THE DAREDEVILS [1979] and ODE TO GALLANTRY [1982]

Daredevils, Ode To Gallantry (1979, 1982)
Directed by: Chang Cheh
Written by: Chang Cheh, Louis Cha, Ni Kuang
Starring: Chiang Sheng, Lo Meng, Lu Feng, Phillip Kwok, Sun Chien, Tang Ching

THE DAREDEVILS [1979] and ODE TO GALLANTRY [1982]

AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY: NOW, from EUREKA ENTERTAINMENT

REVIEWED BY: Dr Lenera

THE DAREDEVILS AKA ZA JI WANG MING DUI, SHAOLIN DAREDEVILS, DAREDEVILS OF KUNG FU

RUNNING TIME: 100 mins

Thief-turned-soldier Han Pei-tsang murders his superior in front of many, including his son who’s also killed, but not before telling his brother Yang Ta-ying and giving him his father’s bankbook and seal. Han assumes control of the area, while Yang rejoins his friends Liang Kuo-jen, Chen Feng, Fu Quanyi, and Xin Zheng who are being trained by the local Master and Liang’s father but supplement their meagre income by acrobatic and daring street performing. However, Yang has vengeance on his mind and sets off, with tragic results. The rest finally go into action, but how do they get close to somebody who always has soldiers around him?

1978 saw Shaw Brothers have a hit with Five Deadly Venoms despite it being devoid of a name actor and the comedy which was so popular at the time. Shaws, along with director Chang Cheh, went on to make a whopping 17 more films starring at least three of the same crew and some with all five. They consisted of Philip Kwok the lizard, Sun Chien the scorpion, Lo Meng the toad, Wai Pei the snake and Lu Fang the centipede, Chiang Sheng never officially being a Venom despite often appearing with then. The group shared considerable chemistry and all members had a great deal of martial artistry, though The Daredevils focuses more on their acrobatic skills, which are certainly something to behold, even if some may find that there’s too much of it, and their character interaction, but those who think that there could have been more Kung Fu willmo st certainly be rewarded by a fantastic climactic fight which feels like it’s from a number of years ahead, straight out of a classic-era Jackie Chan movie with its speed, humour, timing and use of all the things in the warehouse locale. It’s clear that Cheh and his regular screenwriter Ni Kuang were still trying to do some different things, even if Cheh was churning them out in such quick succession by now and was more limited in terms of what he could do, despite still being the studio’s premiere filmmaker of martial arts films. Kuang’s simple revenge tail stumbles a little in the second half, as a lot of convoluted talking and plotting has to take place so our chief villains can be on their own, but it’s still all quite fun to watch.

The Chinese title repeatedly flashes and is intercut with a fuse being lit, probably inspired by the Mission Impossible TV series which may have been an influence elsewhere too. The Venoms are introduced with their names appearing, a sure sign of what major stars they were at the time. Yang is banging on the door of his friend Chen Feng, who’s had a heavy night of it and doesn’t want to get up and answer the door to someone who’s just woken him up, especially when it  could be the bailiffs throwing him out of his house. Of course it’s not the bailiffs, and Chen greets his friend with a bit of play fighting and the picking of his pocket. Yang informs him that his father has been killed, and a flashback shows us that he was struck by the greedy Han and then shot dead by some of his own soldiers in a quite sudden bit of violence. Yang’s brother gave him their father’s bank book and seal before being killed by gunfire himself, after which Han took over  control. Yang reunites with his other friends, Fu – Lu Feng getting a fun introduction of being in a bad mood, sitting in a broken chair because all the good ones were sold for food, and demanding his breakfast while the much calmer Shen Sheng takes it all in his stride – and Kwok as Liang allowed already to show off by hanging from a rope with his feet while placing bricks on other bricks. Master is impressed and hopes that his son can revive his old escort business [which I thought meant what you might think it meant until a line in the script soon after corrected me] before telling him to now practice Waist Strength, which is spinning round and round on a much lower rope, kicking a target as he goes, though once Master leaves Liang substitutes a chair for himself, leading Master really happy at how long he’s practising while he actually goes with two of the others on to the streets to perform for money.

