More Than Kung Fu

Vengeance Is A Golden Blade has little in the way of the manly swordplay suggested by its title. Instead, the film is mostly a transposition of a Shaw modern-day melodrama to the popular wuxia setting. A family, torn apart by secrets and betrayal struggles to return to normalcy — their struggles just happen to involve sword fights.

After his wife betrays him, swordsman Li Zhishan (Tang Ching) rescues his infant daughter and escapes to a secluded life with herb grower Liu (Ku Wen Chung) and Liu’s toddler son Qingsong. Time passes and the daughter, Xiaoyan (Chin Ping), wants to find out about her past and avenge past wrongs.

So far, this is a pretty average setup for a revenge film. But then, unexpectedly, a family melodrama appears. When Xiaoyan finds her mother (Go Bo Shu, who trademarked the evil mother role), she runs into her arms instead of running her through with a sword. This is only the first of many twists and turns in a film that spills more family secrets than blood.

With its story of families torn apart by past sins, Golden Blade hits on many of the same points as Killer Darts, Ho Meng-hua’s film from the previous year. But the idea is not unique to Ho; the same plot, minus the swordfights, formed the basis of Shaw melodramas like Vermillion Door and A Place To Call Home.

The regular recurrence of this plot could point to a lack of imagination at the Shaw studio; but it could also illuminate a curious truth about Shaw films — for over two decades Shaw movies largely continued to sell the same myth. Even as their output evolved to match new tastes, their stories continued to honor the same ideas — filial piety and the glory of China’s past.

Vengeance Is A Golden Blade
Dir: Ho Meng-hua
Released: July 19, 1969