SCORCHING SUN, FIERCE WIND, WILD FIRE (1977)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

This cheap Taiwanese production-- garnished with a half-dozen HK "names"-- is a textbook example of a flick that's just making stuff up as it goes along. It's a shame, because its star Angela Mao was still in her prime. SUN would have been a much brighter film had the creators built up her character of masked freedom-fighter Violet, instead of spending so much time on subsidiary characters like that of her ally Tien Peng, her main foe Chang Yi and two comic relief characters, Dorian Tan and Lo Lieh. 

Supposedly the film takes place in 1920s China, prior to the Communist reign, but most of the film takes place out in rural areas, and almost no one wears clothes congruent with 20th-century fashions. Then one suddenly sees soldiers wearing China-Republic uniforms, or what's supposed to pass as a 1920s automobile, and one is reminded. However, for all that the time-period matters to the rambling narrative, it might as well be happening back in the usual amorphous medieval era common to so many Hong Kong chopsockies.

Violet's career as a masked avenger comes about because her father is Warlord Tung, who's doing a lot of evil things to the people and must be stopped. So like Zorro before her, Violet sets up an underground resistance while remaining close to her father's operations in order to foil his misdeeds. Because the story is so unfocused, there's no real sense of any particular goal Violet seeks to accomplish, much less any sense of conflict about defying her father. The warlord's enforcer becomes the de facto force to be reckoned with, and after the warlord perishes-- not directly because of anything Violet does-- the enforcer is defeated by Violet and the Tien Peng character in one of those two-against-one battles that's supposed to show how badass the villain is.

The "mask" Violet wears is one of those conical hats whose brim is low enough to hide the face, and she doesn't wear it that often. Since the heroine spends so much time fighting without the mask, I debated as to whether her attire really rose to the level of an uncanny outfit. But I decided in the affirmative, and besides, as the lobby card above shows, there's a moment when one of her allies gets trapped in a room with closing spiked walls, which definitely urges the film into the domain of the uncanny. (The peculiar German title, "Gorilla with the Steel Claw," has nothing to do with anything under the SUN.)

Only Mao's fights are particularly memorable, and then only because of her performing charisma. But though Mao made a few other films with uncanny aspects, SUN is probably the only one in which her character is the "costumed crusader" type of superhero.