Imperial Tomb Raiders (1973)

The late 19th Century. The bandit gang – small army, really – of Chin Da-Kui (Tso Yen-Yung), the owner of the biggest damn fur hat you’ve ever seen, is hanging around a village, making it impossible for Liu (Yuan Shen), the official in the next big town, to collect taxes (the subtitles speak of “collecting rent”, but I’m doubtful). Liu has hired famed bandit killer Luo Qi (Wang Yong) to get rid of the problem, but the gentleman appears to have not survived a fight with the bandit leaders.

Even worse, the bandits have bigger plans. Turns out the Liu family’s old Nanny Wang (Chang Ping-Yu) was once an Imperial maid, buried alive together with some of her colleagues to accompany the Emperor’s favourite concubine into death in the lavish, secret tomb hidden in the mountainous country where the village is situated. Apart from dead maids and a dead concubine, the tomb also holds an incredibly valuable pearl – and Nanny, who managed to escape from the tomb, is the only living soul who knows where exactly this tomb is hidden. Somehow, the bandits have gotten wind of her knowledge, and are willing to do rather a lot to get at the old woman carrying it.

While Liu has no clue what to do about the problem, his rather more proactive, if perhaps not terribly sensible, daughter Qiao-Er (Tso Yen-Yung) and her four maids – all excellent fighters with guns, bows and martial arts – grab Nanny Wang and go off to get rid of the bandits.

It’s good that they are capable fighters, for while Luo Qi turns out to be alive and of great help, there are fights, dirty tricks, betrayal and an instable tomb for them to cope with.

I have always assumed that media about Imperial tomb raiding were a Chinese pop-cultural obsession of this millennium (before the censors started complaining, of course). At least, I hadn’t encountered any Chinese or Hong Kong movies featuring tomb raiding action of this style before Taiwanese director Ting Shan-Hsi’s Shaw Brothers film Imperial Tomb Raiders. So apparently, I have been wrong again.

Though, to be fair, despite its title, the film isn’t as tomb-centric as one might expect – most of its short and sharp runtime is spent on a siege scenario, with Qiao-Er’s group and Luo Qi holed up in a farm, fighting the bandits and their dirty tricks. The tomb only really comes into play in a short flashback to Nanny Wang’s escape (including her surviving by eating snakes), and then for the film’s climax, and there’s little of the supernatural or the bizarre traps that would turn up in later tomb raiding films. The tomb, however, is a very nice set and makes a good backdrop for the climactic fight.

Speaking of fighting, even though the choreography is rougher than usual for a Shaw Brothers production, the mix of guns and martial arts does make for an interesting series of fights, fun by virtue of being atypical for the way the Shaws handled this sort of thing otherwise. But then, this was shot in Taiwan instead of Hongkong, so I suspect Ting (who also wrote script) had a bit more freedom here than directors working directly on the Shaw lot.

This film also features few of the usual Shaw stars and bit players – which is its biggest weakness, for while nobody here is unconvincing, nobody is excessively charismatic or puts much of a stamp on the very basic characters featured, either.

That doesn’t mean Imperial Tomb Raiders isn’t a fun film – it’s always interesting, atypical, and features elements – like the siege scenario, the tomb business – that weren’t typical for martial arts cinema of the time and place.