In 1970, Shaw Brothers studios released the groundbreaking action/martial arts film Vengeance!, featuring up-and-coming stars Ti Lung and David Chiang and directed by the visionary auteur Chang Cheh. Collectively known as the “Iron Triangle,” these three collaborated on many crowd-pleasing, critically acclaimed martial arts films for the studio in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Vengeance! was one of their earliest and most satisfying efforts.
A brief history of Shaw Brothers helps to put the film in perspective. In 1957, film producer Run Run Shaw moved his business from Singapore to Hong Kong, and he formed a new company officially known as Shaw Brothers (Hong Kong) Ltd. In 1961, he set up a studio in Clearwater Bay called Movietown. Shaw Brothers began producing popular films in various genres, including romance, thrillers, drama, historical epics, Huangmei opera, and martial arts. Martial arts films, known as wuxia, were often based on popular novels and earlier films that were already familiar to the Chinese audience, and these tales of heroic swordsmen and swordswomen became extremely popular and profitable. Shaw Brothers soon became the premiere Chinese-language movie studio in the world.
Run Run Shaw was an astute businessman, and he admired the craft (and financial success) of the Japanese film industry, especially their action movies of the 1960s. One Japanese studio in particular, Nikkatsu, was producing a string of hard-hitting, impactful movies that became known as “borderless action” films. These filmmakers drew on various influences, including their own Japanese traditions of samurai films and the associated aesthetics, mixing in elements of American westerns and film noirs and the distinctive trappings of Italian westerns and gangster films. All of that was combined with the vibe of rebellious and disaffected youth, from James Dean and Marlon Brando in the 1950s to the global counterculture youth movement of the 1960s.
Such Japanese stars as Joe Shishido and Shintaro Katsu, Americans Clint Eastwood, Steve McQueen, and James Coburn, Italians Franco Nero and Giuliano Gemma, and many others regularly portrayed alienated, cooler-than-cool, tough-guy anti-heroes, and these films became increasingly popular throughout the 1960s. This cinematic trend was not lost on Shaw Brothers. Along with the iconic character traits, story themes, and cinematic techniques from the action films of Japan, Shaw Brothers even brought in Japanese cinematographer Yukio Miaki (billed as Kung Mu-To.) Miaki brought in his considerable experience from the cutting edge of Japanese film and television production, and he notably advanced the use of hand-held camera shots to accentuate the action scenes in numerous Shaw productions, including Vengeance!
In 1967 Shaw Brothers director Chang Cheh broke new ground with his landmark film The One-Armed Swordsman, starring the charismatic Jimmy Wang Yu. Moving away from the more restrained and traditional swordplay stories that Shaw Brothers had focused on earlier in the decade (often with female heroines), Chang instead concentrated on hyper-masculine characters who were often alienated, angst-ridden youths cast out from polite society. They lived by a code of honor, of heroic loyalty to their sworn brothers–and for them, death was infinitely preferable to compromising their values. Onscreen, the action became increasingly visceral and bloody.
As the 1960s gave way to the 70s, the creativity of Shaw Brothers studio went into overdrive, and nowhere was that more obvious than in their 1970 film Vengeance! Set in an unnamed “City in China” in 1925, Vengeance! takes place in the turbulent political climate of China between the fall of the Qing dynasty (1911) and the nation-rending civil war fought between the Nationalists and the Communists (1927-1950). This period was often called the “warlord” era, as many areas of the country were under the control of semi-autonomous strongmen who commanded their own private military forces. This was a time of tumultuous political and military conflict, with ever-shifting alliances and loyalties. As one warlord of the era noted, China at that time was “a country without a system; anarchy and treason prevail everywhere. Betraying one’s leader has become as natural as eating one’s breakfast.” This is the world which the characters of Vengeance! inhabit.
