If you are anything like me, your first exposure to the Shaw Brothers brand of cinema was during the opening credits of Kill Bill: Volume 1. What is this “Shawscope” stuff? Many of us here on the other side of the world had no idea. As time marched on, streaming services, all-region media players and online stores gave us access to a wider variety of cinematic experiences. Now we have entire box sets devoted to the Cannon Films of Hong Kong. Just like the Go-Go Boys of the 1980s were churning out cheap entertainment with a signature stamp, the Shaw Brothers’ filmography has a look and feel to it that’s unmistakable. Have you ever caught a martial arts flick on late night television that was filled to the brim with themes of revenge, overstuffed with cinematography that pulsates with zooms, quick cuts to the eyes, and sword fights that sound like Wile E. Coyote face-planting into a giant Acme frying pan on repeat? Then you may have seen a Shaw Brothers movie without even knowing it.
88 Films’ newest release of these buried gems is 1971’s Lady with a Sword, directed by Pao-Shu Kai (one of the few female directors of this genre at the time), from a screenplay by Kuang Ni. It begins with a sequence so bombastically over the top and busting at the seams with cheesy acting that it sparked a lot of unintended laughter: Scenery chewing bandits murder a mother and beat the ever-loving snot out of her son, seemingly for fun. It plays out like we stepped into a movie at its halfway point, and it plays so hammy that the film almost commits seppuku out of the starting gate with little more than good cinematography by Hsin Chang to show for it. The son manages to escape alive and promptly introduces us to the eponymous Lady with a Sword, whose name is Feng Fei Fei, played with reasonably good intensity by Lily Ho.
From here, the movie finds its footing and slowly begins to draw in its audience. The web of connections weaved between the heroes and villains, unknown to us during that awful opening scene, start to unfold in an organic way that becomes the movie’s greatest strength. Fei Fei vows vengeance for her sister’s murder, confronting an entire brothel full of bandits and fighters with little more than a sword and pure grit. It’s a mesmerizing sequence of stellar choreography, made all the more interesting by an unexpected conclusion that eventually leads to the movie’s pivotal plot revelation. Although there’s a certain Superman-Clark Kent (or perhaps Mulan) quality to the aftermath, where the bandits somehow don’t realize that the warrior who faced them all down is not, in fact, a “lad.”
By the one hour mark, Lady with a Sword finds the right tone, piling on organic complications to Fei Fei’s quest for revenge. It's quite enthralling. Then the script promptly proceeds to screw it all up. Chin Lien Pai (Seok-hoon Nam), the head bandit who gleefully killed Fei Fei’s sister, seeks asylum with his parents after his second showdown with Fei Fei, and this is when we meet his mother, Madam Chin: A character so one-dimensionally abhorrent that she destroys the film's momentum and singlehandedly undermines any impact the conclusion could've had. Her refusal to allow her son to experience the consequences of his bloodlust leaves one gobsmacked, especially when she makes excuses for him raping and murdering an innocent woman who was well regarded by her family. Even after witnessing him brutally murdering a young child, and her own husband calls their offspring a “beast” in utter disappointment, she refuses to behave like a human being. By the time her flatline of an arc concludes in a manner so dissatisfying I literally threw my arms up in disbelief, Lady with a Sword had squandered all of its narrative promise. Instead of ending with a bang, it ends with a wet fart.
On the flip side, this Shaw Brothers film is presented beautifully, with a gorgeous transfer full of luscious colors and pleasing grain levels, accompanied by a DTS 2.0 mono Mandarin audio track. From a pure presentation standpoint, it’s a worthy addition to 88’s Asia collection, and includes a double-sided fold out poster for those of you who love to iron posters before you slap them on your wall. If only it accompanied a better movie that capitalized on such a deep array of promises made. The bottom line is that Lady with a Sword is a delightfully constructed sandwich full of good stuff… held in place by two pieces of moldy bread that make the whole thing stink. Eat if you’re hungry. It won’t make you sick, but you may wanna spit some of it out.
--Blake O. Kleiner