The Phantom Killer (1981)

Original title: 粉骷髏

Siu Fong (Wai Pak) is a bit of a local hero in a Chinese town ever since he fought off the bandits once lording it over the place. Because he’s also as pretty as he is boring, every single one of the town’s single ladies is swooning after him. Siu, however, has only eyes for the equally boring Sin Sin (Lee Yuen-Wa).

While Siu Fong’s gallivanting around the country probably doing something heroic, boringly, a series of murders of young women strikes our town. Curiously enough, all the victims were particular fans of Siu Fong; even more curiously, once he is back in town, the victims seem to be killed shortly after having cornered him to flirt with him.

At first, the chief of the local guard, Captain Chiu (Eddy Ko Hung), suspects Siu Fong. But various plot developments soon dissuade him from that theory. Why, perhaps the killer might be a woman trying to get rid of her rivals for that perfect man’s attentions, perhaps even a crazed Sin Sin?

I do have a place in my heart for films that mix wuxia and tales of detection, even more so when they, as Stanley Fung Sui-Fan’s The Phantom Killer does, add pleasant flourishes of the macabre to proceedings. The titular killer dresses up like a skeletal monk to commit their crimes – and their true nature is even more beautifully improbable – and there’s a whole line of inquiry about a corpse deposited in a statue, a worker in clay who sleeps in a coffin, and other elements of that nature.

Unfortunately, the macabre elements, as well as the mystery plot, suffer from the same syndrome as the film’s protagonist – they sound a lot more interesting than they turn out to be in practice.

Siu Fong’s just too bland to be interesting, and while he’s certainly physically attractive, Wai Pak projects all the personality of a freshly whitened wall. This even continues on into his kung fu style, that’s also technically flawless yet also – in a bizarre turn of events for one of the Venoms (Brother Snake) – lacking in any personality.

The macabre elements aren’t quite as struck with mediocrity as the protagonist – you can only make a skeletal monk piloted by a SPOILER so uninteresting – but director Fung certainly doesn’t use them as well as they deserve. Again, there’s nothing actively bad about the direction – it just lacks personality to a nearly improbable degree.

All of this does not mean The Phantom Killer is unwatchable, it’s just wasting some great ideas on boring competence.

The Postman Strikes Back (1982)

In the early phase of the Chinese republic, when most of the country is controlled by warlords, a certain Mister Hu (Eddy Ko, who will not turn out to be an evil Japanese ninja, oh no) hires a small group of men to transport four chests containing something of utmost importance secretly to the warlord who controls the strategically valuable Laome Pass.

These men are the courier Ma (Leung Kar-Yan) whose profession is slowly becoming obsolete with the growing availability of the railroad, a young thief named Yao Jin (Yuen Yat-Choh), Ma's good friend, the alcoholic and slightly mad explosives expert Bu (Fan Mei-Sheng - and is this how you'd want your explosives expert?) and the professional gambler and cool scarf-wearer Fu Jun (a young and skinny Chow Yun-Fat - count those rips!).

As it goes in films like this, the men soon get some female company in the form of Guifa (Cherie Chung before she was too annoying), who has a crush on Ma, but nominally just wants his help to get to Shanghai and a Miss Li (Guk Ching-Suk), whom they save from bandits.

The small party will have to brave many dangers in the form of bandits, revolutionaries (which in this case means democrats), nature, and a violent past that will come to haunt Yao Jin and Fu Jun with even more people out to kill them. Would you believe there will be small buds of love growing? That the men will become friends despite all their differences? That there will be betrayal, blood, and tears?

Yes, it's one of those films, but it's a good one of its type, with a script that doesn't shy away from cruel, sometimes unfair consequences for characters' actions unlike a comparable Hollywood script would do.

Stylistically, Postman is quite different from the better known, frenetically paced supernatural wuxia that would come later in director Ronny Yu's career (or the films he has made in Hollywood, for that matter), mostly utilizing actual locations instead of beautifully artificial sets and running along at a leisurely pace instead of jumping screaming in your face. I think the film is influenced by the more historically minded Spaghetti Western of Leone and Corbucci, sharing some plot points I'm not going to spoil, certain parts of their visual style as well as a similar outlook on history, although it never gets as explicit about Yu's own politics as some of Corbucci's works do about their director.

The action is mock realistic and quite bloody, but fortunately not so realistic as not to throw things like pick-a-back fu, shawl fu, a magnetic ninja or rat grenades at the viewer when it is deemed necessary and most certainly not willing to give up on a spectacular set piece for stupid things like the laws of physics.

The actors are all game, with a young Chow Yun-Fat doing some neat cigarette acting and Eddy Ko being his typical evil and untrustworthy self, and the rest of the cast acquitting themselves with the dignified professionalism of people who simply know how to do their jobs.

Despite its stupid title, The Postman Strikes Back is a very fine film, not as spectacular and complex an historically minded martial arts adventure as Once Upon A Time In China perhaps, but still worth it.

 

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