THE KNIGHT OF SHADOWS (2019)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

Considering how awful some of Jackie Chan's 21st-century productions have been, whether from the East or the West, KNIGHT OF SHADOWS is certainly way ahead of any of those embarrassments. Though it's almost entirely formulaic, at least there's some sense of what the formula is supposed to be.   

We're in medieval China, probably around the 17th century, since Chan's character Pu Songling is based on a famous storyteller of that era. The author's stories, particularly the supernatural ones, were often adapted in China, most famously in the original CHINESE GHOST STORY movie. But this fictionalized version-- I'll call him "Pu" for short-- isn't content to write about the supernatural. He also travels from town to town, exorcising demons whenever he comes across them. Pu's principal weapon is the "Yin-Yang brush," a calligraphy-brush with which he can sketch mystic patterns that in turn banish demons. He also travels with three goofy CGI demons, and the fact that one demon is named "Farty" aptly describes the level of humor the film's shooting for. This accords with Chan playing Pu as a jolly bumpkin, seemingly more concerned with selling his story-pamphlets in every town to which he travels. He's not a dedicated demon-hunter but just fights the critters wherever he happens across them.    

In one town, Pu gets mixed up in with a demon that rips off some precious jewels, but that's just an excuse to have him encounter a comic foil, a naive young village cop (Lin Bohong) who eventually becomes Pu's apprentice, little as Pu wants one. However, the more crucial support-character is another demon-hunter, Yan (Ethan Juan). Yan is on the trail of a pair of female demons, Xiaoqian (Elane Zhong) and Jin (Lin Peng). These two demons feed on human souls by promising immortality to young women and then imprisoning them in a painting for eternity. Yan has had a romantic relationship with Xiaoqian that one source claims is derived from the same story that gave rise to CHINESE GHOST STORY. However, KNIGHT adds some confusing business that I don't think would've occurred to a 17th-century teller of tales: that Yan apparently used to be a demon and Xiaoqian used to be a human. These needless complications, happily, don't distract from the strong melodrama of the Yan-Xiaoqian love scenes, which are as ripely melodramatic as anything in CHINESE GHOST STORY.

Between the heavy panting of the romance scenes and the wacky comedy of the funny demon hunters, KNIGHT forces viewers to put up with a lot of tonal shifts. The script compensates with a very episodic structure, making those shifts fairly tolerable. Not much of the comedy works, except for a bravura sequence with Pu in a room full of mirrors. Not only can Demoness Jin strike at Pu through the mirror-surfaces, slapping or choking, she also cuts him off at the waist, literally, so that Pu's two halves run around the room doing silly things. Given that sixty-something Chan can't possibly ever duplicate the martial feats for which he became famous, it's fun to see him try to come up with wild stunts via CGI. KNIGHT is never in the least profound, but it's highly colorful and lively, and that makes it worth a look.

   

            

CYBER-TRACKER 2 (1995)

 

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

Though the mythicity of the second and last CYBER-TRACKER is no better than the first, the action and the various story-complications are much better. Since both films had the same director, the difference may stem from a different writer producing the script.

The first film ended with the implication that the legal system was going to abolish the custom of using robotic "cyber trackers" to publicly execute accused criminals. However, such automatons are still being used, though one scene mentions that the robots can be programmed to capture rather than kill. In the ensuing interval between films, secret service agent Eric Phillips (Don Wilson) has married crusading reporter Connie (Stacie Foster). Neither of them seems too perturbed by the fact that the government still uses trackers for public executions. Though Eric is still called a secret service agent, he's first seen playing undercover cop, just so the movie can begin with a big cops-vs-crooks action scene. However, the real story starts when Eric's at home watching TV, and he sees a news broadcast showing his wife Connie assassinating the governor.

It's a robot assassin, of course, and it's the product of a new conspiracy headed by one Morgan (Anthony deLongis) The real Connie was kidnapped by Morgan's thugs, who delayed killing her so that she would be found dead at the most propitious time. However, Connie breaks free, clobbers two of the thugs with handy bludgeons, and tries to reconnoiter with Eric. A tracker (Jim Maniaci) overtakes Connie first, but Eric runs it down with a car, temporarily inconveniencing the robot. (There's a slightly funny scene following the usual car-chase, where the tracker instructs a befuddled cop as to where he can seek "emotional support" for his distress.)