However little money is earned and Chen has to steal a wallet for them to go out, have a good meal and come back pissed. I rather liked spending time with these guys, getting a sense of how they live, which is also pretty much how the actors lived for a while too, something that was of added interest. Of course Yang wants to avenge his father and brother, but the others consider this to be stupid because the target would hardly ever be alone and plentiful armed guards are around him, with guns – and what good would Kung Fu be against guns? Yang won’t be deterred and sets off anyway after leaving a note telling of what he’s doing and that he doesn’t want to involve his brethren, though he also leaves the afore-mentioned bank book for them to use. However, Han is not just a formidable fighter himself but has three bodyguards who show us what they can do in the obligatory “introduce the opposition” scene. After this, we immediately cut to the Venoms sparring, which maybe wasn’t the best thing to do editing-wise. The note is discovered but going to save or avenge Yang is a suicide mission with all those soldiers with guns, so they decide to perform a heist to steal some, in a fairly extended but also fairly suspenseful sequence, though you have to laugh at them killing all these soldiers who aren’t exactly enemies. I guess any person who works for Han is an enemy, even if indirectly. However, the two crates that they take don’t contain what they want, and Yang is coming up to Han’s abode right now and surely doesn’t have much of a chance, though again the editing doesn’t quite work; it would probably have been better not to split up these two sequences with Han and his men but to have them as one, and where’s the scene of the Venoms discovering Yang’s body? It’s just not there!

Three of the Venoms did the choreography along with Robert Tai. The street displaying certainly shows us some impressive feats, and I wasn’t at all bored by this material, though some others might not be of the same opinion. The Venoms sparring also contains some memorable bits; I actually especially loved Kwok and Sheng engaging in a brief fight that’s just play, with no touching, it being a reminder that most screen fights don’t have the performers touching but try to present the illusion of that. Now we join the baddies to also do some showing off. Yu Tai Ping uses a whip to knock some peaches into the air before hitting them with throwing knives, while Wong Li as Han, who’s especially good with Sie-like knives, gets to battle a person in a rubber suit which emits yellow smoke when struck. It’s really weird. When Yang shows up, Lo gets to show some good moves and a seriously cool one when he knocks the Nunchuku out of Tony Tan’s hand and catches it, then fights Li, but soon other bad guys have a go at him and he hasn’t a chance. The big brawl with Kwok, Feng and Sheng against Tai Pin, Li and Tan is an absolute joy to watch. As well as the Chan-style foreshadowing including making use of almost everything in the setting, it brilliantly incorporates most of the things that we’ve seen the Venoms do earlier in a great melding of acrobatics and martial arts. Of course we don’t mind when things evolve into a three good guy vs one bad one situation in an incredible display of great teamwork. Saying all that though, it might be Chien who gets the most powerful fighting moment, delivering a barrage of kicks to multiple amounts despite them all shooting at him. We also get several highly brutal and bloody theatrical deaths.

Most of the second half consists of the elaborate ruse that the Venoms feel that they have to carry out before they can carry out their revenge. It’s one of those situations where the people carrying out the deception often look as if they’re carrying out a deception, which would probably be obvious to those around them, and one would think that there’d be better ways of achieving what they’re trying to achieve, but Cheh keeps this section, which could have really dragged in the wrong hands, moving, coherent and hanging together, as well as giving a chance for a few performances, notably that of Li, to shine. This film does show how Cheh, who was still almost always incapable of not delivering a bad product, had become less stylised and meticulous as a director ; though considering how many films he was making I think we can forgive him, and this one makes fine use of long single takes. This one also ends very abruptly; granted, a lot of films of this kind do, with a freeze frame from the final fight just as the hero has won being the norm, but here we get the impression that there’s another minute or so to go even if the story has essentially reached its end and we’re able to admire the way that a major character’s death is allowed to be both moving and amusing – which might sound silly but you’ll see what I mean. Out of the Venoms the best-known out of the group Kwok has plenty of charisma and could be the most amazing performer too. Chien is a nice, low-key foil for him, though it’s Feng and Chiang who are the true team here, frequently joining together physically with smoothness and an incredible sense of timing.

Unusually set much later than most of these films, during the Warlord Era between 1916 and 1928 when China was divided into military regions which immediately gives it a different feel despite some of those familiar and obvious Shaws sets that we also love, with no women at all except for a few we can glimpse during a street scene, and containing a few seriously odd music cues or sourced music cues by “composer” Eddie Wang who also uses several times an exciting track also heard in Dawn Of The Dead, The Daredevils stumbles occasionally a bit but is nonetheless still a good showcase for the Kung Fu legends it features.

