Eureka Entertainment: Exact Revenge (1971 - 1972) - Reviewed

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Images courtesy of Eureka Entertainment

While Arrow Video, Shout Factory and 88 Films continue to pilfer and put out the near entirety of the Shaw Brothers ShawScope film catalog on blu-ray disc and/or 4K UHD, Eureka Entertainment has been quietly yet steadily following suit with their own subset of Hong Kong martial arts revenge actioners.  Recently, rather than doing comprehensive boxed sets with numerous titles in one like their release of Horrible History quartet of Shaw titles by director Chang Cheh, Eureka has been pairing up films from within the same company sharing kindred themes that are ultimately by different directors.  With only a year dividing them apart from 1971 to 72, Eureka’s new Exact Revenge two-film set pairs up Teddy Yip’s The Eunuch and Jang Il-ho’s The Deadly Knives as a mini-meditation on Shaw Brothers’ period of the wuxia film which was just about to begin leaning more heavily into the kung fu film.

 
Starting with The Eunuch from 1971, penned by The Big Boss director/actor Lo Wei, we’re transported into a wuxia period murder plot involving the titular eunuch Gui Dehai (Pai Ying) who after surviving an attempt on his life by the Emperor (Lo Wei in a sneaky cameo) proceeds to have bloody vengeance wiping out the Emperor and his family in cold blood.  However, it would appear that the young Prince Zhu Jin (Hua Tsung) has escaped and coming under the wing and apprenticeship of an elder pole fighter the youth begins formulating his own revenge plot against the ruthless and nefarious eunuch.  Featuring Sammo Hung in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo, Billy Chan and Chung-Hsin Huang, this panoramic widescreen wuxia action fighter has all of the time-honored tropes of the subgenre from characters gliding through the air or double crossers trying to poison one another amid sword fighting.  With two cinematographers on the picture including Shao-Yung Tung and Chi Yu and an energizing score by Fu-Liang Chou, The Eunuch starts out the set with a ferocious bang.

 
Next and far more searing than you’d expect it to be is The Deadly Knives, another wuxia albeit with a more notably realistic and oppressive perspective involving two lovers Guan Yue-hua (Ching Li) and Yan Zi-fei (Ling Yun) whose romance and way of life is targeted by Japanese thugs led by Ogawa (Ching Miao) who are determined to steal the Yan family deed to the land and cargo by any means necessary.  Eventually there’s a traitor in the picture who will sell his morals up the river to get a bit closer to his “girlfriend” who is actually terrified of him and the plot thickens into a revenge tale as Yan Zi-fei takes up a method of knife throwing sure to mow down enemies in quick succession.  Far bloodier, meaner and nastier than the already brutal The Eunuch including but not limited to sexual assault committed by the Japanese against the Chinese with cold blooded murder and complicity in ruthless chicanery, The Deadly Knives for a good portion is something of an endurance.  But the grand finale is satisfying enough to redeem the film of its occasionally abrasive hardships. 

 
Differentiated by cast and crew but kindred in being ShawScope releases which came out during an intermediary period where the wuxia was shifting towards the kung-fu martial arts flick, Eureka’s Exact Revenge two film set housed on one disc comes limited to 2,000 copies with a collectible slipcover, collector’s booklet with writing on both films by James Oliver and Camille Zaurin.  Both movies include their own subset of audio commentaries by Mike Leeder, Arne Venema and Frank Djeng and there’s also a new video essay entitled Falling Leaves, Flying Daggers by Jonathan Clements chronicling the wuxia film.  Shaw Brothers completists and aficionados will no doubt want to pick this up right away as all the disparate boutique labels are intent on building a ShawScope totem in the US and UK.  Regarded as underrated compared to some of the other Shaws that have come and gone, Exact Revenge represents another indelible offering of Hong Kong action cinema from Eureka Entertainment and will absolutely satisfy genre fans.

--Andrew Kotwicki