|
|
|
The Daredevils & Ode to Gallantry: Limited Edition
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Eureka Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (17th March 2025). |
|
The Film
 "During his long and industrious career, the “Godfather of Hong Kong Cinema” Chang Cheh made several films with the celebrated “Venom Mob,” a group of skilled martial arts performers – including Lu Feng, Chiang Sheng, Philip Kwok, Sun Chien, Lo Mang, and Wai Pak – who rose to fame as the stars of his own Five Deadly Venoms. Here, Eureka Classics presents two of the Venom Mob’s best: The Daredevils and Ode to Gallantry." The Daredevils are Chen Feng (Crippled Avengers' Chiang Sheng), Fu Quan-yi (Masked Avengers' Lu Feng), Xin Cheng (The Kid with the Golden Arm's Sun Chien), and Liang Guo-ren (Hard Boiled's Phillip Kwok), members of a failing security company who have turned their martial arts skills to street performing and thievery to survie while letting Guo-ren's father (Corpse Mania's Walter Tso) believe they are honing the "old fashioned" martial arts that have been the tradition of their school for generations. When old friend and former fellow pupil Ying Da-ying (The Brave Archer's Lo Meng) appears and reveals that his commander father ('s Wang Han-Chen) and brother ('s Hsiao Yu) have been massacred along with the rest of his family in a military coup by bandit Han Pei-chang (Bastard Swordsman's Wong Lik) with the backing of the region's Field Marshall, however, the quartet balks at helping Da-ying avenge his family in a battle of five against an army of ten-thousand, not to mention skilled fighter Han's own personal and especially deadly bodyguards Yuan (The Bride with White Hair's Tony Tam), Yang (Island of Fire's Yang Hsiung), and Zhen ('s Yu Tai-Ping). When they later hear of a failed assassination attempt against Han who had the bullet-riddled body of the culprit hung in the village square, the four decide that avenging their brother will require more cunning than brawn. Robbing the local army depot of yet-uncirculated German-made guns, Quan-yi arrives in the region with Guo-ren as his envoy along with Cheng and Feng as his bodyguards, gifting Han some German pistols through go-between Chief of Staff Xu (The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires' Chan Shen) as a prelude to a larger arms deal and letting the ambitious Xu make the assumption that Quan-yi must be the Field Marshal's son arranging another coup of the forces of Deputy Zhang (The Mighty Peking Man's Ng Hong-Sang) which would mean promotions for both Xu and Han. Through a fraught series of meetings and exchanges of gifts, they earn Han's and Xu's trust, maneuvering them into a trap using a hidden cache of weapons as bait. Although the glory days of the likes of The One Armed Swordsman were behind both Shaw Brothers and director Chang Cheh – thanks to the departure of Jimmy Wang Yu, Golden Harvest's Bruce Lee hits, and Jackie Chan in the wings – Chang maintained a powerful position at the studio, allowing him to continue making pictures of large scale and scope for the studio and to experiment. In the mid-seventies, he created the film performing troupe the Five Venoms who made their debut in Five Deadly Venoms and would appear in roughly thirty loosely-related films over the next decade. Although there were occasional substitutions, the primary quintet consisted of Feng, Chien, Kwok, Meng and Wai Pak ( The Young Master) who would leave and be replaced by Chiang Sheng while regular villain Wong Lik was considered the unofficial sixth venom. With various boutique labels on both sides of the Atlantic raiding the Fortune Star catalogue of Shaw remasters, the Five Venoms series of films is scattered across labels and throughout Shaw box sets – mostly organized by the availability of restorations rather than specific genres, themes, stars, or directors – so The Daredevils is neither Eureka's introduction to the Five Venoms (that being the historical adventure Marco Polo in the Horrible History: Four Historical Epics by Chang Cheh) nor is it a particularly good entry in the loose series. The revenge plot line is old hat, although the slightly more contemporary setting is novel, but it drags by following up a riveting fight to the death scene of one man against four fighters and multiple armed soldiers with extended acrobatics displays – the way the music cues seem to either repeat themselves or simply restart contributes of the monotony – and the the warehouse finale better earns its extended length but its brutality and suspense are undermined severely by the showiness of the acrobatics which only occasionally seem like clever and effective countermoves to the special skills of each of the villains. More effective are the meetings between Han and his intermediaries and Guo-ren and his buddies, the preoccupation with protocol, affectations of privilege, and such extremes as introductions that include frisking and meals that must be tested for poison simultaneously poke fun at the gullibility of the villains and the veracity of the self-importance of type of people the heroes are playing. While the unevenness of tone is not very prime Chang Cheh – check out his early Shaw works like The Singing Thief for more variety as a jobbing director – the homoerotic aspect seems more pronounced here with Da-ying attempting to catch Han unawares at night in his assassination attempt so he and his bodyguards are fighting shirtless and Da-ying's shirt is eventually shredded, and three of the Venoms sport deep-necked acrobatic tights for the extended final confrontation.  