Not content to have framed Connie, Morgan has his techs manufacture an Eric robot, sending it to kill the fugitives in a police station (an unsubtle TERMINATOR riff). In the movie's best fight, a less hostile tracker (Maniaci again) interferes with the Eric-robot's mission. The Eric-robot then combines two familiar fight-tropes: (1) he rips off the tracker's arm to beat him with it, and (2) he knocks his head clean off.

More gunfights and car chases follow, and eventually the Ericbot is destroyed. Eric makes an ally of a "friendly" tracker-- one the agent worked with on the undercover case from the film's beginning-- and the small group of Eric's allies seek out Morgan at his HQ. The Connie-bot (Foster of course) has a nice moment beating down the tracker, Eric dodges a laser gun, and Morgan's female aide (Athena Massey) has a brief fight with one of Eric's allies. A "super-tracker" is eliminated within a minute by the laser, and Eric gets to throw down with Morgan, who's a little tougher than the average corporate greedhead. All that, and a big lab-destroying explosion too. Now that's the kind of simple pulp-action I expect from PM flicks!               

CYBER TRACKER (1994)

 

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

I've occasionally appreciated the better formula-flicks from the defunct straight-to-video studio PM Entertainment. However, this brain-dead effort, despite starring what might be PM's most bankable star, proves thoroughly routine.   

Don Wilson plays Eric Phillips, a secret service agent assigned to protect government bigwigs, lives in a near-future Earth that looks almost like regular Earth: the presence of cyber-trackers. These emotionless automatons serve roughly the same purpose as the judges in the British JUDGE DREDD comic: once assigned to overtake sentenced criminals, they immediately execute them with arm-guns. The script shows zero interest in how this sociological state of affairs came about, and we never see more than one cyber-tracker at a time. always played by the same hulking actor, Jim Maniaci.

Though Eric's devoted to his job, he's lost a wife who didn't like the danger he lived with, and an obnoxious fellow agent constantly seeks to undercut Eric's authority. (Since the other agent is played by Richard Norton, fans know there will eventually be a match between Norton and Wilson, though the script makes viewers wait until the bitter end for the fight.) However, Eric's biggest problem is that he won't help the governor he's guarding with some illegal project he's got going with Cybercore, the company that makes the trackers. So the villains frame Eric for murder and send a tracker to kill him. Eric is then conveniently enlisted by a rebel group seeking to eliminate Cybercore's influence over the government, and guess what, the head of the rebels is a hot young babe named Connie (Stacie Foster).         

Some of the PM releases are good in terms of mounting decent if unremarkable action-scenes, but TRACKER's many scenes of gunfire and car chases are tedious in the extreme, and the one big kung-fu fight at the end is just fair. The Connie character can't fight but she's reasonably cast as a reporter allied to a rebel group in order to seek justice, though the script, having set up a new romance with her for Eric, doesn't develop that subplot. The movie's only original touch is a concluding quote from Ayn Rand.        

ARABELLA BLACK ANGEL (1989)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological* 

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

I don't know if at the time ARABELLA was made, giallos were enjoying a comeback, but since the movie was recently released on a DVD volume called "Forgotten Giallos," I'm guessing the movie wasn't overly successful. I've seen no other directorial efforts by Stelvio Massi, though he was a cinematographer on a number of better-known Italian films, including Giuliano Carnimeo's only giallo, THE CASE OF THE BLOODY IRIS. The writer has no other credits on IMDB, which might explain why the script for ARABELLA tends to wander about at times.

As others have observed, ARABELLA amps up the near-hardcore sex right away. Some reviews call Deborah (Tini Cansino, niece of Rita Hayworth) a nymphomaniac, though all one knows from the first few sequences is that she's not getting any at home. (I think the name Arabella is used for a fictionalized version of Deborah.) We only know of one transgression, when the upper-class Deborah goes to a warehouse sex party, looking for love-- though not, as she specifies in the warehouse scene, for pain. Unfortunately for the young woman, Italian cops raid the party. One cop, DeRosa, seizes Deborah, believing her a hooker, and sodomizes her to exchange her freedom. Deborah goes home, and the next day we see her life with husband Frank and live-in mother-in-law Martha (Ida Galli, the only name I recognized from other films, such as THE CASE OF THE SCORPION'S TAIL). Frank, as a result of an accident shortly after his wedding to Deborah, became both wheelchair-bound and impotent. The result is that he's a petty tyrant.to the women, even though he's apparently able to give them a ritzy upper-class existence just by writing popular crime novels.

