The Young Avenger
(Xiao du long, 1972)

Griffin Yueh Feng

Hong Kong

82 min, color, Mandarin (English subtitles)

Review © 2007 Branislav L. Slantchev

Why is it that some of the most attractive and promising female stars never get a proper break? Like a director who knows what to do with them. Or a cinematographer who can resist the temptation to zoom wildly in and out. Or a choreographer who does not put male stand-ins whenever some mild jumping around needs to be done. Shih Szu is one of these timeless beauties from the Shaw Brothers company that starred in a bunch of martial arts films in and out of the conveyor belt that was the studio. She was promising as the impulsive Cheng Pei-pei sidekick in The Lady Hermit, but for some reason never quite made it to stardom unlike Pei-pei and unlike some of the other Shaw leading ladies like Ching Li, for example.

One little beggar girl, huge can of whoopass	Ancient Chinese kidney stones healing technique

I honestly do not understand this. Shih Szu is more attractive than either one and even if she's not as intense as Cheng Pei-pei, she is a lot classier, and while Ching Li can match her in that department, she cannot really come close to Shih Szu's fluid movements and genuinely convincing swordplay. While Cheng is best playing rough beggar girls and Ching is at her best as a maiden in distress, Shih Szu can be a real heroine, an active beauty whose impulsiveness gets her in trouble but who can mature and be equally at home as a thoughtful mistress of the house. Chu Yuan at least knew how to make her look dreamy in The Jade Tiger. Griffith Yueh Feng has her running around in a story that never amounts to much.

RSVP if you would meet me so I can kill you	I practice only genuine Ugly Kung-fu (tm), and you?

Shih Szu plays Li Pao Chu, whose dad (Tung Lin) is treacherously mortally wounded by a hunchback rascal by the name of Liu Tuo (Fan Mei Sheng). It's a long story why, but essentially this Master Li has apparently killed Liu's brother back in the glory days when he still ran a security service. Liu attempts to blackmail Master Li into teaching him some secret sword style by offering to trade his right to vengeance for the skill. When Li (predictably) refuses to reveal his secret to such a mentally and physically deformed man, Liu uses a moment's inattention and hits Li in the back. Before dying, Li sends his young daughter Pao Chu to his Fourth Brother, the Mad Monk (Chan Shen) who will look after her and teach her proper fighting technique.

Patently unfunny comic reliefs	If you think this is a girl, you are sadly mistaken

Why? So she can exact bloody vengeance upon Liu when she grows up. While this film is not going to be remembered for originality of its plot, it will forever stay in history for the upbeat Song of Vengeance which extols the virtues of "annihilating a blood debt" with genuine musical gusto. In fact, it's so catchy that the English subtitles even translate the "Ah ah" wordless singing, just to make sure we don't miss a syllable. Well, okay, maybe it won't be remembered even for that song, but you have to admit it's not every day that you can hear bloodthirsty paeans to endless vendettas chirped in very angelic voices by a demure female choir.

Shih Szu in girl-on-many-thugs action	Please don't stare at the beggar hogging your reserved table

Fast-forward a decade and Shih Szu is an accomplished fighter. Unfortunately, her training by the Mad Monk must have skipped all the instructions on ethics or morals for we find her scratching out a meager living as a hired hand. Whereas it's true that she seems to be offing mostly villains, it's also true that she's hired by no less noxious characters. As she makes her way back to her village (where she expects Liu to return as promised), she kills several dozen armed men whose only transgression is to have joined a fraternity disliked by the villagers so much that they put prices on their heads. Shunned by society, they are forced to live in a cave which is not exactly five-star accommodation despite it's Disney World-esque name of "Fairy Cave."

Did you bring me my favorite sewing kit?	No rest for the young avenging person

Not content with mercilessly hunting down these outcasts who barely make a living robbing and killing people (if they were well off, would they be living in caves?), Pao Chu also allows two cowardly villagers to collect the bodies and claim the reward. Apparently, she did it all for kicks, not even for the money! While I could excuse killing several dozen nameless men for money, I simply cannot tolerate such wanton waste of human life for something as ephemeral as one's self-esteem. Upon entering the village, Pao Chu heads straight to the restaurant where she terrorizes the hired help with unreasonable culinary demands and is clearly out to pick up a fight with the local Big Kahuna Mr Chen (Yueh Hua).

Yueh Hua is classy despite sporting unmanly fanning implements	Is this a viciously murdered bandit cluttering my nice patio?

Now, we all know that Chen is her cousin, so her behavior is truly despicable. Just when Chen is about to unleash some major whoop-ass on her with his manly Iron Fan technique, Pao Chu throws another fit, then throws a little ceramic Buddha statuette at Chen, and when the latter recognizes this as the gift he had given her ten years ago, she breaks down in tears, totally oblivious to the utter confusion this causes in this reviewer. I was forced to guess that she's troubled by the pointless "young avenger" business on account of it paying badly and her thus far utterly failing to avenge her dad despite killing so many people. Or maybe it was her hormones, who the hell knows. At any rate, she then commands her dad's faithful servant Er Hu Tzu (Wu Ming-Tsai) to help her restore her family's house so she can live there.

I screwed up. Now, can we be friends again?	We are a bunch of totally unafraid villagers

This, of course, is all just a prelude to the final apocalyptic confrontation with the evil Liu who is expected to arrive precisely on the date he had promised at the head (or, as it turns out, at the back) of an enormous army consisting of about 30 men who are nevertheless formidable opponents given their proclivity to show up unharmed 10 seconds after getting themselves hacked to death. I will never understand why these villains keep their word. Why not show up 10 hours early, take the hero by surprise, kill her, and then show up at the appointed time to claim the victory? As usual, punctuality is going to be the end of the evil scheme although Pao Chu, having changed into feminine clothing and put a flower in her hair, seems to have lost at least half of her motor skills, so it takes her teacher to blind Liu conveniently for her before she can stab him to death.

Hey, how come we lost 50 men out of 20?	How dare you resist being killed by my favorite student?

Well, almost death. The guy manages to steal the show with a death scene worth of Shakespeare. He gropes around for a while with hands and face covered in ketchup, and then crowns this inimitable performance with an astounding salto mortale, a somersault which truly turns out to be death-inducing. To visualize this grand finale, imagine the final scene in Sanjuro taking place in the middle of the village at the end of the big fight in Seven Samurai. Having saved the village from the doom she inflicted on it at the cost of about 65% of its population, Pao Chu is left contemplating the broken blade of her sword. Will she continue on the path of vengeance? (Sure, there's nothing left to avenge but that did not stop her before, now did it?) Or will she settle? If she settles, what are the Chinese rules about shacking up with one's cousin? Is it verboten even if he's Yueh Hua? We shall never know.

Oh no! Not the Heinz again!	Fat hunchback bastard broke my avenging blade

The Celestial Pictures DVD presents the film in its OAR of 2.35:1 and the transfer is anamorphically enhanced. As usual with the releases in these series, the picture is gorgeous and there's relatively little to complain about (the out of focus scenes must have been due to bad original cinematography). Only the mono Mandarin soundtrack is included, and the optional English subtitles are fine (they do transcribe the names slightly differently). The extras include talent files, trailers, photo galleries, and useless production "notes" (more like one sentence that you can read on the back cover anyway). For serious fans of Shih Szu (among whose thin ranks you can easily spot me), this is an absolutely essential purchase: there are very few films in which she has the lead role. For others, I have no idea. Probably not. But then there's no accounting for their taste: they are not Shih Szu fans!

January 8, 2007