SPECIAL FEATURES

Mandarin mono audio

English dubbed audio

Audio commentary by East Asian film expert Frank Djeng (NY Asian Film Festival) and martial artist and filmmaker Michael Worth
Worth must now be Djeng’s most frequent commentary partner and the two really have their art down to a tee. Djeng, who first saw this film and others in Mandarin, as usual begins by mentioning box office – number one of the year was, unsurprisingly, Fearless Hyena, while The Daredevils was only number 60 – before moving on to the historical background, including an explanation as to why films set in this era are usually set in China and not Hong Kong[ the latter was a British colony. He also describes the availability of Shaw’s films when he was younger, with them never being shown on Hong Kong free TV while they were never shown in Chinatown because they’d been sold to American distributors, and reveals the dangerous job that his father had during a time of political uprising. Worth, who first saw these films dubbed into English and sees the value of such dubs, says as much, and possibly more of interest. He talks a lot about Cheh, who denied that his heroes were really gay, and tells a great story of when commotion during filming was revealed to be a fight involving Jimmy Wang Yu. Director Chen Kwan tried to break it up and was thrown violently by Wang Yu; eventually Run Run Shaw walked by and neither seemed bothered nor ever mentioned it. Worth also says that Cheh preferred to stay with Shaw where he was getting regular payment then have potentially more freedom if he moved. A really good track.

Audio commentary by action cinema experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema
Djeng tends to do the potted biographies in his shared tracks, while Venema helps Leeder out with them in their commentaries. The duo’s freshness and energy has yet to abate as they give us another fun yet informative track which typically digresses in places but never loses our interest, be it about working as an extra, 65-year old stuntman Paul Wong deciding to recreate the step fall from John Wick 4 with no pads, or the first Italian restaurant in Hong Kong which did Italian food the Hong Kong way, to share with each other rather than each person’s sole use. Leeder informs us that Walter To [the Master] made a whopping 406 movies – then Venema says that there could be 200 more – which sounds unbelievable to me but he knows far more about such things than me even though information can sometimes be vague. We learn even more about Cheh, such as Meng saying that Cheh would encourage actors to incorporate their own personalities which made acting easier for them, while Venema says that director Godfrey Ho remembers Cheh not being a nice guy and desperate to make 100 films, something that he never achieved. Leeder tells an amusing story of an extra suddenly speaking his lines with a Russian accent whom Leeder had to then dub over, while Venema recalls confusing Kwok with Sheng when he saw the film as a kid. Another really good track.

ODE TO GALLANTRY AKA XIA KE HANG [1982]

RUNNING TIME: 83 mins

Beggar Shi Po Tian aka Bastard accidently steals a token inside of a biscuit during a fight which will grant him a request from the local leader Xie Yanke. Despite opposition from others, Xie Yanke tells Po Tian that he’ll grant him his request, but Po Tian doesn’t want anything. Nonetheless Xie Yanke decides to teach him martial arts anyway. Po Tian is near unconsciousness from a training session when he’s discovered by Bei Haishi and companions, who are seeking their missing Zhangle gang chief, Shi Zhong Yu. Their resemblance is uncanny. Haishi orders the unconscious Po Tian be taken to the Zhangle to replace their missing leader, though said missing leader was an arrogant killer and even rapist, not much like Po Tian at all….

I’m not particularly well versed in Venom lore, and a lot of my reviews these days don’t contain the “background information” paragraph that I used to include a lot, primarily due to time, so without having a look at the likes of the IMDB and Wikipedia I can’t tell you how many Venom films only featured four, three etc. of these extremely talented geezers. Therefore I don’t know if Ode To Gallantry is one of a considerable number of films which not only featured only three, but one of them in what’s basically an extended cameo. And yes – there’s even less fighting than in The Daredevils which at least also contained a lot of Peking Opera performing. Should this be considered a problem? Well, this is the martial arts genre, where martial arts should surely be prominent, so the real concern is perhaps whether the film in question is good enough overall to not make the relative shortage of fighting an issue. This one is certainly different to the other one on this disc and certainly shows that Shaws, Cheh and Kuang were still trying different things within the confines of the type of film they were involved with – some might say trapped in [while he came close a few times especially with Boxer Rebellion, I’d have loved for Cheh to do a proper, full-on war movie which didn’t require much martial arts]. To make up for not much Venom it gives Philip Kwok a good chance to show his acting chops by playing two very different characters who just look alike, and Kwok certainly come through. Despite one of the people he plays being rather horrid, it’s generally a fairly light-hearted tale as its innocent, Jackie Chan-like though less intelligent hero finds himself in strange situation after strange situation while a multitude of characters get caught up in his existence, all taking place in a slightly – just slightly – more fantastical world than usual.

