The Ghost Hill (1971)

It’s deliciously campy and bloody wuxia action from Taiwan as four sword heroes come together to lead an army of fighting beggars in an assault on the trap-filled mountain lair of the notorious jiang hu villain King Gold (Sit Hon), master of iron skin and the “Gold Light Fire Flow” kung fu. Fronted by the newly crowned King of Swords, known as Shadow Tsai (Tien Peng), and fierce fighting mistress Swallow (Polly Shang-kwan), the sword heroes struggle to reclaim the stolen martial world’s most powerful weapon, the Purple Light Magic Sword, and defeat the mad King Gold and his vicious minions.

THE GHOST HILL has nothing to do with ghosts apart from a spoken reference to them but it does have a lot to do with the most outrageous brand of wuxia entertainment, the likes of which can be found in films like INVINCIBLE SUPER CHAN, ZU: WARRIORS FROM THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN and THE BEHEADED 1000. The latter film, starring Jimmy Wang Yu and Joey Wang, also happens to be directed by GHOST HILL’s writer-director Ting Shan-hsi.

Ting began as a writer for Shaw Brothers and penned the 1967 wuxia film KING CAT before relocating to Taiwan where he became a relatively prolific writer and director on a variety of films, notably Wang Yu’s basher extravaganza FURIOUS SLAUGHTER and its sequel MA SU CHEN. With THE GHOST HILL, Ting trades in the highbrow swordplay action that defined Union Film’s initial output, including King Hu’s DRAGON INN, for the increasingly violent and colorful fighting antics that filmmakers Chang Cheh and Chor Yuen were putting together at then leading Chinese film studio Shaw Brothers. He also provides a nod to the well established fantasy wuxia genre dating back to the silent film era in Shanghai with many familiar conventions.

The film starts out routinely enough with two swordsmen, “Black Dragon” Jun Fung (Tong Wai) and Shadow Tsai, dueling over who will become the Sword King and inherit the most powerful sword, a common goal among knights of the jiang hu, or martial underworld. Shadow Tsai is crowned the victor but shortly thereafter has his prize stolen by minions working for King Gold. Tsai is a skilled swordsman but not too bright. In addition to losing the sword and falsely accusing his rival of stealing it, Tsai is easily seduced by King Gold’s adopted daughter and if not for the intervention of Jun Fung and his sword sister Swallow, the mind-controlled Tsai would have been doomed.

Although oddly paced at times with a few short yet overlong non-action scenes, the film rolls along at a quick pace as Tsai and Jun Fung plan their assault on Hell’s Castle, King Gold’s hideout atop Gold Mountain. Meanwhile, we get a very common genre plot tossed in when King Gold’s daughter discovers that he actually murdered her real parents and raised her as his own. Ting goes a step further by revealing that King Gold intends to force her to marry him, that dirty old man!

Having lost the duel at the beginning of the film and now sensing that Swallow, the woman he secretly loves is falling for his rival, Jun Fung tries to prove himself by assassinating King Gold by himself. After traveling to Gold Mountain he’s captured by something called the “Sky Net,” which we never get to see. It’s presumably some sort of magical or super-strong netting, either that or a Terminator from the future.

While Jun Fung is literally chilling in a winterized jail, complete with frost-covered guards, Tsai pays a visit to King Gold in a cavernous, Technicolor throne room filled with poison-emitting jungle plants. Unable to endure the poisonous air, Tsai vows to return and reach King Gold the hard way, through a gauntlet of booby-trapped corridors and theme rooms bursting with baddies and more traps. From here, Tsai and Swallow gather their friends and head into certain peril with a gang of pole-wielding beggars in tow who throw in their support.

This is where the film goes beyond the typical B-grade wuxia actioner and becomes something akin to Joseph Kuo’s entertaining kung fu classic THE 18 BRONZEMEN. That film saw several Shaolin monks fighting their way through a gauntlet of spiked walls, hidden projectiles and near-super powered fighters with a vast array of weaponry. I once thought that Kuo’s film was the ultimate example of this type of action. That was until I discovered THE GHOST HILL. For 25 minutes, Ting packs in an incredible variety of challenges for the heroes to overcome, all backed by the production muscle of Union Films, which was relatively high by Taiwanese standards at the time. The list of threats includes wall spikes, ceiling spikes, formation fighters, fire arrows, explosives, flares, crushing corridors, snake pits, freeze rays, volcanic geysers of fire, spinning wheels with blades, giant fire-breathing statues, and a cauldron of boiling oil that King Gold bathes in yet instantly renders anyone else into a deep-fried fritter.

As wuxia villains go, King Gold is pimped out. He’s got the pad ladies would love if they were into walk-in freezers, boiling oil baths and a tanning room set to charbroil. He’s got shiny gold pants and matching boots that would have been the envy of MC Hammer in 1990. Other accruements include a necklace with beads in the shape of golf ball-size skulls, golden armor and a harpoon gun replacing his severed left hand for impaling luckless intruders, or undoubtedly as a way to retrieve a sandwich without getting up.

As with most of her early Union Films roles, martial arts starlet Polly Shang-kwan gets tops billing yet is just a member of a small ensemble cast of staple genre stars. She has a couple fight scenes that are unremarkable, although she looks good regardless.

Action is choreographed by the rather obscure Chen Shih-wei. He previously had a role in DRAGON INN and went on to choreograph action for a handful of other Taiwanese martial arts films throughout the 1970s including a couple of Shang-kwan’s final films, IMMORTAL WARRIORS and LITTLE HERO.

The fighting action is dated and looks particularly bad in the first half of the film where some of the players seriously under perform during group fights. A lot of the fighters’ skills are implied rather than shown, which is typical for wuxia films. In one of the more interesting examples, Tien Peng’s character runs his hand over a watermelon and pulls all of the seeds out through the skin with his internal energy. This takes place during a sequence that puts a unique spin on the usual teahouse standoff by having fighters meet outside in front of a watermelon vendor.

A lot of camera and quick-cut editing tricks are used later on to enhance the fighting. During one particular fight scene midway through that pits Shang-kwan against a female opponent, severe undercranking takes place that speeds the two characters’ action up to comical levels. (It’s possible that the print I watched for this review from Hoker Records had damaged frames removed during this sequence which could have also caused the action to speed up even more unnaturally than usual.)

If the pacing and tone of martial arts movies were sized up on a volume dial, THE GHOST HILL would be an 11 with the knob broken off. It’s relentlessly absurd and only gets more so as the film progresses. While there is nothing that is original or especially well done, the film succeeds on a base level by unreservedly diving head first into scenes involving esoteric weaponry, all manner of bodily destruction – including one particularly amusing Sam Raimi-style beheading – and production design that looks like feral chimpanzees overran the set and vomited glitter, cherry syrup and rainbows in every direction.

Related Topics: fantasy, Polly Shang-kwan, swordplay, The Ghost Hill (1971), Wuxia