 The next day, DeRosa finds out Deborah's upper-class background, and he heedlessly beards her in her own lair, hungry for more easy pickings. The cop corners his prey and talks her into having sex on the property. Deborah goes along with the extortion but Frank in his wheelchair spots the assignation. Deborah sees Frank watching, picks up a handy hammer and apparently kills the cop. (I say apparently because a careless end-scene suggests he might have survived, but this incident was probably nothing but a toss-off notion.) 

The killing of the cop has zero consequences; Deborah and Frank simply bury him on the grounds, and he's barely mentioned afterward. What does affect the plot is Frank having seen Deborah interact with another man. Not only does it stimulate Frank on some level, he decides he wants his wife to go around getting into more sexual encounters, so that the author can incorporate them into his book. (If it wasn't a sex thriller before, I guess it becomes one by fiat.) Deborah is either a nympho or an unusually obedient wife, for she goes along with Frank's scheme. However, her sexual peregrinations also supply the movie with the giallo-trope of escalating murders. Some mysterious person begins killing off people in Deborah's orbit-- including a potential blackmailer she didn't have sex with-- and this is what brings in the cops. The film then shifts its focus to an inspector named Gina.         

 

I don't know if the filmmakers thought audiences might add Gina to the movie's very small pool of suspects for the crimes, but the inspector never seems a potential murderer despite being (a) lesbian and (2) psychologically messed-up because her mother killed her father long ago. I doubt anyone was convinced, though, because the script tosses out such details so carelessly that they don't seem to have any importance. Even Gina's quarrel with her lover, female reporter Agnese, just seems contrived to occupy time, up to the point Agnese is one of the killer's victims.

 After a handful of desultory murders, the script jams together three big reveals at the end. One is that Frank, though probably still impotent, isn't actually wheelchair-bound. (It's not explained very well but I think the idea was that he spontaneously healed yet kept his recovery secret from Deborah in order to keep a mental hold over his wife.) The second reveal is that Gina is actually Frank's half-sister, for Frank was her mother's child by a different husband. The third is no surprise at all, because the mother of Frank and Gina is Martha. who's the only possibility left given that both Deborah and Frank would be too obvious. 

Martha's motive is a favorite among makers of sex-thriller films: she's a prude who hates sex-- though there's a slight implication that she resents her daughter-in-law getting so much action. To be sure, though, Deborah isn't a good advertisement for concupiscence. Though she's not a developed character and Cansino isn't much of an actress, there are a few scenes that put across how badly women can be used by men, whether they're husbands or casual extortionists. Those scenes are the only reason I grade ARABELLA's mythicity as fair. But if one has any hopes of ARABELLA being a stylish giallo, those hopes are doomed to perish quickly.          
    

    

PIRAHNA-MAN VS. WEREWOLF-MAN (2010)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *irony*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

I guess Streaming has finally outpaced both the commercial TV of my youth and the days of video rental stores, if it can summon forth, as from the vasty deep, a fifteen-year-old monster-mash crapfest I never heard of.    

Now, ordinary when I raise the specter of--

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

-- it's usually because I'm revealing detailed plot points. But for PIRAHNAWOLF, I'm going to reveal the story that the crap-movie probably could have told adequately, at least as far as crap-moves go:  

Reporter Lexi Glass (Carrie Long) thinks she may have hit the big time. Stuck doing routine local news in Anytown U.S., she hears about two brutal slayings of blonde women, and witnesses think they heard the howling of a dog or wolf. While investigating, Lexi starts having weird dreams. Sometimes she feels herself experiencing the serial murders, as blonde women are attacked by a werewolf-killer. Less often, she also dreams herself swapping spit with a handsome bearded man she's never met. The two forebodings come together when Lexi learns more about her family background. Her mother had an affair with a man who was a werewolf, and by him she conceived a son, also a werewolf and a half-brother to Lexi. Lexi realizes that she's been experiencing the murders through her brother's eyes, and when she meets him in his non-werewolf persona, she's immediately attracted to him, dinner and a movie be damned. So they swap spit, because evidently as the child of her mother Lexi just can't resist those wolf-boys. However, she realizes she really doesn't want either to protect a killer or to raise little lupine babies, so she strangles Wolf-Brother to death without so much as a "one who loves him enough to understand" sentiment.   