Against a black background we have Kwok’s two characters, both double-printed, standing beside each other, a great opener really. We immediately get into some action as a vendor is accosted by a gang of mostly sword-wielding thugs because he might have a black token. A pancake is dropped, but before a hungry “Mongrel” can get it, it’s stepped on and squished by some inconsiderate fellow, then – when a fight breaks out with the vendor having a few guys on his side too – another pancake has a killed person fall on it. I mean mate, couldn’t you have dropped dead a few feet away? One group quickly bests the other with the head of the latter crying “black iron token!” as he perishes, while Po Tian is finally able to get breakfast and runs off with it – only to find that it’s not what he seems when he bites into it. The melee inconveniently relocates right by where he encounters first Shi Quan and Guan Rou, a married couple who see what he’s got, then the rather mysterious Xie Yanke who seems to be some kind of god on earth. “You still have two years before I begin issuing rewards and punishments as I do every three years“, he says to the couple. He grabs the token which he originally had [made?] in the first place, then, when others appear seeking it, Shi Qing announces that it’s now back with Xie Yanke. Po Tian is the one who possessed it and therefore should reap the reward, so Xie Yanke grabs and steals him away from the others, but is irritated that Po Tian wants nothing from him, not even being interested in learning Xie Yanke’s special Kung Fu. Xie Yanke ignores this and announces he will teach him anyway.

It’s all good fun so far, and indeed for a bit more, watching this poor simple guy who just wants a quiet life and refuses to change his name for his teacher because his “mum would be upset”, getting swept up in all this intrigue and squabbling. He’s tricked continuously, even by Xie Hanke who makes him sit on a furnace, makes his pain go away magically, then says to him “you’re a foul smelling boy, but I cant just kill you myself but I can teach you how to generate internal energies without telling you to properly harmonise them, conflicting energies in the body will kill you then I can say I had nothing to do with your death”. Very puzzling indeed, this guy. Po Tian is found by Bei Haishi and companions, who are seeking their missing Zhangle gang chief, Shi Zhong Yu. Po Tian looks just like him, so Haishi orders Po Tian be taken to the Zhangle compound where he can recover. Shi Zhong is missing so Po Tian can masquerade as him for a while, but Shi Zhong is a nasty sort. He’s probably sexually assaulted maid Shi-jian, while the Xueshan school head Zhan’s sister has been raped by him and then committed suicide as a result, though Shi’s parents, who are Shi Quan and Guan Rou, don’t believe him,  while no amount of denial is able to convince people that Po Tian isn’t the man that he looks like. However, he fortunately acquired “supreme martial power” when punched which “sorted out” his yin and yang, so, even though he doesn’t like fighting, can do it anyway without making any effort, and can’t be hurt either. To be honest, more could have been with this particular idea, but the turns, which include Po Tian marrying Zhong Yu’s girlfriend Dingding, continue to intrigue and even grip.

I can imagine a much longer version of this film, which is based on a novel by Louis Cha, working well, with some elements being given more time to work. For example I’ve just mentioned Dingding, whose relationship via more misidentification with Po Tian feels rather truncated, and it being given more space would have made the rather cruel development in this aspect of the story have a more powerful emotional effect. The role of Shi-jian seems cut even shorter – was there originally a love story featuring Po Tian and both of these ladies? – but then there’s also Shi Quan, a third prominent female character in a film directed by someone who by now usually had little interest in women in his films. But on the other hand, the way Kuang’s screenplay moves so very fast, which might sometimes make things a bit confusing a few times if you’re not paying total and utter attention to what’s taking place on screen, but which certainly keeps us interested even when, until the end, every single fight except Xie Yanke fighting Po Tian and then some others while wielding a fan, is only given a few seconds unless you count our hero’s training by Ding’s grandfather. Fortunately we get a cracking climax where Chiang Sheng with white on his face, Ricky Cheng with green and Tony Tan with red are opponents for Kwok, Chiang Sheng and a couple others on a very familiar set indeed, a sword-wielding Kwok doing much of the work. He and Sheng have the longest battle, tumbling all over the place, things really going up a notch when these two are at it, but Kwok is on fine form throughout these last fifteen minutes, while the choreography by Kwok, Sheng and Lo Feng is smooth and incorporates some nice comedic touches.

One character whom we really want to see engage in a proper fight is Xie Yanke aka The Skyscraper Monster [honestly]. It’s quickly established that he can leap into the air Wuxia-style, and he tends to swoop in to help Po Tian out, but he doesn’t get a real brawl to take part in. But then the character and the role he play in this world is rather vague. At one point we hear that he’s killed 137 people and get the impression that he does this kind of thing a lot, though he’ll respond positively to honour and sacrifice. We wonder why he made the charm, and put it out there, though maybe it was as some kind of test for us humans? Of course the makeup people have done nothing more to make Wong Li look older then slap a grey beard and moustache on him, but we don’t mind and even like these idiosyncracies, don’t we? And this film, which contains no real tragedy which is unusual for a Cheh film especially from this later period, has a humorous feel throughout despite containing almost no slapstick; it just understands the farcical nature of what’s happening and gives us lines such as “I imagine that grandpa will stay up in the mountain for at least the next ten years to figure out how he can beat you”, while the element of sexual violence in the story isn’t dwelled upon and we don’t see any of it, it mostly being projected by Kwok who’s great as the arrogant, entitled Shi Zhong, though he’s even better, despite seeming to struggle appearing not to know martial arts, as the somewhat dim but always likeable and even rather sweet Po Tian, reminiscent actually of Chiang Sheng’s Wang Yi in The Crippled Avengers though slightly lower key.