Ode to Gallantry: Having wandered off the mountaintop in search of his mother, Mongrel (Phillip Kwok) tries to beg for some food and ends up in the middle of a fight between the Zhan-ye gang and Wu Daotong (Doctor Vampire's Jamie Luk) over the Black Iron Token which winds up between Mongrel's teeth secreted in a pancake. The MacGuffin is a prize that its fearful Master Xie Yan-ke (Wong Lik) lets rival schools fight to the death before he administers rewards and punishments – including death – every three years, and the Zhan-ye gang are desperate to get their hands on it before he kills them for not repenting for their bad deeds. When Xie snatches it away, Shi Qing (Rendezvous with Death's Tang Ching) points out that Xie must grant a favor to the possessor of the token, hoping that Mongrel will ask for an end to Xie's practice. Xie, however, knowing that he cannot kill Mongrel until he makes his request, spirits him away. Shi Qing and his wife Guan Rou (To Kill a Mastermind's Lau Wai-Ling), however, are preoccupied searching for their son Shi Zhong-yu who is also being hunted by the Xueshen school for seducing and abandoning the daughter of one of their elders who then committed suicide. Shi Qing promises find his son and bring him to justice is the charges are true. What neither party know is that Zhong-yu is the twenty-year-old chief of the Zhan-ye gang and they too are searching for him hoping that he will take responsibility for their wrongdoings and sacrifice himself to Xie but has gone missing. When they happen upon Mongrel, who out of ignorance and humility rather than cunning has resisted asking Xie a favor and been left to die after Xie harnassed his Yin and Yang to degrees that will kill him if not regulated, they see the striking resemblance between Mongrel and Zhong-yi; whereupon, Zhan-ye's leader Bei (Sun Chien) contrives to substitute him for their leader when Xie comes for a reckoning. Although Mongrel insists that he is not Zhong-yu, everyone else believes that he is, including lovelorn Ding-ding Dang-dang (The Sword Stained with Royal Blood's Candy Wen), the Zhan-ye's housemaid Shijian (Killer Constable's Yau Chui-Ling), and Zhan Fei (Tony Tam) whose wife was raped by Zhong-yi and whose Kaibei Palm strike has inadvertently balanced Mongrel's Yin and Yang, making him near-invincible. His powers combined with the martial arts taught to him by Ding-ding Dang-dang to make him worthy of her cold killer grandfather Ding Busan (Heroes Shed No Tears' Yang Chi-Ching), Mongrel goes from trying to clear up an increasingly complicated case of mistaken identity to trying to set things right when more sinister forces reveal their hand in the chaos. While Lo Meng sits out Ode to Gallantry and Lu Feng worked behind the scenes as a martial arts director, the film is primarily a vehicle for Phillip Kwok in a dual role with support from Sun Chien while Chiang Sheng turns up late in the film for the film's final fight scene. The film is much lighter and more humorous than even The Daredevils and is not unlike some of the other Shaw films of the period like The Bastard Swordsman and Buddha's Palm; although, oddly for a film made by the studio's top tier filmmaker the film's visual effects are far cruder than those of the former films with squiggly hand-drawn animation and gel lighting when characters glow rather than optical composites or multiple exposures. Kwok is more charismatic and charmingly naive performance here than in The Daredevils and in terms of his physical performance, acrobatically dodging blows and fighting defensively even during the exciting climactic fight when he must help and ultimately defend remorseful people who once tried to manipulate him against a trio of supernatural warriors and the ultimate betrayal which pretty much anyone but the characters in this film can see coming from the first bit of flashback backstory. Like The Daredevils, the film's soundtrack makes use of the DeWolfe music library tracks already heard in Dawn of the Dead. While Ode to Gallantry is a better film than its disc companion, it feels more like "Another Shaw Production" than specifically a Chang Cheh film. 
