MartinHafer This film begins with one of the dumber decisions in martial arts history. A man's wife has been unfaithful and has plotted to kill her husband. However, the apparently stupid husband learns about this and confronts her. What would a sane person do in his case? Well, not what he does! He tells her she must drink poison and then leaves her with free run of the household since she pinky sword to killer herself. Not surprisingly, she then tries to poison him and her lover's men soon attack!! However, the dumb guy manages to escape thanks to a faithful servant. As I said, the man is pretty dumb, giving the wicked lady poison and assuming she'll do the honorable thing and off herself! What we have here is a very dumb guy--but also a very interesting black widow of a woman! Years have passed. The dumb man has raised a pretty young daughter, Xiaoyan. However, because he is dumb, he tells the girl her mother is dead. Sticking by his goal of staying dumb, even when she meets her mother (who now runs a brothel), he doesn't tell her that his mother is a madame nor that she is murderous. Instead, the mother plies her daughter with compliments and gifts--all in an attempt to turn her own daughter into a prostitute. At any point, Dad could have said something like 'she is an evil skank who tried to murder me'--but he doesn't. Instead, he yells at Xiaoyin and drives her towards her evil mother by his confusing behavior. Only after Xiaoyin is drugged and nearly raped does she realize that Mom MIGHT not be all that nice and she escapes her evil clutches and returns to Dad.Eventually, the dumb guy tells his daughter the truth and she realizes she has one and only one alternative--seek out all the men who destroyed her father's life 20 years earlier. And, considering that she and her boyfriend are amazing with the sword, you wonder why he didn't tell her sooner. Oh, yeah...he was too dumb to do that. And so Xiaoyin and her beau go on an amazing killing spree--complete with lots of wire-fu, fake blood and decent action sequences. However, no matter how good the fighting is, the plot itself is a bit thin, some of the special effects are really bad* and this cannot be ranked among the better martial arts films from the Shaw Brothers Studio--especially since most of the action doesn't even occur until the second half of the film. Even the big twist near the end isn't enough to save this one. On the plus side, at least you get to see Dad chuck some chopsticks into people's faces. On balance, it's among the lesser offerings from this studio and you can certainly do a lot better. Still, if you are a die-hard martial arts film fanatic, it's worth a look.Bad effects include a very fake beheading, a fire scene where the background was clearly rear projected onto a screen (complete with ripply seams to let the audience know it was all very fake) and some crappy miniature sets. By the way, one important lesson I did learn from this film: too much kung fu can make you impotent!!

Brian Camp VENGEANCE IS A GOLDEN BLADE (1969) is that rare Shaw Bros. swordplay movie that is centered around a father-daughter relationship. The girl has grown up in the mountains with her father, a crippled hero who has spent the last 17 years perfecting a blade that will successfully counter the Golden Blade that had been stolen from him in an ambush by the Vicious Brothers of Long, with whom his wife has taken up and who's now running a brothel. The father and daughter live with an herbalist and his grandson, the likely future mate for the girl, Xiaoyan. When Xiaoyan is full grown she is reunited, quite by chance, with the mother she hasn't seen since she was a toddler. During a visit with her mother at the brothel, Xiaoyan is enticed by the nice clothing, jewelry and fine things her mother promises her. Eventually she has to make a choice between the two parents.It's a compelling story made more so by three fine actors in the lead roles. Chin Ping, who did so well in the "Temple of the Red Lotus" trilogy (also reviewed on this site), plays Xiaoyan with the right mix of simplicity, vulnerability, girlishness, martial arts expertise, and curiosity about the larger world. Chin Ping wasn't the greatest fighting femme at Shaw at the time (that would be Cheng Pei Pei), but she knows how to play the emotional scenes with her parents very well. The actor who plays the father, Tang Ching, was a really strong actor in his Shaw films and here plays a seriously injured, humiliated man who has not given up, who lives for his daughter but has difficulty releasing his hold on her and letting her out into the cruel world. Kao Pao Shu plays the mother and is the most emotionally in control. When she's reunited with her daughter and wants her back, it's hard to tell whether it's out of a lingering maternal love, a desire to use her to make money at the brothel (she does say to her, "We can make a lot of money together"), or simply to save the girl the grief of witnessing the death of her father should the Vicious Brothers finally track him down. It actually makes for a better performance and more interesting character when we don't know for sure what's going on in her head.The martial arts take a back seat to the dramatics, which is okay for a film like this where the relationships are so interesting. There are plenty of fight scenes but they're not the best we've seen from Shaw Bros. Yueh Hua, as the herbalist's grandson, has a few fight scenes but is generally a subsidiary character throughout.My only major quibble with the film is the big buildup given the new sword that the father is making and the long, frustrating wait we have to endure for it to finally be introduced into the action and then only at the very end. For this to have been a martial arts classic we needed a little more. As it stands, it's a good drama with action scenes and is highly recommended.