The opening of Vengeance! shows a Peking opera performance by Guan Yulo (Shaw star Ti Lung). Acting onstage, he’s portraying a brave, doomed character challenged by numerous assailants, and despite his impressive martial arts skills, he meets a violent onstage demise. While the performance is taking place, gangster Feng Kai Shan (noted Shaw character actor Ku Feng) is making his moves backstage on Yulo’s beautiful wife, who’s also an opera actor. Far from being resistant, she’s more than receptive to the gangster’s affection. Yulo is well aware of what’s going on, and he’s not happy. He pays a visit to the gangster’s martial arts school, and after smashing their school’s wooden sign, he proceeds to deliver a violent beat-down to everyone present. He makes it clear to all that his martial arts skills extend beyond the opera’s theatrics.
The gangsters don’t take this threat to their power lightly, and they subsequently plot a teahouse ambush of the actor. Upon his entrance to the establishment, a disguised gang of hatchet and knife-wielding thugs attack the unsuspecting Yulo. He makes a valiant effort to defend himself, but in the end, he can’t withstand their brutal and relentless assault–and he meets a gruesomely violent end. In a brilliant bit of editing, the film cuts back and forth between Guan Yulo’s theatrical death on stage and his actual demise at the hands of the gang. We see the curtain close on the stage show in silence, and we understand his real-life fate.
Guan Yulo, however, had a brother named Guan Xiaolo (Shaw star David Chiang), also an opera performer and a skilled martial artist. He was performing in the south, but upon hearing of his brother’s murder, he returns to the unnamed city in the north and is out for revenge. All the gangsters in town know of his arrival, and they’re all preparing for him. His only ally is his good-hearted former flame Zhengfang (Wang Ping), and the girl’s father. Zhengfang is, in fact, the sister of his late brother’s wife, so she’s intimately familiar with everyone involved in his brother’s death.
After his own investigation and several violent encounters with the gangsters, Xiaolo determines that the one who orchestrated his brother’s murder was the warlord Hu. While plotting his revenge, Xiaolo is approached by Hu’s second-in-command, Jin Zhi Quan. Jin also wants Hu killed, so that he can take his position. As warlord Hu has eight tough, knife-wielding bodyguards, Jin needs the skilled Xiaolo to take them out before the warlord can be killed. Jin offers to set up an ambush where Xiaolo can take his revenge and ultimately kill warlord Hu, and Xiaolo agrees.
In reality, Jin is planning a double-cross, and he’s hired a sniper to kill Xiaolo after Xiaolo has killed warlord Hu. In an added twist, perfectly in line with the character, we see that perhaps Xiaolo fully knows he will be double-crossed, but that won’t deter him. When Jin offers him money for his task and says he can have a bright future, Xiaolo responds, “I don’t dream of a bright future.” Indeed, in his poignant farewell to Zhengfang and her father, they intuitively suspect he won’t return.
In the epic, monumental final fight, white-suited Xiaolo takes out a virtual army of villains in brutal hand-to-hand and knife combat, including both warlord Hu and his duplicitous underling Jin. In the process, however, Xiaolo is mortally wounded, and his blissful future with Zhengfang is not to be. In his final moments, he has a flashback to a pleasant time he shared with his brother in the golden days of the past, when the future seemed bright and limitless.
Vengeance! showcases, perhaps better than any other film of the Shaw Brothers’ oeuvre, the unique influence that gave Chinese martial arts films their distinct character: the colorful and vibrant tradition of the Peking Opera. Long before the advent of the motion picture, the Chinese had been performing stories of valiant warriors, lovelorn maidens, doomed heroes, and tragic love affairs onstage since the 17th century. The stage show’s bright costumes, distinctly dynamic and archetypal characters, and acrobatic martial arts choreography were well suited for translation to film. Director Chang Cheh was a huge fan of (and an authority on) Peking Opera, and it’s certainly no coincidence that many of the greatest Hong Kong martial arts stars, most notably Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan, and Yuen Biao, all came from an opera background.
