Yet another Shaw Brothers / Chang Cheh / Venoms mob movie is up for review here. This was one of the last Venoms mob movies with the classical line up (minus Snake / Wai Pak) as more Venoms style movies would focus on Philip Kwok, Chiang Sheng and Lu Feng as the core group. Also, known as Killer Army, this movie is structured with many of the key tropes fans of the Venoms are familiar with.
This is a pseudo period piece about refugees escaping the wars of the Republic in China where a town run by some corrupt martial artists take in various refugees. These martial artists are split into four different camps with their own distinct styles with bizarre gauntlet/fists, swords, sword/shield and a bendable spear weapon. At the head of these groups is, of course, notorious bad guy Lu Feng as the ambitious Chen Chu-Kwong.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have the three refugees of Philip Kwok (Wang Hsu), Lo Meng (Chi Chun-Peng) and Chiang Sheng (Yu Wen-San). In a way, the three (most notably Philip Kwok and Chiang Sheng) reprise their roles as impoverished people, stealing food to survive. In Wang Hsu’s case, he gets into a major fight against Pan Peng (Wong Lik) the another major leader in town for free loading but is rescued by a generous prostitute and is employed as a guard at the brothel. Likewise, Chi Chun-Peng encounters the fist fighter group and impresses their leader with his own mantis skills and strength, which gives him a job as a trainer with them. Finally, Yu Wen-San is hired by Sun Chien (Tang Yu-Tung) a seemingly gregarious character and leader of the sword/shield division.
The three eventually encounter one another at a casino where Yu Wen-San works as a sneaky backdoor assistant who gives false advice to players in order to make a quick tip. Naturally, a fight breaks out when Wang Hsu uncovers Yu Wen-San’s mischievous ways and tries to get his money back. Despite the chaos that breaks out, when the dust settles, it’s the three who end up reconciling over the miscommunication and decide to have a drink outside of the casino. As they go for their drink, the three swear a blood pact and make each other blood brothers.
In the meantime, an undercover messenger is discovered by Pan Peng who reads the letter and goes to confront Chen Chu-Kwong. Chen Chu-Kwong is entertaining Colonel Chang and Pan Peng kills his own men to demonstrate his loyalty towards Chen Chu-Kwong and show he’s knowledge of the plot that Chen Chu-Kwong is cooking up. Chen Chu-Kwong has his brother and another subordinate take the colonel to the brothel to be secretly killed for which the blame is placed on the three refugees. The three manage to kill the brother but the subordinate gets away to inform Chen Chu-Kwong. Because it’s his brother, Chen Chu-Kwong makes the issue personal and has his guards search the city to find the refugees.
Chi Chun-Peng convinces the other two to meet up with his boss and try to sort the mess out. Chang Hsiao-Hu (Chi’s boss) remains an honorable man and agrees to help the three by taking them to Tang Yu-Tung, thinking he should also be informed of the plot. However, Chang Hsiao-Hu doesn’t realize that Tang Yu-Tung has already been corrupted and is killed by him at Tang’s base. Chang’s men are dispatched as Tang’s guards come to try and get the three refugees. Tang’s plan fails and is killed which means that the three almost have no allies left.
As they try to escape the town, they hide on the roof and are seen by the prostitute at the brothel, who decides to aid them. Wang Hsu gives her his hand made three linked staff as a way to warn them if trouble happens. In the meantime, they decide to hide out in some baskets. However, during the night, the prostitute is caught by Pan Peng and is beaten to have her trick the three refugees into leading them into Peng’s trap. They go to a location where Chi Chun-Peng is caught but just before she hands back Wang Hsu’s three section staff to warn them. Then Peng has her stabbed and a fight breaks out while Chi Chun-Peng is carried off.
While the fight between Wang Hsu and Yu Wen-San occur with Peng and his men, Chi Chun-Peng is taken to a part of town where he is scheduled to be hung. Some sympathetic onlookers attempt to give him water and a hidden knife to get him free. Despite their distraction, they’re slain by the guards but Chi Chun-Peng manages to free himself. Although he manages to get a few of the guards, he’s soon overwhelmed and runs. On the other hand, Wang Hsu and Yu Wen-San kill off Peng’s men and Peng then set off to the boats where they hope to meet Chi Chun-Peng.
Chi Chun-Peng arrives at the boats first and encounters an awaiting Chen Chu-Kwong. Chen Chu-Kwong’s elite guards go to fight Chi Chun-Peng before Chen Chu-Kwong joins the fray. However, these men (mostly) are armed with flexible spears. As Peng is launched in the air, Chu-Kwong tosses his cape over Peng and stabs him with his spear almost fatally.
