Wen Suchen

Fellows in black invade a temple. A monk appears and the men call him out as a criminal and they fight. The opening fight is a bloody brawl. They do not hold back on the blood and amputations. The men are lead deeper into the monastery and picked off or fall into traps one at a time. Only one escapes. He lives long enough to tell Wen Suchen about the dirty deeds and then dies. The monks have imprisoned ladies to serve them. A student arrives to study there and they allow him in. It is Wen Suchen. Shaw Brothers cinematographers used a camera technique to darken the image to give the appearance of night during daylight. This technique always looked fake to me and only served to make the video hard to see. True I have only seen these moives on wide screen television so maybe it looked acceptable in theatres but I doubt it. The fights are standard fare for 1966, a time when actors were actors and only stunt men had any martial arts skills. That means mostly brawling sword fights where the actor raises his sword, the stunt men hit it, he waves his sword and stunt men fly off in every direction, and there is a cut every two or three moves. The hero putting on a face mask also is effective. This movie has more of the look of a Chinese opera rather than a martial arts movie from the golden age of 1967 to 1984. (1966<1967, duh!) For that fan I can only recommend it because it is Shaw Brothers. I have watched all these movies in chronological order and it was quite a learning experience to see the development in filming, fighting, and acting. My copy is the Celestial release DVD and the video and subtitles are excellent.