Now, that's a serviceable if unremarkable plotline for a werewolf movie, and maybe if I'd read a summary that covers those points, I would have watched that movie more quickly than about a dozen other lycanthrope streaming-flicks that I haven't yet watched. But I have to admit I was lured in by the title PIRAHNA-MAN VS. WEREWOLF-MAN, even though I didn't expect much.

Trouble is, the two artistes behind this dreck thought they'd enhance the simple premise of their werewolf story not only by shoehorning in a Pirahna-Man (who's also Lexi's father), but also a convoluted origin in which (1) the original werewolf killed all hands aboard a nuclear submarine, (2) the submarine gave off nuclear waste that contaminated some pirahna-eggs, which (3) Lexi's father ate so that he became a "piscathrope." ALSO, the werewolf tends to kill lots of people in Lexi's social circle, a la Original Frankenstein's Monster, though not for any particular reasons I could suss out. AND ALSO, Lexi has some sort of spirit-guardian who wears a papier-mache mask over his face and who guides Lexi through some of her backstory-revelations, as well as enlisting Lexi's horny roommate to serve as the reporter's guardian.

On occasion I like flicks that throw everything and the kitchen sink into the mix, but here it's just low-energy and tiresome. All the extraneous material makes me wonder if the writers thought they were doing an absurdist take on monster-movie tropes-- and that leads me to label the film an "irony." It's also a combative irony thanks to a few minutes of fighting between the title monsters, though it's a poor example of both categories.    

        

ALIENATOR (1990)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological*

Re: the above lobby card-- I'll bet the makers of this cheapjack film didn't run any ads using the name "Terminator" in the domestic U.S. back in the day.

As I've commented before in slightly different terms, Fred Olen Ray's movies break down into either dull shit (of which WIZARDS OF THE DEMON SWORD is the current nadir) and lively shit (with CYCLONE occupying the apex). ALIENATOR-- which happens to be the only other movie credit for writer Paul Garson, author of CYCLONE-- is closer to being dull shit than lively shit. Still, it did engage me in one minor way.

As I've also said before, all Ray movies are just standard genre-stories, loosely constructed so that Ray could slot in as many of his favorite actors as he could manage. Usually, though, it's easy to tell who's the star of the show-- a heroic barbarian, a kick-ass motorcyclist, or an imitation Terminator. But I found myself asking, "Is the top-billed 'Alienator'-- actually called a 'Hunter-Unit' in the film proper-- really the primary character/phenomenon?"

 Oh well, on to what passes for a story. An opening title card informs us that the film begins out in space, following a rebel insurgence against a "tyrant" sporing the Biblical name of "Baal." So, we might think, we're going to hear about one or more good rebels, like Luke Skywalker, right? Ah, no, because the raid led by the rebel leader Kol (Ross Hagen) claimed "thousands of innocent lives," so maybe Kol, sentenced to die on a prison planet, is not a sterling hero. Or is he the best of a bad lot? The warden of the planet (Jan-Michael Vincent) fairly thirsts to vaporize Kol, and beats on the prisoner for the least excuse. Then the warden gets distracted by the arrival of an official named Lund (Robert Clarke), and later he exchanges bitter bon mots with his sexy subordinate officer, and ex-girlfriend (PJ Soles). However, somehow Kol breaks free, beats down or kills various guards (causing one to be victimized by big worms that bore into one's flesh), and then steals a ship. But Kol has a tracking device attached around his neck, so the warden just sends a "hunter-unit" to follow the fugitive and complete his execution.

Kol makes landfall in some US national park. He wanders around and gets summarily knocked down by an RV. The four collegians therein-- a nerd, two interchangeable girls, and an arrogant pre-law guy-- take the injured alien to the local park ranger (John Philip Law). Kol tells the Earthlings part of the truth--that the hunter-unit will destroy everything in its path to get its quarry-- but also claims that the empire plans to invade Earth. The hunter shows up at the ranger station, proving to be a statuesque female with a metal bikini, a white fright-wig, and a laser-ray mounted on one arm (Teagan Clive). The idiot pre-law guy shoots at her, and the hunter-unit demolishes the station and forces the Earthlings and their ET guest to flee. As she stalks them, she also runs into two goofus comedy relief hillbillies, whom she kills when they shoot at her.

The victims take refuge with an old ex-military guy who lives alone (I guess not in the park per se). Kol doesn't participate in the defensive fight, but he suggests using a metal net to deactivate the hunter's circuits, which of course works where bullets did not, (Not surprisingly, this Terminator clone is both part machine and part organic, though there doesn't seem any good reason for the prison-planet to have used a cyborg rather than a robot.) However, Kol recognizes a kindred spirit in the nasty pre-law guy, and he exercises his one super-power-- a previously unmentioned ability to take over bodies, like that of the asshole guy-- before the "Alienator" revives and chops off Kol's head. 