It all plays out entirely on sets – most Shaw movies contain some exterior footage – which are hardly convincing but which have their own aesthetic appeal and reinforce the feel of a filmed play, though Cheh still sometimes likes to have a zoom before we change scene. This time the “score”, again credited to Eddie Wang, is mostly electronic and isn’t actually present that much, though this seems to suit the movie, which has its odd elements but is fundamentally an old-fashioned mistaken identity comedy-drama with a greater assortment of interesting characters than we’d have probably accepted.

SPECIAL FEATURES

Mandarin mono audio

Audio commentary by East Asian film expert Frank Djeng (NY Asian Film Festival) and martial artist and filmmaker Michael Worth
This track suddenly stop around half way through, and I initially wondered if there was a problem with my screener disc, but after ten minutes the commentary returns. It’s a bit odd, and I guess that there might have been an issue, but Djeng and Worth provide another fine track nonetheless. Djeng opens by telling us that this was number 97 at the Hong Kong box office and didn’t even last a full week in cinemas, before spending much of the time giving us some information on the book, which was adapted another five times, and how the film differs; he says it’s a good condensing of it, but changes were made including the cutting – probably for budgetary reasons – of a length tournament sequence and all the action added at the end, plus things not taking place over a long period of time. Meanwhile Worth, the one Djeng collaborator wbo says almost as much as Djeng, asks something that I ought to have picked up but didn’t – why does nob0dy wonder if Po Tian and Shi Zhong are brothers, and tells us more about Cheh, who for ages wanted to make a film about Wing Chun, and was more interested in characters rather than storyline.

Audio commentary by action cinema experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema
Leeder and Venema do their usual thing, providing lighthearted banter and a lot of information along with it. Leeder points out both Jamie Luk [who dislikes being primarily known for Robotrix] and one of Cheh’s hands doing calligraphy, tells us that the Venoms were more popular internationally than in Hong Kong, and digresses into talking about trying to coax actresses back onto the silver screen, while Venema informs us that Cheh started off as a film critic, that the heroes often die in Cheh movies though lighter offerings such as this one just have them be willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good even though they don’t end up doing so, and that Cheh was descended from a warlord. Both wonder about things such as why he nearly never get female teachers with male students in these films. Perhaps the only flaw in these tracks is that the two sometimes chuckle so much that we don’t always understand what they’re staying.

GENERAL SPECIAL FEATURES

Limited Edition [2000 copies]

Limited edition O-Card slipcase featuring new artwork by Chris Malbon [2000 copies]

1080p HD presentations on Blu-ray from masters supplied by Celestial Pictures
Both films generally look fine, though Daredevils was filmed in an anamorphic medium lens which sometimes has distortion around the edges including people looking thin on the side and a fuzziness when the camera pans. A few shots are noticeably grainier than the majority, Daredevils having slightly more of these, though by contrast the colours pop out slightly less here than on Ode To Gallantry. Detail is tremendous throughout, enhancing the artificial quality of the sets – not to mention some very obvious breakaway glass – which of course doesn’t hamper enjoyment of the films at all. Generally very good with some minor source material flaws.

Optional English subtitles, newly translated for this release

Deadly Venoms – new interview with Hong Kong cinema scholar Wayne Wong on the Venom Mob [18 mins]
Wong seems on his way to becoming a regular on these releases and he’s always welcome. His main focus here is putting the Venoms in context, the cycle comprising a rather important period in the development of the martial arts genre, the attempting to fill the void left by Bruce Lee, greater appreciation overseas – particularly when at one point Hong Kong wasn’t making such films- , and each often playing similar characters being three things which relate to this. Wong also looks briefly at each film, made by a director who was already well known for putting stars together.

A limited edition collector’s booklet featuring new writing by writer and critic James Oliver [2000 copies]

Maybe these two rather different films don’t represent the peak of Venom artistry and genius in the opinion of some, but I had a really good time with both, and they both get the great Eureka treatment. Recommended!