The Lady Assassin

Split Ending

The Lady Assassin
aka Qing gong qi shi lu
Directed by Chun-Ku Lu
Hong Kong 1983 
Shaw Brothers/Celestial Pictures/88 Films
Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Spoilers regarding the whole, chaotic affair. 

The Lady Assassin is yet another brilliant release of a Shaw Brothers movie, this one from the early 80s. Now, it’s not for me to complain too much but the translation I got from Google of the original title (yeah, which I don’t trust too much, it has to be said), gives the title as The Qing Dynasty Revelation and, I have to say, this makes much more sense considering the content of the film. 

That content reflecting that there isn’t really a lady assassin character in the film at all, at least not in a top line position. There is a lady who enters the film 23 minutes in who is certainly the one the English packaging of the movie is focusing on but I think assassin is a bit of a stretch (although she is, indeed, a killing machine) and this film is definitely an ensemble piece in terms of the huge cast of characters and actors (indeed, read the synopsis on the packaging and you’ll find no mention of a lady assassin at all, bar the title, which is pretty much reflected in the film itself). And don’t ask me who plays that particular character because the different characters and actors leaves listings like those found on the IMDB kinda redundant and useless. I can tell you that Tony Liu, Leanne Lau, Mok Siu-Chung and Wei-Wei Huang are all in it but, if any of these are the so called title character then, well, the movie is certainly not giving up any of its secrets to the internet IMDB, that’s for sure. 

Also, in one scene, a kung fu master who is brought in to the narrative at a very late stage reveals himself to be, when he shows his real face briefly... as opposed to his young face... well, it looks like Pai Mei but, since his character is killed near the end, I’m guessing he’s just being used to invoke the spirit of such character types as Pai Mei, rather than being the actual one. 

None of this really matters though because this is a bit of an epic movie as regards to both the convoluted plot, based on an apparently infamous part of Chinese history... and also the expected, incredible kung fu wirework which goes into many brilliantly choreographed fight scenes. So we have a bodyguard who can run across the top of water to meet his opponents... with his body and soul being presumably nimble and light enough to pull off such ridiculous moments with no lack of credibility. Or what about a moment when two acrobatic young lady fighters both land on horizontal blades of their opponents swords, upside down and balancing on the point of their own blades as they float there for a moment. 

Another great moment is when, mid fight, a guy catches a rock kicked at his head and immediately uses it to block a sword. Said sword crumbles the rock to ash and he uses the dust to temporarily blind his enemy. And so on and so forth. 

Typically for the Shaw Brothers, because this is based on a particular set of incidents from Chinese history, don’t always expect the heroes to win or stay alive for any length of time. And certainly, while there are definitely heroic characters to follow, they are all from slightly lower classes than the various royalty who seem to switch sides and make empty promises at the drop of a head. It’s those opposing, royal characters who seem to be switching between good guy and bad guy mode constantly until, in the end, you realise that nobody in the nobility is good. They’re all just as bad as each other and it’s the little people who tend to pay for their crimes, whether they are kung fu experts or not. Hmm... this reminds me of UK and US politics right now. 

If you are a fan of the wildly ridiculous being injected into your action films, however, then you’ve come to the right place. When one villain gets his head chopped off mid fight, his body goes on and then is replaced by the real villain, the head suddenly revealed to be a mannequin dummy kind of head. This baffles but, luckily, a character said that he was using the ‘magic of disappearance’ technique... oh, well that’s alright then. This particular villain, after pelting his heroic enemies with ninja throwing stars, then uses a giant sized throwing star, acting as a kind of boomerang frisbee weapon, to cause more chaos. 

Like many Shaw Brothers movies, this film ends in the middle of some action, specifically when the woman I suspect of being the title character finally goes on what Beatrix Kiddo would call "a roaring rampage of revenge" (she’s about the only one left at this point). She finally catches up with the main villain and her sword splits his body vertically through. As the two sides of his body fall apart in the foreground, the shot is frozen and the usual Shaw Brothers end messages appear... a literal split ending, for sure. 

And that’s me done with The Lady Assassin. While the content of the film was not quite what I was expecting, it was still absolutely brilliant and I’m looking forward to watching the other 130 or so Shaw Brothers Blu Rays I have lined up for this blog at some point. Good stuff.