Even though Ray's faux-Terminator is the film's selling point, the script shows no interest in what she is or even if she possesses anything like consciousness (aside from a throwaway scene in which she pets a deer in the forest). Kol the ruthless revolutionary is really the figure central to the story, whether he's killing "thousands of innocents" or involving naive Earth-people in his troubles. Garson could have swiped Kol's basic type from any number of stories in which alien criminals come to Earth and are pursued by alien cops, such as 1987's THE HIDDEN. I should add that Kol's influence upon the prison planet doesn't end when he leaves it, for the delegate Lund turns out to be a Kol ally, and Lund also kills a few redshirts before the warden takes him out.                          

Because of the rustic setting and the presence of Robert Clarke, some reviewers labeled ALIENATOR a remake of THE ASTOUNDING SHE MONSTER. Though ALIENATOR is often as dull as MONSTER, at least the 1990 trash-film doesn't indulge in a phony-baloney cheat-ending. As in most Rayflicks, the talented actors are placed on the same level as the untalented ones, whether it's John Philip Law or Dawn Wildsmith. They're all just uttering undistinguished rote dialogue-- unless, like Teagan Clive, they have next to no dialogue at all.  

TO KILL WITH INTRIGUE (1977)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*

Otherwise known as JACKIE CHAN'S HAMLET! Okay, I'm the only one who calls TO KILL WITH INTRIGUE by that name but given that this obscure Taiwanese flick predates Jackie's jolly image, I could justify the name just on the basis that this has to be Chan's grimmest, most morose role up to this point in his career.

In addition, one of INTRIGUE's earliest scenes reminded me of Hamlet's rejection of Ophelia, possibly (as some critics speculate) after he's made her pregnant. In INTRIGUE, young nobleman Shao (Chan) meets with Qian (Yu Ling-long), a maid in his father's court, and tells her to take a hike, despite knowing that she has a bun in the oven. Not too much later, he bursts into the court, telling all of the guests celebrating his father's birthday to get lost too. The guests leave, and Father Lei yells at Shao. Shao says he did it all to keep innocents out of harm's way, and he removes an item from his tunic: a dismembered hand with the image of a human-headed bee drawn upon it. Shao doesn't say how he came by this curious oracle, but he claims it's the calling-card of a gang of kung-fu bandits, the Killer Bees, whom Lord Lei attempted to wipe out. While the lord is conferring with his son, wife, and retainers about the incipient attack, four guests return to the court-- only to drop dead. A strange one-handed man shows up (maybe a cutesy reference to Jimmy Wang Yu's One-Armed Swordsman?) and demands the return of his hand. Shao flings the dead hand to the probably dead man and the latter bounds away.

Then the attack by the Killer Bees begins in earnest. Armed men appear on the estate-walls, and into the courtyard five coffins appear. The coffin lids shoot off, and up spring the assault's leader and four cohorts, all attired in flower-masks, as if seeking to conflate death and fertility. The leader is Ting Tan-yen (Hsu Feng), a beautiful woman wearing a half-mask over her lower face, and after swearing vengeance, she engages Lord Lei in sword-combat. A melee breaks out, but the Lei family is overmatched. Ting kills the hero's mother and father and easily beats down Shao's weak nobleman-fu. However, he manages to get a sword to Ting's throat. She invites Shao to kill her but only after she shows him the facial scar beneath her mask, a wound she got from Shao's father when she was still a child. Doubt, the curse of the Melancholy Dane, causes Shao to hesitate, and Ting knocks him out.

When he awakes, he sees Ting from behind and thinks it's his lost love Qian. Ting tells Shao that she spared his life so that he'd suffer as she suffered the loss of her family. Shao can do nothing but go looking for the woman he spurned, even for reasons he thought beneficent.

To be sure, Shao wasn't completely stupid about the risks of chasing off his pregnant mistress; he mentioned to his father that he sent a friend named Jin to look after Qian. Jin does show up just as bandits attack Qian, and he kicks their asses before taking Qian to his house. However, Jin doesn't seem to know why Shao disavowed his mistress. Qian wants to flee the general area and Jin obliges her, so that when Shao comes looking, no one's to home.