Video
Although The Daredevils was dubbed for export, it was likely only shown theatrically in Mandarin stateside in Shaw's Asian-American theaters while the dubbed version would not turn up until the mid-eighties in World Northal's TV package and was not available in English-friendly form and OAR until 2007 when Hong Kong label Intercontinental Video Limited using Fortune Star's PAL master. The 2020 German Blu-ray came from a newer Fortune Star HD master which was also presumably the "studio master" for Eureka's dual-territory, region A/B-coded 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen Blu-ray – also available in the U.K. – and the presentation is spotless as fitting a Chang Cheh-tier Shaw production shot entirely in the controlled conditions of Shaw backlots and sound stages. Bloody reds and royal blues pop throughout along with the dyed sand in the sequence of one of Han's bodyguards demonstrating his knife skills on a padded opponent. Some Hollywood magic is more apparent in some breakaway glass and bullet-riddled set flats but the acrobatics of the Venoms is real enough to compensate.  Ode to Gallantry was not dubbed for export so an English-friendly version was not accessible until Intercontinental Video's PAL-converted DVD. Eureka's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen Blu-ray is also spotless. The film was also entirely shot in the controlled conditions of Shaw's sound stages and backlots including a familiar mountaintop piece for the climactic palace fight. Colors are richly saturated, including the lighting gels used for the Yin and Yang blue/red glow and some bloodshed which is not as prevalent as in the disc's co-feature. 
Audio
The Daredevils features Mandarin and English LPCM 2.0 mono tracks while Ode to Gallantry only includes Mandarin LPCM 2.0 mono. The tracks sound pretty clean with what first seemed like some digital cleanup artifacts actually turning out to be part of the foley track which is obsessively dedicated to depicting footsteps and tinkling jewelry and wardrobe accents in addition to the fight foley effects. The music track is crisp enough for the Dawn of the Dead tracks to stand out more than in the Romero film where they are more recessed in the mix. Audio is post-dubbed on all tracks and the optional English subtitles appear to be free of errors (although in the context of one dialogue exchange, one wonders if "leave" should have been "live" in Ode to Gallantry). 
