Directors: Hsi-Chieh Lai and Sung Pe Liu
Writers: Liang Chin and Sung Pe Liu
From: Cult Cinema
Watch: archive.org
A one-armed princess searches for patriots to help her kill the bandit king that has murdered the Emperor and spuriously claimed the throne.
Opens with text on screen and a voice over telling the same story but clearly reading a different text. Could we be on the cusp of watching my most beloved movie ever?
A bandit leader has gathered a personal army and is finally assaulting the walls of the Ming Emperor’s castle. Rather than be captured and humiliated, the Emperor orders all the castle residents to kill themselves as he himself is about to. His daughter, the third princess, refuses, saying they can flee into the countryside and rally an army of loyalists. He says there’s no honor in this and personally tries to cut her down, but only cutting her arm off in the process. The bandits raid the castle, find everyone dead, and the princess escaped. The bandit leader orders a search for her since she can challenge the legitimacy of his claim.
The rest of the movie is the princess trying to rally loyalists to her cause, taking them to challenge the bandit leader, and failing, usually at the cost of the loyalist who joined her. There are a variety of double-crosses and double-crosses of double-crossers and the hilarious repetition of the people who’ve aligned themselves with the princess realizing the cause is lost, telling her to flee, and her refusing as the loyalist gets pincushioned trying to protect her.
The pattern continues until the very end where things do and do not go as you’d expect from this kind of movie and the princess retires to a Buddhist monastery to become a nun. THE END
I very slightly loved this movie, and I’m not sure it that’s due to an error on my part. I’m not sure if this is supposed to be a comedy or if it becomes comedy through the act of translation. I mean, I’m not even sure if the voices aren’t all dubbed by one person trying to sound like different people throughout. So the movie’s hilarious on just a technical level, but I’m not sure if the original film itself wasn’t meant to be a comedy.
As I said in the synopsis, the movie repeats the pattern of “Let’s slay the bandit king! Oh, we’re no match for the bandit king! Flee, princess! I won’t leave you! *Stab* Ow! Flee princess! *Stab* Ow! Flee princess! *Stab* Ow! Flee princess! *Stab* Ow! I won’t leave you! GTFO princess! I flee! *Dead*” Even the final confrontation follows that model. There are also scenes like the princess’ first encounter with a loyalist where she thinks he’s an agent of the bandit leader following her. She hides in a field, he approaches and shouts, “Show yourselves!,” and a bunch of ninja jump out and fight him. Once he defeats them, he again shouts, “Show yourself!,” and another samurai emerges. They fight, he wins, and, again, shouts, “Show yourself!” The movie cuts to the princess hiding in the weeds wondering if anyone else is there until he says he means her and there’s nobody else hiding in the weeds.
That had to be a joke in the original Chinese, right? That can’t be something added in the translation process, right? Part of the final battle involves the bandit king using his carriage as a weapon by shifting in his seat. This has to be a joke.
So, yes, I highly recommend this movie. I was not eager to watch it because, as I’ve said in other reviews, I don’t know kung-fu films well enough to say what makes one good or bad, but this one surprised and delighted me throughout. I believe it’s in the public domain so have added a copy to archive.org here. Give it a watch. It’s silly fun.
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