Rider of Revenge (1971)

Kung Fu starlet Polly Shang-kwan heads this highly entertaining swordplay actioner from Taiwan’s Union Film Co. as a swordswoman who teams up with two chivalrous knights (Tien Peng and Chiang Pin) to track down the martial world’s most notorious criminal (Miao Tien). The film’s well-paced and engaging story, which contains character-based drama and intrigue, is matched with colorful genre characters and quality wuxia action ranging from frenzied sword and whip fighting to deadly, esoteric use of spring-loaded abacuses and iron fans. While sharing the same quality production values of Union Film’s artful premiere release, DRAGON INN, RIDER OF REVENGE is a true action wuxia film in the tradition of Chang Cheh’s GOLDEN SWALLOW and future Shaw Brothers hits THE MAGIC BLADE and SECRET SERVICE OF THE IMPERIAL COURT.

RIDER OF REVENGE has the strong feel of a classic Chang Cheh film despite having a female lead. Her two male co-stars are fashioned after Chang’s favorite leads of the era. Tien Peng portrays a noble swordsman in the mold of Ti Lung and Chiang Pin is a roguish whip and dagger-wielding hero similar to David Chiang’s frequently rebellious screen persona. All that’s missing is the part where the heroes die standing up with a few strips of cloth tied around a stomach wound to hold their innards in while covered head to toe in their own cherry-red blood. However, this film packs its own emotionally intense action finale.

The similarities are more than mere coincidence. The film is written and directed by Hsiung Ting-wu, a former assistant and second unit director at Shaw Brothers who worked under Chang Cheh on some of the legendary action filmmaker’s early wuxia classics including THE MAGNIFICENT TRIO, THE ASSASSIN and GOLDEN SWALLOW. Unfortunately, Hsiung only directed one other movie of his own, TOUGH DUEL for Taiwan’s United Film Production Co. As such, I have to attribute much of the success of this film to the producers at Union Film Co. who once again were able to generate a consistently high-grade wuxia film comparable to the best that Shaw Brothers had to offer at the time.

The story is free of the overused revenge theme and instead is driven by another plot staple of the martial arts genre, a grab for hidden treasure. Yet this is only the beginning of a more complex story ultimately driven by the differing goals of all the principle characters. Hsiung’s story is one of the better-rounded examples of storytelling within the wuxia genre at this time and it’s worth detailing.

Ting Fu (Miao Tien) the most dangerous murderer in the jiang hu, or martial underworld, has been caught and sentenced to die. On the day of his execution he is rescued by three mean-looking Mongolish fighters, one of whom wields a bear paw with razor-sharp claws as a weapon. These men are working for Gentry Kao (Man Chung-san), a crafty and effeminate villain with an iron fan containing a switchblade who runs a criminal operation out of a seemingly innocuous teahouse. Kao is after a large sum of money that Ting Fu has amassed through years of marauding and has stashed away in a hidden location.

While Ting Fu is being taken to Gentry Kao for interrogation, Constable Liu (Kao Ming) mounts a search for the escaped criminal. He mistakes two sword heroes for accomplices and after the two men escape capture Liu’s daughter, Ling-hua (Shang-kwan), goes after them.

Ling-hua catches up with one of the two heroes, mischievous swordsman Wei (Chiang Pin), and joins forces with him after discovering that he intends to use Ting’s hidden treasure to ease the suffering of impoverished villagers.

Ting’s trail eventually leads all three heroes to Kao’s inn. Despite the efforts of a crafty innkeeper who wields an abacus that shoots poisoned darts, the heroes expose Kao’s criminal operation and a major battle ensues whereby Ting Fu is freed, only to be taken into custody by Wei who unceremoniously ditches Ling-hua.

This time, Ling-hua teams with sword hero Lung (Tien Peng) who was wounded in the skirmish and yet remains determined in his mission to bring Ting Fu back to see his heart-broken, elderly mother once more.

When Ting finally gets the upper hand and takes Wei hostage, Ling-hua convinces her father to remove the villain’s shackles in order to spare the sword hero’s life. Ting Fu escapes vowing revenge on all persons present and eventually faces his villainous rival Gentry Kao in a standoff.

Once free, it is feared that Ting will be unstoppable so the three heroes hatch a plan to catch Ting Fu using his only known weakness, his mother. An unexpected surprise awaits that forces the heroes to take on an enraged, unchained madman with unsurpassed martial arts ability in a final, deadly showdown.

Competent martial arts action is directed by Pan Yao-kun, who previously oversaw sword action in several Union Film Co. productions including Polly Shang-kwan starrers THE SWORDSMAN OF ALL SWORDMEN and THE GRAND PASSION. He does not rely on undercranking or trick editing nearly as much as some of his contemporaries so the action at times appears slower. It’s significantly slower than the rapid screen fighting audiences have subsequently become accustomed to, first in the late 1970s thanks to very well-trained and rehearsed sequences from the likes of Lau Kar-leung and Sammo Hung, and more recently by trends in post-production editing that can turn any action sequence into a flurry of high-speed carnage.

The action in RIDER OF REVENGE is definitely best appreciated by fans of old school wuxia fighting where solid swashbuckling with semi-grounded acrobatics mix with modest displays of unusual weapons handling and emphasis on creative camera placement and arrangements of fighters. Pan uses some formation fighting with overhead shots, yet is just as capable of handling more natural and rugged skirmishes, such as when Polly Shang-kwan gets cornered by a mob of attackers and resorts to throwing baskets haphazardly to regain some tactical advantage.

I would argue that this is the first of Polly Shang-kwan’s fighting performances that is really worth taking notice of. She is still sharing equal screen time with her male co-stars but her screen fighting is more aggressive and technically proficient than previously seen. Yet as much as I enjoy her role, there is no doubt that this movie belongs to the villains, chiefly the steely-faced Miao Tien as the tortured criminal sentenced to die and his rival, as played by Dean Shek look-alike Man Chung-shan.

Great heroes need great villains and this is something that Hsiung Ting-wu and his producers clearly understood. Most of the villains in this movie are representative of conventional genre heavies used even to this day. For KUNG FU HUSTLE, Stephen Chow lampooned the all-powerful kung fu supervillain turned loose with his Beast character, played by Bruce Leung. Jackie Chan drew on a similar convention for his kung fu classic THE YOUNG MASTER in which Korean superkicker Whang Ing-sik portrays a seemingly unstoppable escaped kung fu villain Chan must contend with.

RIDER OF REVENGE is a great swordplay film but is not perfect. Although well written and shot, it isn’t particularly original. The end fight could have been more substantial with a longer, more impressive sequence. Polly Shang-kwan gives a great fighting performance but doesn’t have enough screen time for being top-billed. The fake outdoor set used for this scene looks particularly unreal at times. A few supporting characters are distractingly goofy. Ho You-min, a bald-headed Taiwanese actor known for playing odd supporting characters, looks awful with his fake scarred left eye and heart-shaped chest hair. That character could have been dropped and would not have been missed at all. The soundtrack features interesting orchestral music I’m almost certain was lifted or at least copied from another soundtrack, possibly an American or Italian Western. Some of the music sounds eerily close to Jerry Goldsmith’s score for PATTON which was released the previous year. All these gripes aside, I found this film to be a lot of fun. I would go so far as to call it one of my new personal favorites from the wuxia films released in Taiwan and Hong Kong in the late 1960s and early ’70s.

Related Topics: Chiang Pin, Hsiung Ting-wu, jiang hu, Miao Tien, Pan Yao-kun, Polly Shang-kwan, Rider of Revenge (1971), swordplay, Tien Peng, Union Film Co., Wuxia