A disconsolate Shao stays at Jin's house. Ting shows up, twisting the knife by telling Shao his friend's gone off with his lover. Then she calls Shao a "beast," which just so happens to be what Qian called Shao when he gave her the kiss-off. Shao hallucinates that Ting is Qian, embraces her, and summarily beds her. It's not clear if Ting is aware he's mistaken her for someone else, though there's no question she could've stopped Shao if she'd wanted to. After they've had sex and Shao's passed out, he mumbles Qian's name and Ting runs off, jealous as hell. (I admit Hamlet didn't do quite this much bed-hopping, though a fellow named Freud claimed that he had a certain ambivalence about his mama.) 

Then Shao pays the price for a grudge against Jin, as three paid assassins break in on him. He fights them and he kills one, but the other two knock him out. Fourth Dragon, an older noble, shows up and tells his assassin-employees that they assaulted the wrong man. He pays them off but when they want to murder the unconscious Shao, Fourth Dragon drives them off. He has Shao brought to his home, apologizes, and tells Shao that Jin ripped off the cargo that Fourth Dragon's guard-escorts were protecting. Slightly later, Ting shows up again-- "I am your shadow," she mocks the anguished hero-- and though she won't tell Shao where Jin and Qian are, she tasks him with not even having the filial piety to bury his slain parents. Further, she says, they were buried by none other than his recent benefactor, Fourth Dragon. Shao, unable to find his lost love, sublimates his desires by pledging loyalty to a "second father," joining the Dragon's guards. Does Fourth Dragon take the place of Lord Lei, the father whose virtue became suspect? The clan of the assassins attacks the guardians, and Shao leads the fight against them, calling himself "Fifth Dragon." But the assassins really start losing when Ting Tan-yen joins the battle, without explaining why she interceded. She leaves Shao in the care of Fourth Dragon for the time being but later persuades him to let her take Shao to her own domicile. 

On top of all these sturm-and-drang incidents-- Shao finding a new father to replace the dead one, or having his life preserved by the woman who killed both parents-- Fourth Dragon meets the governor, to whom his life is forfeit for losing a precious cargo-- and it's none other than the robber Jin, who is ALSO the head of the assassin-clan. Basically, everything Jin has done has been to advance his clan's power in the region, and he even takes credit for eliminating the Lei family. This may have been an overreach on the author's part, since Jin doesn't seem affiliated with the Killer Bees, who aren't mentioned or seen again after the opening fight. Jin fights and kills both Fourth Dragon and his aide, and then proceeds to his estate, where he uses honeyed words to persuade Qian to marry him. She agrees, wanting to protect her child and grieving because she's been told Shao is dead. 

Now, thus far INTRIGUE hasn't had anything like Hamlet's ghostly father, or even the Devil whom Hamlet half-suspects of having sent the paternal apparition. However, there is a slight sense of passing into another world when Shao is taken to Ting's estate. Ting heals Shao but won't let him leave if he can't beat her in kung fu. He practices continually, but he's unable to up his game. He challenges her anyway, and she punishes him in various ways, which reminded me of the ordeals heroes would undergo from goddesses. (Admittedly the Classical deities didn't make their acolytes swallow hot coals or suffer having their faces burned). Finally, in contrast to the majority of chopsockies, Ting realizes Shao can't equal her. She feeds him a drink mixed with her own blood, and this empowers him so that he can now destroy Jin and save Qian, even though Ting's implicitly condemned to a loveless existence.

I admit that Shao's quest for vengeance isn't responsible for the deaths of almost all of the principal characters, as Hamlet's quest causes the fall of the Danish court. However, a few times the English translation criticizes Shao's inability to tell good from bad, which is closer to Hamlet than most martial-arts heroes ever come. Shao's overly trusting friendship with Jin makes it possible for the evil plotter to end the lives of the Fourth Dragon family, and (maybe indirectly) those of the Lei Family too. It is a major error when Ting's Killer Bee allies just disappear. In a plot-sense Jin's assassin cult more or less takes the place of the recrudescent bandits, even though Ting clearly does not connect the two in any way when she cuts a bloody swathe through the assassins to protect Shao. While INTRIGUE was no more than a bump in the road of Jackie Chan's ascension to international success, it does deserve to be better known as one of the few kung-fu films to possess some psychological depth. I haven't seen all the films in Hsu Feng's repertoire, but I doubt any other role she played came close to that of the tormented Ting Tan-Yen.