PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*
Shaw
Brothers’ LADY HERMIT is a well-photographed “female diva”
chopsocky, offering viewers two divas for the price of one. Cheng Pei
Pei, famous for having starred in COME DRINK WITH ME, the first
“diva-film” of the classic era, plays Yushuan, the “mentor
figure” to younger diva Cuiping (Shi Szu), though the latter was
only eight years junior to Cheng.
HERMIT
also feels a bit like the kung fu version of a superhero story.
Aspiring heroine Cuiping comes to town looking for the legendary Lady
Hermit, famed for running around in a veiled outfit as she uses her
sword-skills against evil, though the veiled heroine has been absent
for three years. Cuiping doesn’t know that the Hermit suffered an
enduring injury at the hands of her enemy Black Demon. Because of
that injury, the heroine’s been forced to take a mundane job while
healing, and in that status Yushuan meets her would-be student..
While
Yushuan is under cover, Black Demon’s thugs run a protection
racket, pretending to be ghosts who will murder people who don’t
buy Taoist charms at a high price. Cuiping fights some of the thugs,
forcing Yushuan to come out of hiding and to reassume her superheroic
role. In the process, Cuiping learns Yushuan’s identity, and
eventually persuades her senior to be her “sifu.” Unfortunately,
during their residence in the same town, the two women fall in love
with the same man, Changsun (Lo Lieh), which makes for trouble
between student and teacher. However, all three fighters join
together to oppose Black Demon, who, in addition to a wealth of
henchmen, possesses claw-like fingers (possibly artificial) and still
knows the same “special move” that injured Yushuan earlier.
This
is a classy kung-fu production, lacking the overheated absurdities
often associated with the genre. That said, its psychological motifs
and its fight-scenes rate as no more than fair at best.
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