Archive for November, 2004
Golden Swallow
When people list the best Chang Cheh films, Golden Swallow rarely appears. Its absence confuses me. I wonder if it is because the film is a sequel to King Hu’s Come Drink With Me—since the film didn’t originate with Chang, it can’t compete with his original films. Or it could be because the film features a female star, Chang Pei Pei, and not his normal crew of muscular males.
Whatever the reason, Golden Swallow has been unjustly left in the cold; featuring Chang’s most experimental camera work, a pleasantly nasty turn from the usually goodie goodie Jimmy Wang Yu and some music blatantly stolen from Ennio Morricone, Chang does everything he can to distance this sequel from Hu’s influence.
In an opening sequence shot like an abstract comic book, the Robin Hood-esque Golden Swallow (Chang Pei Pei), the heroine of Come Drink With Me, is injured and nursed back to health by the righteous but curiously non-violent Iron Whip (Lo Lieh). While she recuperates with Mr. Whip and his friend Flying Fox (Wu Ma, in what was probably his biggest role to date), the (mostly) righteous and extremely bloodthirsty Silver Roc roams the countryside slaughtering (mostly) bad guys and planting evidence that Golden Swallow is the real killer.
Why? Because he loves her. Of course!
This clever plan has one drawback—every single relative, friend and clansman of these slaughtered bad guys now wants to kill Golden Swallow. Not exactly a nice way to treat the one you love. But, as Silver Roc and Golden Swallow learned martial arts together, Roc is confident that Swallow can survive.
He’s mostly right. While she’s still a skilled fighter, Chang tones down her abilities a bit in the second film, allowing the two men to move closer to center stage. Whip and Roc meet and, in a thinly veiled battle for Golden Swallow’s heart, agree to duel. The “battle for the girl” plot is obviously nothing special, but it does allow Chang to include more fights and examine the conflicting natures of his male protagonists and the danger of killing in the name of “justice.”
Iron Whip, for all his nice qualities, simply can’t get the job done. Unable to kill even the most dastardly villain, he’s doomed to also-ran status in the race for Golden Swallow. His whip may be iron but, according to Chang, he lacks virility. Roc, on the other hand, dispatches the bad guy with ease, but has a tendency to take out anyone in the way, including several innocent bystanders. Sure he’s a righteous killer of baddies, but do you really want to love a guy who stabs someone in the mouth?
Well, in Chang Cheh’s world, an overzealous killer is better than a limp whip, even if the love is short lived. Roc is a fascinating character; undoubtedly nasty, self-absorbed and obsessed with status, he’s also ostensibly the film’s hero. Roc’s complexity makes the film far more interesting than its plot would lead you to believe.
But even when Roc’s off-screen, Chang enlivens the film with ever shifting hand held camera work, using cockeyed angles, quick pans and bizarre framing to capture the film’s many fight sequences. At times it feels like style for style’s sake, but I can’t deny that it looks good. Come Drink With Me is a far better film that treats Chang Pei Pei with more respect than Chang Cheh can muster, but Golden Swallow still deserves a better reputation
Golden Swallow
Dir: Chang Cheh
Released: April 4, 1968