Extras
Both films are accompanied by an audio commentary by East Asian film expert Frank Djeng (NY Asian Film Festival) and martial artist and filmmaker Michael Worth and an audio commentary by action cinema experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema. Of The Daredevils, Djeng and Worth discuss the film's Mission: Impossible-esque title sequence and the novelty of a Venom Mob film set with a relatively contemporary setting of the early twentieth century after the fall of Qing Dynasty, with Djeng providing some historical background. They also discuss observations on the perceived homoeroticism of Chang Cheh's films and his comments later in life on male bonding in his films as well as his feelings about homosexuality in general. Although the film on disc only includes Mandarin and English tracks, Djeng reveals that the film was released in Hong Kong with a Cantonese dub while Worth notes Chang Cheh's role in Shaw Brothers and the Hong Kong industry as a whole switching over to post-dubbing since before he was a director, he was in charge of dubbing Shaw's Japanese and Korean imports. Leeder and Venema note that another novelty of the film is having the five primary Venom Mob members as good guys rather than one or two playing supporting villains as in the co-feature. They also discuss male bonding and brotherhood rituals in Chang Cheh's films as well as his responsibility in steering the industry away from Shaw's earlier female-dominated romances, also pointing out the fact that there are absolutely no women in the film apart from extras. They note how screenplays in Hong Kong cinema were primarily templates and that the director liked to observe and incorporate aspects of his actors' real lives into their performances, noting that the street opera performances by the acrobats were indeed what some of the Venoms had been doing to make ends meet when the director discovered them. They discuss some of the Venom Mob cast members, revealing that Kwok had been discovered because his father was Chang Cheh's chauffeur, and that he went from heroic characters in film to comic relief ones when he moved to television. They also provide background on some of the cast including Walter Tso whose catalogued filmography consists of four hundred films – including the long-running black and white Wong Fei Hung film series – and may be even more, as well as the latter day filmography of some of the martial arts actors/stunt performers that included not only Category III films as expected given the studio's trend in the eighties but also actual pornography with titles like Sexual Husband Lover and Dick's Dicks Dicks.  Of Ode to Gallantry, Djeng discusses the serialized source novel by Louis Cha (who also penned the Royal Tramp source novel) and the adaptation by Chang Cheh and novelist Ni Kuang (Dirty Ho) - along with it subsequent film and television adaptations – and some of the fat trimmed including more characters and subplots as well as changes while Worth ponders one of the film's largest plot holes for which Djeng has no explanation; and, indeed, they note that the way the film was edited might make it hard for Western viewers to keep track of the characters that remain. Djeng suggests that no Cantonese or English dubs were prepared for the film because Shaw did not have high hopes for it and only created the Mandarin track to focus on other Southeast Asian territories, revealing that the film only spent six days in the theater in Hong Kong. Leeder and Venema discuss the source novel's acknowledged debts to Shakespeare's comedies of mistaken identity and the film as a "writer's movie" in that it is far more dependent on the script and dialogue to move the film than most Hong Kong films that use the script as a guide. They note the way in which shooting the film entirely in the studio contributes to a sense of wuxia irreality and suggest that Xie himself is the McGuffin rather than the Black Token. They also provide some more background information on the cast including Jamie Luk who started out as an actor and martial artist before moving to directing and apparently does get annoyed when fans bring up Robotrix, The disc also includes "Deadly Venoms" (18:10), an interview with Hong Kong cinema scholar Wayne Wong on the Venom Mob, noting the strengths of each of the participants – while also observing that Lo Meng is usually the one to die first as he does in The Daredevils – their combination of acrobatics and Peking Opera training and the influence of Drunken Master on the use of training montages in the later Venom Mob films. Wong also discusses the generations of Chang Cheh's stars and the use of the Venom Mob actors and their films to explore his recurring themes. 
Packaging
The first pressing of 2,000 copies comes with a limited edition O-Card slipcover featuring new artwork by Chris Malbon and a collector's booklet featuring "The Last Gang in Town: Chang Cheh and the Venom Mob" by writer and critic James Oliver who reveals that the director's reputation at Shaw allowed him to convene the group which was retroactively given a name by fans based on their first film. In discussing the members, he suggests that Wai Pak left the group because the twitches of his Tourette's syndrome made him reluctant to attempt some of the more precarious stunts. He also notes that the ability of each of the members to help design the action scenes compensated for the loss of his regular action director Lau Kar-leung (My Young Auntie) as well as the incorporation of their opera training into their fights. 
Overall
With the filmography of Chang Cheh's "Venom Mob" films scattered throughout boutique label releases, the pairing of The Daredevils and Ode to Gallantry is neither the best or the most representative films for the group but they are a good sampling of the director's attempts to keep up with trends in the industry.
|
|||||
|