Chung Mo Meng Hua Ho is known for some of the more outrageous Shaw films, Black Magic, The Flying Guillotine, Oily Maniac, Mighty Peking Man and a slew of extreme horror films. Here he doing a standard wuxia film.The leader of a security firm in ancient China, Li Zhishan, returns home to his wife and young daughter after a year away on a job. During that time his wife has been fooling around with the leader of the rival security firm, the Vicious Long Brothers, who have more crime than security on their agenda. The leader finds himself ambushed by his rivals but he suddenly pulls out the amazing Golden Dragon Blade which shatters all other swords. The evil firm retreats but Li Zhishan's wife blinds him with poison and her lover returns with his cronies. Li loses the Golden Blade and is gravely wounded. He barely escapes with his daughter and a servant. On the run from the Long Brothers, Li is rescued by a kindly herbalist and his young grandson. Unfortunately the Long gang is relentless and only when the elderly herbalist reveals his incredible swordmanship are the group able to escape again. They hide in the mountains. Twenty years pass and Li's daughter has grown into an excellent twenty something sword fighter. So has the herbalist's son. All seems idyllic until the day the daughter want to go to town for the first time. Unfortunately Li grants permission and sure enough his ex-wife and the Long brothers are still up to no good there. And to make it complicated Li has told his daughter that her mother died. And so it goes.I have never been a fan of director Meng Hua Ho's work. He is good at finding outrageous stories (examples stated earlier) but his directorial skill is haphazard at best. Lots of bad editing and clumsy set-ups. The music in this film is non-stop and just hokey. It turns acceptable scenes into bad scenes. There are some odd plot devices. When Li reveals his sword, the bad guys know it's name immediately but seem to not know that the sword will smash their weapons. Later when a newly made super blade is revealed for the first time, everyone seems to know it's name as well! The melodrama was bad enough that I contemplated stopping the film but the pacing is snappy enough that I watched all the way through. The fight scenes are pure stage and very unbelievable. Ten bad guys all swing their swords at the same spot and a good guy stops all ten blades at once with his sword and then flings all the bad guys aside, that sort of fighting. It's fun but crude compared to what was to come from the Shaw company in a few years. There is a scene with more miniature effects then I've ever seen in Shaw film.This was the sort of old fashioned sword film that Bruce Lee blew away a few years later with his new style of martial art movie fighting. You might like it but I can't really recommend it.

jh_reaper This film is perfect for fans of martial arts swordplay type movies like Death Duel and One Armed Swordsman. The plot isn't too deep as you might expect, but the film is beautiful, well choreographed in the action area, and nicely acted. I must give credit to the director, the film looks and feels nicely and I was very into it - I can't believe I never heard of this film and just happened to come across it looking for another gem by searching for Vengeance. If you are a fan of martial art's cinema and haven't seen this one - don't feel bad, apparently many people haven't, but go out right now and order it, you won't be disappointed at all. I don't usually write reviews, but when a movie is a hidden gem, I feel the need to help spread the word and bring it to a wider audience. This ones worth checking out, and looking at it from a martial arts cinema stand point I rate it a 9/10.