sword, so the resident martial arts master gives title and sword to Tsai. A slightly disgruntled Fung and a very happy Tsai go their ways.
Tsai needs the sword for something different than prestige - it's the only way to take revenge on the killer of his father (and we're not going to learn about the why and wherefore of that death), whose skin is supposed to be impervious to weapons and who also is a fearsome fighter even with the little handicaps of being old and blind. He is also protected by his daughter Swallow (Polly Kuan), an effective swordswoman in her own right.
Such a simple tale of revenge wouldn't be enough for a film very much in the spirit of the Chor Yuen school of the wuxia film and so the house of Tsai's master is attacked by a strange group of fighters. One of them pretends to be Fung - and really, who else would have a motive to kill Tsai's master and make off with the Purple Light Magic Sword?
At the same time, Tsai's potential revenge victim, who is also - as we will learn a little later - the teacher of Fung, is attacked and killed by a strange group of fighters pretending to work for Tsai.
All this devious killing is part of the plan of a certain King Gold (Sit Hon, yes, having his skin painted golden) to get Fung and Tsai to kill each other, because he...um, you got me there. Wants to piss off the best swordsmen around? Well, he is a man who has lots and lots of other things to do: Raping women (thankfully off-screen) while wearing his pet parrot on his shoulder, taking baths in scalding hot water, throwing his servants into said water, shooting people with his harpoon arm, laughing evilly after every second sentence he says etc, etc, so it is all too explainable why not every single one of his plans can be a hit.
This one turns out especially badly for King Gold. Instead of causing at least one dead swordsman, his plan only leads to Fung, Tsai and Swallow talking things through (after some drama and fighting of course) and combining their efforts against Gold (whom, as I'd like to emphasize, they held no grudges against before he tried to mess with them).
Of course, all this is not complicated enough at all, so what about a little emotional trouble? So, Swallow is in love with Tsai, Tsai is probably (he is the strong silent and slightly stupid type) in love with Swallow, and Fung is very definitely in love with Swallow and also rather jealous of Tsai being such a swell and well-loved guy.
Still not complicated enough? Alright, King Gold also has a daughter named Gia (Hon Seung Kam), who is also a little in love with Tsai - and, as it turns out, not King Gold's daughter at all, but the daughter of a dead enemy, taken in and raised as Gold's daughter to be married by the golden madman as soon as she's old enough (and can I get an "Ewww" here?). Turns out this is going to be a good reason for her uniting with the other three swordspeople against him. It was probably not Goldie's best idea to teach her the art of fighting.
As you can see, there are a lot of plot points to resolve until our heroes can attack King Gold's mountain with the help of a lot of guys we didn't meet before, go through his creatively trapped (ice! fire! poison!) Ten Gates of Death and kick his ass.
The Ghost Hill (and I don't have a clue why the film is called that way) is a rather fine example of the slightly mad wuxia type beloved Chor Yuen pioneered. Taiwanese director Shan-si Ting was no Chor Yuen, to be sure, as he was missing Yuen's incredible sense of color, framing and use of sets, but his film should be a lot of fun even for people not completely in love with the wuxia genre. The film goes along at the slightly mad pace these things should have - fast enough to confuse the average viewer with its quite complicated plot line and the merry bunch of characters. But really, why should a film have just one old master when it can have three (or is it four? I'm not sure anymore)? The same goes for bearded evildoers and death traps.
Many of the Taiwanese wuxias I know have a little trouble keeping their intensity up when the fighting stops and the melodrama starts. This is not a problem here, thanks to a very well-cast and well-played core of characters. For once, even the chemistry between the love interests is as it should be. That everyone knows how to look good in the not brilliantly but well choreographed fights is a given in any case. The characterization is of course more archetypal than deep, but all four heroes are in the hands of actors who know how to make an archetype come alive. My favorite though is Sit Hon's King Gold, with his permanent belly-laugh and his parrot - and a lair that is probably the historical source for every place those Hindi villains are inhabiting.
I wouldn't really know what to criticize about the film if not for the fight scene between Swallow and Gia which is partly sped-up in the most irritating and obvious way possible - and for no good reason, since other fights show both actresses to be more than capable enough to provide a good fight without this kind of non-trickery.
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