It Takes a Man to Be Henpecked
Just barely misses out on being the worst Shaw Brothers movie I’ve seen; Divorce, Hong Kong Style retains that particular (dis)honor. While nearly everything about Henpecked is worse than Divorce it does manage to have one somewhat funny moment, and it also never forces its female characters to disrobe. Also, it’s 2 minutes shorter than Divorce, saving me a full 120 seconds. Small mercies.
Director Kao Li had left Shaw Brothers in 1967 and had mostly worked with Cathay since then, releasing a mix of classical Chinese tales. This fit well with his experience at Shaws, where he trained under Li Han-Hsiang and had directed a significant part of Shaws haungmei diao films.
I’m guessing he ended up back at Shaws after Cathy closed in the early 70s. And as Shaw no longer made non-wuxia classical Chinese films he was asked to make modern romantic comedies, of which this is the first of three.
Maybe his past experience with haungmei diao is why this film is also a musical. Though the musical interludes here are not good. Nearly always performed by a pair of fighting lovers the songs are mostly interchangeable and do little beyond restate the plot. And I’m not sure if the problem was due to my copy (which came from a Ziieagle) or the film itself, but the lip sync for the songs is awful.
One song in particular stands out, though not for good reason. A flashback to when two of our leads were living in an orphanage. Why an orphanage would gather all of their kids to sing a song with the lyrics “Mummy, why did you abandon me? I’m a sad and lonely orphan.” is a question for the ages.
Other than Dean Shek in an early leading role the cast here is surprisingly unfamiliar. Richard Chen Chun, the male lead, came from Taiwan’s wuxia boom. But he only made four films with Shaws before departing. Female supporting actress Ling Ling starts her Shaw Brothers career here, though she only stayed with the studio for a couple of years. And Chin Wen, another supporting actress, had been in the background of a bunch of Shaw movies for 4 years. This was her biggest role with the studio before departing by the end of 1971.
Of note is Teresa Ha Ping, who came to Shaw Brothers after nearly 15 years in the Cantonese film industry. This is her third film with the studio and she would stay with them all the way through their closure, after which she’d become a regular character actor in a million classic 80s and 90s HK films.
Ian Whitney
Published: 2026-03-29