From there, both Wang Hsu and Yu Wen-San arrive at the docks but do not see their comrade. Shortly thereafter, Peng scrapes his way to warn his friends of the trap and is brutally speared by two of Chu-Kwong’s guards. A final fight breaks out where we see a lot of acrobatics and a very confusing ending. So the last sequences are Yu Wen-San leaping up to try and deflect a bunch of spears, catching a spear through his abdomen, fending off the spears while Wang Hsu jumps to apparently smack the four spear men with his three section staff and breaking eggs bloody (???) before smacking Chu-Kwong around a bit before strangling him to death with his staff.
Poor Yu Wen-San dies and tells Wang to escape on the boats as well as having them burn down just as Chu-Kwong’s reinforcements arrive too late to see the sails go up in flames while (supposedly) Wang Hsu’s own remaining ship take off to safety.
If I sound tired while writing this review, it’s because the story feels this way. There’s really nothing groundbreaking about this flick and it’s got a lot of the formulas that made the Venoms mob famous. For instance, Lo Meng gets killed in a cruel manner, Sun Chien turns out to be a traitor, Lu Feng is the predictable bad guy, Philip Kwok survives, etc. along with tons of acrobatics and crazy fights with weapons with violence and blood. The main structure starts off lighthearted (outside of the conditions of the refugees themselves) but only when Lo Meng, Philip Kwok and Chiang Sheng make their appearance and things break down quickly so that they can quickly get into a variety of fights.
But that’s the thing about later Chang Cheh / Venoms movies where the characters themselves aren’t really well developed, the story is minimized, the historical relevance is almost null and everything centers around how to get into as many crazy fights as possible. The fights are mostly amusing but you start to grow bored of them because they become lengthy and do not have a focus nor purpose outside of being gratuitous. Probably, the best encounter to me was when Lo Meng beats the crap out of three “old school style” guys in the casino fight, which is making fun of a lot of the mid 70s stuff with Chi Kuan-Chun and his Hung Gar.
However, some things just made no sense to me outside of sheer laziness in writing. The most offensive part was seeing Sun Chien suddenly turn without an explanation. Yes, Lu Feng referred in an earlier scene that he “corrupted” one of the other leaders, which I suppose is to force the audience to guess between Sun and Hsiao-Hu. Yet given that Sun’s character is established as being kinder from the start, the abrupt corruption makes no sense outside of “hey Sun is turning heel again.”
The fight themselves besides feeling extraneously long and gratuitous sometimes just look plain bad. They are far faster than the more authentic stuff you’d see in the mid 70s stuff, but you can also sense someone with a metronome in the background tapping out a beat for these guys to make each move. But in a few cases, the effects were either nonsense or look terrible. An example is the ending where Philip Kwok uses his three section staff to knock what looks to be brown painted eggs that explode in red. What the hell were those supposed to be? Was that meant to be subliminal and representative of the four spear men’s teeth? That whole sequence made no sense whatsoever.
Then there’s the part where Lu Feng hurls his cape onto Lo Meng to catch. Lu Feng’s spear “cuts” the cape like scissors so that Lo Meng’s organs can be pushed out. It’s such a terrible visual not necessarily gross but fake looking and exaggerated. Or when Lo Meng is speared by the two guys, his body flies in the air with the cape and it’s quite obvious they shot up a dummy for dramatic effect. But it looks ridiculously bad kinda like when that guy’s head is kicked off at the end of the Ten Tigers of Kwangtung.
Another humorously poorly shot sequence is when Sun Chien’s foot is cut off. Like he sticks his leg in the air as Philip Kwok is trying to choke him with the bench and Chiang Sheng flies through the air and severs off the guy’s foot. Then Sun Chien does some ridiculous rigor mortis as he’s struggling under the bench and stops moving, tossing his head to the side. It’s pretty lame.
And let’s talk about the anti-climatic demise of Lu Feng. Despite all the despicable things he and his followers do, his death is nothing more than a weak looking choke out. At least in Masked Avengers, he’s impaled by all the tridents he flips up so there’s some ironic about his death there. This one lacks any catharsis. In fact, all things considered, his character isn’t that awful considering he’s running a town that is housing a bunch of ruffians.
That said, this movie doesn’t age all that well. I think because they started going in this direction of ridiculous, fake looking, more acrobatic fights that lasted too long and had less character development as well as almost no story beyond revenge, the Chang Cheh / later Venom stuff feel tedious. The costumes are kind of cool like I really like the white silk outfits for Lu Feng’s men and he’s got a sexy white / orange-red colored cape. The flexible spear was an interesting concept too but beyond those things and the comedic casino fight scene, this felt like a sad way for the classic Venoms mob to go out on.
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