Noted screenwriter Ni Kuang, working behind the scenes, is perhaps one of the most unheralded stars of Shaw Brothers films. Fleeing from the tyranny of the communist mainland (by his own account, he had been tasked with writing death sentences for those who ran afoul of the Chinese Communist Party), he fled to Hong Kong. Subsequently, he became an incredibly prolific and influential writer. Along with his well-loved science fiction novels, he wrote an astounding number of brilliant, nuanced screenplays for Shaw Brothers. His stories often reflected traditional Confucian, Buddhist, and Taoist values and his own anti-communist sentiments, where he emphasized the heroism of the individual who, above all else, was true to his own moral conscience and code of honor. In Ni Kuang’s writings, it was of little concern to the hero if his values conflicted with the powers-that-be and society at large; his code would not be compromised, even at the cost of his own life. In a stroke of genius, Ni Kuang penned a script for Vengeance! where the Peking Opera is not simply an influence but is, in fact, a central element of the story.
The influence of the Peking Opera on many kung fu films of the 1970s is obvious; the intricate and theatrical choreography and extended fights, drawn directly from the opera tradition, are prominent features of the movies. In Vengeance!, however, director Chang Cheh utilizes a more subtle approach. With the quick cuts between the opera performance and the real-life combat, the viewer is instead presented with the stark contrast between the aesthetically pleasing, flowing, and fluid pantomime of stage combat and the ugly, brutal, bloody fighting of the forlorn characters in the film.
The opera influence extended to Vengeance! In other ways, as well. Director Chang Cheh had a penchant for showing his heroic characters, after fighting off a bevy of foes, ultimately dying by disembowelment; this comes directly from the opera The Battle of Jie Pai Guan, in which a red sash worn by the doomed character symbolizes just such a fate. The white suit of David Chiang in the film is also a direct reference to the traditional costumes of many wusheng (martial) characters of the opera.
Several techniques are effectively used in Vengeance! to accentuate the differing aspects of Xiaolo’s life. The central musical theme (from prolific Shaw Brothers composer Wang Fu Ling) is an eerie, seething, tension-filled piece that would not be out of place in a Hammer horror film. The action scenes are further emphasized by a dramatic riff lifted directly from John Barry’s score from the James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Yet in Xiaolo’s subdued romantic and reflective scenes with the beautiful, sensitive Zhengfang, the score effectively shifts to a melancholy, jazzy, muted trumpet or marimba. Similarly, the scenes of intimacy and tenderness are often shot in dim, warm light and shadows. In contrast, the action scenes are brightly lit with vivid colors–particularly the crimson hues of the spurting blood. The viewer can’t help but feel that for Xiaolo, the peaceful, loving future with Zhengfang is only a hazy, wistful dream, and his brutal, violent doom is the stark, inevitable reality.
The widescreen aspect ratio of Shaw Brothers films of this era, their bright primary colors, the hyper-intense action, and the judicious use of slow-motion lend an epic, other-worldly feel to stories such as Vengeance! The angst-ridden, archetypal characters and their exaggerated combat do not exist in the real world, and we, the viewers, are not meant to think otherwise. This is mythology, pure and simple. We experience all the drama and symbolism of a Greek epic or Shakespearean tragedy, presented in a contemporary Chinese setting and displayed in the vivid, glorious color of 1970s Shawscope.
Vengeance! was one of the first modern martial arts movies to step away from the traditional sword fighting and period settings of the costumed wuxia films that were so popular and prevalent in the 1960s. With its modern Republic-era setting and its focus on brutal, distinctly non-glamorous hand-to-hand combat and knife fighting, it helped set the stage for a new style of kung fu movies in the 1970s–and it directly paved the way for the worldwide success of films such as Bruce Lee’s Fist of Fury. Chang Cheh would revisit many of these themes and images a couple of years later in his hit film The Boxer From Shantung, and one of the assistants on that film was a young John Woo. Woo would further develop many of these ideas and aesthetics in his “heroic bloodshed” films starring Chow Yun-fat, such as A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, and Hard Boiled.
At the 16th Asian Film Festival in Jakarta in 1970, Vengeance! earned star David Chiang a well-deserved Best Actor award, and Chang Cheh was named best director. Affectionately dubbed “the godfather of kung fu films,” Chang Cheh directed nearly a hundred martial arts movies, many groundbreaking and highly influential. Vengeance! ranks among the best of his efforts, and any fans of martial arts cinema would be well-advised to seek out this visceral, nuanced, and influential film.