The Bastard
(Xiao za zhong, 1973)

Chu Yuan

Hong Kong

102 min, color, Mandarin (English subtitles)

Review © 2003 Branislav L. Slantchev

In the 1970s the Shaw Brothers were churning out film after film at a rate that would make Hollywood look like a boutique. Well now Celestial Pictures is churning out these films on DVD, digitally restored to their original glory. I already own about 30 of the DVDs but this one is the first to be reviewed. I sure hope the other films are better.

The Bastard (Tsung Hua) is getting named	Hsiao Yi (Lily Li), the beggar girl

Some time in the distant past (well, not that distant; let's say 300 years), a man by the name of i-have-no-name-because-my-dumb-master-did-not-give-me-one goes in search of his parents. Why he wants to find the parents that apparently dumped him on the steps of a temple is not quite clear. Does he want to see if they have reconsidered in the two decades that have gone by? Or maybe he hopes that it was an accident and they are still looking for him?

What is the Bastard doing?	Smitten by the obviously evil woman

Appropriately enough, the first person the guy meets is a shit-collector (well, okay, a shit-disposal guy, but it's the same smelly thing). He dubs our hero 'The Bastard' (literally) which our hero takes literally innocently unaware of the colloquial connotations of the word. He then stumbles across a bunch of gamblers who all lose to a very pretty girl who turns out to be a little beggar (Lily Li). Naturally, the gamblers, a vicious lot it goes without saying, try to rape her, and of course our hero, who happens to be there it goes without saying, kicks their gambling asses. The funny part here is that he keeps telling them how he does not want to fight them while doing it.

Hsiao Yi giving hilarious last will instructions	Ai-Zhen, the Evil Scheming Woman

The bastard and the beggar strike an immediate friendship and (naturally) end up in the same room at an inn. Less naturally (but not surprisingly given the year the film was made), they do not immediately sleep with each other although they do some frolicking in the fields, which is the occasion for the uncomfortably irritating laughter of The Bastard to be put on display. Naturally (and not surprisingly given the intricate storyline so far), the inn turns out to belong to the bad guys. There is a squabble which ends surprisingly with a really beautiful girl saving our hero from a whoopass (although, as it turns out later he really did not need saving).

Never mind the rose petals... still stinks	Caught in the act, but who cares?

Well, the bad guys are actually employed by The Bastard, Sr., our bastard's father. He's bad. He's very bad. The little beggar immediately senses it but gets distracted when (naturally) The Bastard gets seduced by the beautiful woman in a lyrically beautiful and intricately filmed (so that no nudity is shown) scene that involves lots of petals. The Bastard, who has never seen a naked woman, performs rather admirably well, but then (the dumb bastard) falls hard for her. The bastard is dumb because the world has not seen a beauty fall for such a not-that-nice-looking guy so quickly. Therefore, something is rotten in the state of China, and that something turns out to be The Bastard Sr.'s other son, a perfect look-alike of The Bastard, Jr., who is rotting in a prison cell for rutting a city official. The plot is to swap them! They do but he escapes.

Hsiao Yi tells the Bastard he is one	The perky breasts argument

The little beggar, who has developed feelings that include more than friendship, now begs the bastard to bed her. He refuses (not such a bastard, after all). She counters with the eternally valid argument that her breasts, although smaller than her rival's, are quite perky. He rejects the argument on the grounds of insufficient reason, and leaves to find out why his father wanted to screw him so badly. While he's doing the finding out (mostly by kicking innocent servants and thrashing a lot of furniture), little beggar gets raped and killed. This is not funny. The Bastard, upon learning about this, goes and finishes off all the furniture, and when there's nothing left, kills the rapists. Everyone else also dies. Tragedy finally strikes when the other beautiful babe slits her wrists and dies on a swing, recalling the poignant scene from Ikiru: What is the meaning of life if one can't swing?

A gratuitous shot of Lily Li...	... and another

A lackluster film that does have its moments (Lily Li is very, very pretty and very convincing as the beggar girl). The fights look quite outdated now but are still entertaining to watch despite committing the cardinal sin of having attackers wait in a circle while the hero deals with their comrades one by one. The linear plot line won't be straining any brain cells although the death of the beggar girl may jerk some tears. I think that death was a really unnecessary and painful development whose only purpose was to inspire The Bastard to grand mayhem and murder.

The needlessly sad development	The Bastard goes eco-berserk on everyone

The DVD is very nice. The picture is letterboxed at 1:2.35 and is very clean and crisp. The Mandarin dialogue is audible although the sound effects leave something to be desired. The subtitles are in refreshingly good English and are visible all of the time. There are some extras, like production notes, short bio sketches, and a photo gallery (why do people include these galleries is a mystery to me). Certainly worth the $11 I paid for it.

May 31, 2003