The Swordsman of All Swordsmen (1968)

Original title: 一代劍王

Swordsman Tsai Yieng-Chieh (Tien Peng) is obsessed with vengeance. He is hunting down the men who killed his family to acquire a valuable sword when he was still a child.

But his straightforward way to slaughtering a quartet of vile men is getting increasingly complicated and morally grey. Even though he is trying to keep´cool and removed from the world, connection is not to be escaped: he gets help, if he want to or not, by people with agendas of their own. There’s Flying Swallow (Polly Shang-Kuan Ling-Feng) who saves him from a deadly poison for reasons having something to do with not repeating the injustices of previous generations (and probably love, as well), and who will indeed turn out to be the daughter of one of the men Tsai is planning to take vengeance on. Then there’s Black Dragon (Chiang Nan), the greatest swordsman in the martial world (he’s got a little medal that says so), who helps out our protagonist because he just needs to have a duel with him when the whole vengeance business is over and done with.

Eventually, even one of those horrible killers Tsai has set out to kill right back will turn out to have repented, and be quite helpless now.

I really have underrated director Joseph Kuo. Some of his films may have been shoddy attempts to jump on the newest trends, but at least this early in his career, he was also able to make a proper masterpiece like this wuxia. At first, it appears to be a well-shot but straightforward vengeance tale, with a straightforward hero hunting down straightforward villains for straightforward reasons in a straightforward manner. But with every additional character Kuo introduces, things become less easy and less clear, vengeance turns out to not be just in every case, and the obsession of the martial world with very clear and strict rules of conduct not fit for the more complicated world of the human heart. These rules turn out not be an ethical way to lead one’s life, but a cage one traps oneself and others in.

Visually, Kuo couches this tale in often beautiful and poetic nature shots that position the human drama in a world that mirrors and comments on it, and at times dynamic, at times focussed swordfights. It’s all wonderfully of a piece, where what at first appear to be distractions will turn out to be important parts of the film’s philosophical argument – it’s rather astonishing coming from a typically distractible director like Kuo.

The Return of the 18 Bronzemen (1976)

Original title: 雍正大破十八銅人

Qing prince Yong Zhen (Carter Wong Chia-Ta) doesn’t like the choice of successor to the throne made by his late father, and so changes Daddy’s last will to become emperor himself. Framing the actual successor for an assassination and grabbing the throne is all in a day’s work.

Most of the rest of the movie flashes back to Yong Zhen’s earlier years, when he, an already accomplished martial artist, takes on the role of a commoner to be taught the legendary martial arts of the shaolin. The harsh training regime isn’t quite enough for the guy, so he also commits some minor acts of villainy trying to acquire further shaolin secrets.

Joseph Kuo’s follow-up to to his rather wonderful 18 Bronzemen is a bit of a mess. The first act and the final ten minutes or so seem to belong to a different film – one that doesn’t even have an actual ending. The film appears to believe because its audience already knows the folklore surrounding the destruction of the shaolin temple, it is not its business to actually tell that story even in so far as it touches on what’s happening in its own main plot, the shaolin temple sequence. Which leaves Return not just without an ending but also without a dramatic climax. There’s a pretty random fight against Polly Shang-Kuan Ling-Feng, out to take vengeance on our nasty protagonist, but since we never actually spend time with her, or see the reason for her need for vengeance, or even get a conclusive ending to that fight, this just strengthens the feeling of Return simply being unfinished – or consisting of scenes of two different films with the same cast that have been smashed together without rhyme or reason, or interest in coherence.

The main shaolin training sequences are fun, at least, with some nice further ideas for shaolin torture, I mean training and testing, regimes that make much of visual interest of the film’s small means, fun choreography, and a very accomplished editing flow. This part of the film really only lacks at least somewhat distinctive characters – none of Yong Zhen’s co-students are fleshed out to any degree, and even he doesn’t have anything like actual character development – to be riveting. However, the martial arts are fun enough and the training methods weird enough, to make for a somewhat entertaining middle film, even though it never acquires an actual narrative or makes anything much out of the opportunity to flesh out the backstory of one of he major off-screen villains of kung fu folklore.

King of Kings (1969)

Warning! Not a film about the Sweet Baby Jesus!

We are in old, martial world China. A high up government person holds a tourney to bequeath the winner with the position of "county escort". It looks like the swordsman Shin is the winner, but when he is just in the process of being officially pronounced the new escort, a rather rude and impetuous guy with a face hidden by his insanely large hat who calls himself Thunder Sword jumps into the arena and demands a fight. A fight he gets.

Thunder Sword wins the duel, leaving Shin dying on the ground, to the despair of Shin's wife and children who witness everything. Instead of taking the position that is now rightfully his, Thunder Sword rides away, muttering something about only having wanted to test his mettle. Mrs Shin dies shortly thereafter of melodramatic shock, leaving her son and daughter penniless orphans. Both swear vengeance, and after a lot of crying each of the children is taken in by a different martial arts master.

Years later, the boy has grown up into Ku Chung, a fighter with the charming nickname of Man Killer (Peter Yang Kwan). He deserves the name too, for he spends his time roaming the country randomly killing everyone who just might be Thunder Sword. He really isn't very particular and follows a "better safe than sorry rule". Going by his state of mind, it won't take long until Ku Chung will lose it completely and become the first true serial killer of the martial world. Fortunately, Man Killer needs his sword sharpened and just happens to stumble into the abode of a certain Devil Blacksmith (Ma Kei?). The blacksmith isn't sharpening swords for just anyone, though, and begins to teach the murderous young man moral philosophy.

At first, it doesn't seem to take, but some dead bodies later, Ku Chung has a break-down. He begins to practice non-lethal forms of ass-kickery and tries to be a much nicer guy, largely with success. Alas, Ku Chung can't stop thinking about the vengeance he swore to take. He wants Thunder Sword to be the last person he will ever kill. The final confrontation with his elusive enemy will include a reunion with his sister (Cheung Ching-Ching) - also in the revenge biz - and two very dramatic revelations.

I mostly know King of Kings' director Joseph Kuo as the man responsible for countless Carter Wong (the most boring man in martial arts cinema, if you ask me) vehicles, but a closer look at his filmography shows a director active since the end of the 50s who had already made every sort of film, from melodrama to wuxia, before Wong was even born. Watching this film, you wouldn't believe how experienced a director Kuo already was, though. It's not that the direction is truly bad or incompetent, but the film does not show anything amounting to a stylistic personality. The way King of Kings looks is absolutely typical of Taiwanese wuxia of its time and place and could easily be confused with any film made by anyone at the time and place. If you are looking for visual excitement, you are in the wrong place.

The film is rather roughly plotted and filmed (and the print I saw is missing bits and pieces here and there), never developing a rhythm of its own. On the other hand, the genre standard scenes are done perfectly competent, and if you like bog-standard wuxia as much as I do, they make for pleasant enough viewing.

Kuo isn't completely ambitionless either. The "vengeance is bad and makes people to monsters" morals are used quite consequently, and treated with as much importance as the fighting and the jumping. The film doesn't even have a climactic battle, but can instead be proud of a climactic dialogue scene with lots of crying, a turn of events you don't see every day in martial arts cinema. Unfortunately, Kuo is no King Hu, and King of Kings isn't A Touch of Zen, and so what should be a tragedy drifts away into the realm of stiff melodrama. Still, Kuo is trying something different with the ethics of his film where many of his peers didn't bother, and that deserves a little respect, even if, as is the case with King of Kings, his trying doesn't amount to too much in the end.

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