LOVE ETERNE beauty Betty Loh Ti makes one of her final screen appearances starring in director Yuen Chau-fung’s female-driven take on the ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN. Loh is a blinded swordswoman caught between a ruthlessly ambitious father she has only just met and her former clan that still needs her help. This is a solid ’60s-era swordplay actioner that combines the blood-soaked swordplay violence of a Chang Cheh movie with old-fashioned, yet lively action choreography and a mostly satisfying tale filled with high-brow romance and constant peril.
“If one is not blind at heart, what does it matter to be blind in sight? Sword fighting is an art, subtle and mystic. Why be bothered by blindness?”
Cantonese genre actor Sek Kin, who notably played the lead villain throughout the long-running WONG FEI HONG film series and later as Mr. Han in ENTER THE DRAGON, plays yet another villain named Kuan Han Pin. Desperate to rule the martial world, Kuan steals the powerful Golden Sword and Magic Mirror from rival clansmen residing at the Supreme Gate. He seriously wounds the clan’s master in the process and leading pupil Sun Yuk Bin (Loh Ti) is sent to the mountainous home of the Southern Sky King (Kok Lee-yan) to ask for a pill that will cure him.
After a troublesome misunderstanding with several students, Bin receives the pill she needs from the Sky King’s senior student Chee Chun Nam (Zhang Yang) but returns too late to save her master. What’s worse, it is revealed that she is actually the killer’s daughter and therefore can no longer reside at Supreme Gate as a clan rule. Even defending the clan from a challenge by former clansman Sun Tai Yong (Kelly Lai Chen) is not enough to persuade them to let her stay.
Bin becomes an unarmed outcast but not for long. Nam, who has trailed her all the way to the Supreme Gate, has fallen in love with the distraught swordswoman and offers her a golden flute sword for protection. She next is warily convinced to join Yong in meeting her real father who locks her away with the stolen clan items when she refuses to join him. Bin escapes and attempts to return the weapons to her clan but Yong intercepts them. Furious at his daughter’s actions, Kuan goes on the warpath. He strikes Bin with his deadly Icy Press attack and stalks off in search of Yong and the stolen weapons.
From here the story takes on a more interesting dramatic turn as Bin recovers with the aid of the Sky King but is left blinded by the attack and unwilling to accept aid from Nam. Through various dramatic turns, Nam refuses to give up and finally tricks her into accepting his care. He eventually trains her to adapt her swordsmanship to fighting blind. This predictably comes in handy when she returns to the Supreme Gate to once again aid her former clan folk by dueling the new master of the Magic Mirror, a weapon designed to blind its victims with bright light so that the attacker can use the dagger-sized Golden Sword to break though their defenses.
DUEL AT THE SUPREME GATE is a fairly routine wuxia film appearing towards the end of a cycle of female-starring swordplay films. It very obviously reworks Chang’s blockbuster hit, ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN, to put a woman into the role Jimmy Wang Yu played. The most telling sign is how Loh’s blindness is substituted for Wang’s missing arm and how that disability becomes an asset for her just as Wang’s disability became an asset for him. These are just the most obvious similarities among many.
Loh is better known for her non-action acting performances than for the few swordswomen roles she had at the end of her career. As such, her acting in this film is strong but her action scenes are almost completely dominated by a combination of stylish poses and trick editing. Some of the film’s action editing and camera work is awful, particularly a couple scenes where very crude undercranking is used to speed up the fighting.
Yuen Chau-fung, who earlier co-directed Shaw Brothers’ THE BUTTERFLY CHALICE with Chang Cheh, applies adequate yet decidedly dated direction to the film which is not in keeping with the emerging style of Chang or other leading wuxia filmmaker King Hu. This is most apparent during the action scenes and less noticeable elsewhere where plot takes center stage. The exception is in the high level of graphic violence, by ’60s standards. An arm is severed, blood erupts from belly wounds, and bodies are slashed and stabbed in various ways.
Golden Eagle Film’s production standards are quite good with picturesque outdoor shots matched nicely with well-lit sets that are sometimes lacking in realistic detail yet remain interesting to look at. Viewers may notice the canned soundtrack borrows recognizable samples from one of the James Bond films. However, if you didn’t know the source of the music it would probably fit right in.
by Mark Pollard- s-o-m
