Vengeance!

Released in May 1970, Chang Cheh's Vengeance! occupies its own, distinct, space between the halting nausea of John Boorman's Point Blank and the suited-and-booted vendetta powering a certain British crime film directed by Mike Hodges. Chang's film even seems to anticipate certain elements of that latter piece: both Vengeance! and 1971's Get Carter feature the immaculately tailored brother of a murdered man wading, almost effortlessly, through a nest of small-time crooks while pursued by a deadly sniper. Curiously, Vengeance's Hong Kong cinema release came just three months after the publication of the book Carter was based on, Ted Lewis' Jack's Return Home, so it's conceivable that someone at Shaw Brothers Studio was taking notes on the novel's broad plotting when outlining this feature. All that said, the crisp mod lines of David Chiang's buttoned-up suits - both black and a funereal white - definitively prefigure Carter's luxuriant three-piece. 

Chang uses these outfits to differentiate his stylish subject from the unbuttoned heavies that flank his enemies. They accentuate the actor's lither lines. The contrast is clear: David Chiang is a matinee idol in a sea of unremarkable slobs. Unlike the aforementioned Michael Caine classic, Vengeance! though finds space to detail the killing that incites such a bloody, single-minded response. The film spends time with Ti Lung's Guan Yu Lou, a theatrical performer who believes himself as tough (mostly with good reason) as the Chinese folk heroes he portrays on stage. After tangling with a local mobster over an unfaithful wife, Guan Yu meets a bloody end thanks to the small army of amoral retainers that the crime lord keeps on payroll. Chang and editor Chiang Hsing-Lung employ a sickly dreaminess to describe this killing, drawing a clear line between the death throes of this bloodied brother and the twirling acrobatics of his earlier, operatic, performance. When Ti Lung's character finally submits to the punctures stamped all over his body, Chang inserts a shot of the actor lying dead on stage, the curtains open and appalled before an unmoved audience. 

Revenge in this film then is demonstrably motivated by a collective indifference to the murder of a slighted individual, one who had found himself powerless when attacking the corruption that upholds the establishment. This grudge must then be resolved by the actor's younger, meaner brother. Vengeance!, much like Chang's previous hit The Wandering Swordsman, is comfortable literalising the thoughts that prickle across the minds of these dying men; the fantasies and flights of fancy that hint at a life beyond whichever suicide pact that have, willingly, sunken themselves into. Although Chiang's Guan Xiao Lou proves himself far more capable than his older brother - equalising a feud that, eventually, seems to encompass an entire province's worth of violent belligerents - the end result is no less fatal. Bleeding out, he imagines himself in the company of his older brother, a cheery connection perhaps missing in the lives these men actually lived. This hallucinogenic quality reaches out into the rest of film, even encompasses the depiction of violence. Pivotal maulings are slowed to a crawl, luxuriating in eerie music and ghoulish sound cues that seem to denote an episode of profound mania - an aesthetic flourish, incidentally, copied to great effect to describe the bloodlust felt by Bruce Lee in 1973's Enter the Dragon. 

The Wandering Swordsman

The Wandering Swordsman, directed by Chang Cheh, charts the rambling adventures of David Chiang's eponymous ranger, a lightly supernatural presence in Ming Dynasty era China who combines the altruistic intentions of Robin Hood with a weightless mischief reminiscent of JM Barrie's Peter Pan. There's also something of Toshiro Mifune's sauntering bodyguard about the character too; an expert swordfighter trapped between two equally matched factions. However, where the older (itchier) Yojimbo was able to leverage his spectacular martial arts skills to manipulate his competing troublemakers, Chiang's much younger man is himself hoodwinked and exploited. Although Chang's film takes a significant amount of time getting there, Chiang's rootless swordsman is, eventually, tricked into working alongside a group of dastardly thieves, cast as their difference maker. 

While a litany of disguised officials and treacherous bandits go about their circuitous treasure transportation, director Chang repeatedly returns to a Cheshire Cat image of the smiling Chiang. The actor is photographed in the manner of a pop-star pin-up, his pearly white teeth shining out of the creeping greenery that hangs like a haze over these claustrophobic Shaw Brothers sets. No matter the occasion, Chiang is the subject. This pointed attempt at star making could come off as obnoxious where The Wandering Swordsman less dedicated to chewing up its characters: Bolo Yeung, in his feature film debut, has his face cut in half while the heroic Chiang is skewered more than once, forced to wrench swords from his oozing trunk. Chang and cinematographer Hua Shan stack their frame with layered limbs and glistening weapons, perhaps as a way to generate depth on these stock, artificial locations. The combat sequences that conclude The Wandering Swordsman may be filled with the theatrical twirling and tumbling typical of this period, but Chang's camera doesn't stand apart from the bloody violence. Instead of observing at a discreet distance, our viewpoint rushes headlong into the sparking flurries, making itself a willing participant in the unfolding slaughter.