Finger of Doom (1971)

Long before Brigitte Lin made a name for herself playing man-eating and gender-bending vixens in New Wave classics like THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR and THE EAST IS RED there was Ivy Ling Po. In FINGER OF DOOM this once hugely popular leading lady sheds her musical and masculine roles that made her a star to play a deadly vampiress in a classical Chinese vein.

WATER MARGIN director Pao Hsueh-li definitely had Hammer Films-style vampire action in mind when he made FINGER OF DOOM. Although lacking the British horror film company’s thick atmosphere, there is enough flesh baring and eerie violence to make this movie stand out from the common wuxia titles coming out of Hong Kong and Taiwan in 1971.

What is intriguing is how Pao combines elements of I Ching with Western vampirism to create an original wuxia film. In a set up similar to Chang Cheh’s 1978 kung fu classic THE FIVE VENOMS, a cult leader in the martial world sends out her star pupil to track down and kill a rogue student who is using the clan’s kung fu for evil. Ling Po is the nameless heroine, although it’s a little difficult to tell her apart from her corrupted sister (Po Chih-hsien). Both women are suspect. They both dress in white, the traditional color of death in Chinese culture. They both sleep in coffins, age in sunlight and use darts shot from launchers on their fingertips to turn hapless male victims into undead servants.

The women belong to the Tai Yin Cult which is the literal translation of the Chinese title. “Yin” refers to both the feminine and nocturnal force in Chinese philosophy, thus making a natural reach towards the concept of a group of women who shun daylight and turn evil men into walking corpses. Yin isn’t a force of evil (despite what some husbands might think). Therefore, neither are these women. The men they poison are deserving of their fate.

When one of their kind decides to use their bizarre kung fu to dominate the martial world, the balance in the “force” is upset and good men become victims, including Juen-shung (Hung Sing-chung), the second of three sword brothers who have retired from the martial arts world and taken up an honest living. They take up their swords again when Juen-shung goes missing and his distinctive sword stroke is found on a corpse that washes up on the shore of a nearby river. This leads the elder, “Heaven Sword” Lu Tien-bao (Chin Han) and his impulsive third brother “Earth Sword” Ju Jian (Chan Feng-chen) to begin an investigation. Ling Po eventually joins forces with Tien-bao to hunt down and kill the power-hungry vampiress.

This film has a great premise, although the execution is spotty. The characterization of the three brothers caught up in a supernatural fight is genuinely compelling. Pao actually takes time to build up their relationship to one another and present them as very human heroes with a purpose outside of fighting for the sake of it.

Chin Han gives a great acting performance. What he lacks in martial arts skill, he makes up for in substance. No doubt, his off screen relationship with wife and co-star Ling Po helped to add dimension to his interaction with her on screen.

Ling is a potent force to be sure and her steely gaze, mixed with a wizened smirk rivals that of Brigitte Lin’s intensity. She also dazzles during her action sequences, again because of a convincing acting performance that overcomes limited screen fighting ability.

What hurts is the awful presentation of walking corpses and the references to Western vampires. Four guys in white face paint just doesn’t do it for me. Neither does Po Chih-hsien’s stiff performance as a supposedly deadly seductress. She has to be one of the worst villainesses I’ve seen in recent memory. Her performance during an immodest attempt to seduce Chih made me cringe.

The real problem here is the Shaw house style of filmmaking. While a few studio filmmakers like Chu Yuen managed to create some awesome atmosphere in their movies, SB productions were not generally known for their visual or atmospheric depth. This movie cries out for fog, dark lighting and more bloodletting or general spookiness. Instead we get the typical floodlight sets except for one nicely lit scene in a rundown temple, and a rather odd take on creating and managing vampires.

Victims are tagged in the back of the neck with a deadly poison dart and fed an antidote that keeps them from completely dying, yet left in state of complete subservience. So technically there isn’t anything all that supernatural about the “vampires” in this movie. The slowed aging of the women that is advanced by exposure to the sun is more intriguing and does come into play towards the end. Regardless, there never quite seems to be enough substantial supernatural fun.

The action scenes are very well directed. I want to emphasize the word directed, as opposed to choreographed. This is a director’s martial arts movie, where careful camera placement, zooming and edits dominate. Pao started out as a top tier cinematographer and his love of framing action is very apparent. A great example is in a hallway fight where he positions the camera at one end and quickly pulls back from a long zoom to capture falling or struck fighters perfectly timed to react as soon as they come into the frame. He uses a wide variety of shots including overheads and jerky handheld work to really add vibrancy to otherwise conventional scenes limited by the studio’s uniform production standards.

A sample taken from Gustav Holst’s “The Planets” is overplayed on the soundtrack during every fight sequence, but manages to fit the timing and pace of the action well.

FINGER OF DOOM has the makings of a genre classic, yet it came too early and didn’t receive the treatment it deserved. The element of living dead and vampires in period China didn’t reach maturity in Hong Kong moviemaking until Sammo Hung gave us SPOOKY ENCOUNTERS and MR. VAMPIRE. This wuxia interpretation of vampires at least exceeds the campy, kung fu lunacy of THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES in concept, if not presentation.

Pao Hsueh-li is a talented filmmaker who wasn’t afraid of trying something different, yet Chu Yuen probably could have gotten better mileage out of this particular story considering what he delivered in classics like THE MAGIC BLADE. Ling Po and Chin Han make the most of it anyway and I’d say its worth watching specifically for their performances.