Ying is perhaps most known for her role in Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon, but she starred in over thirty other films in the 1970s and 1980s. A former student of the Peking Opera and a martial artist, Ying’s physical talents carried her to stardom. Shout! put together a double feature DVD release that contains two of her movies that I don’t believe have ever been released on DVD before. These are both from 1972, and are Lady Whirlwind and Hapkido. Both films were created by Golden Harvest and feature Ying as a skilled fighter, but she also shares the stage with very capable co-stars like the great Sammo Hung, Carter Huang, Pai Ying, and Chang Yi. Between the two, I enjoyed Hapkido more, but Lady Whirlwind is entertaining as well.
In Lady Whirlwind, Ying plays a fighter named Tien who is seeking revenge for the death of her sister. She’s trying to track down Ling (Chang Yi), the man that left her pregnant sister, which she believes resulted in her sister committing suicide. At the outset of the film, Ling is being beaten to death by a group of corrupt gang members. This gang, or syndicate, runs opium dens, gambling houses, and a variety of other shady businesses. Their influence is growing, and the locals are suffering because of it. Ling, left for dead, is discovered by another girl who takes him into the forest where he heals and trains for three years. When Tien arrives looking for Ling, the local syndicate members take notice because they believe Ling to be dead. Instead, Ling has been preparing himself to exact revenge on the syndicate while simultaneously dismantling their corrupt operation. Tien could care less about his noble endeavor, but reluctantly agrees to let Ling try and get his revenge first, before she gets hers.
Lady Whirlwind has a pretty good story but it does tip-toe around some pace-breaking dramatic scenes that feel a little forced and perhaps unnecessary. There is also a point roughly three-quarters of the way through where it seems like the movie is about to end before a new angle is introduced that is somewhat jarring. In it, Ling helps an old man who has been bitten by a poisonous snake. In return, the old man teaches Ling the God Palm Tai Chi, which in practical fighting terms means he can literally knife-hand his way through an opponent’s flesh for a deathblow. Overall, the fight choreography is alright, but certainly shy of greatness. Many of the fight scenes are one versus many, which is usually good, but the ‘block once, hit once’ formula wears thin. Some of the deeper fights, like those between Tien and Ling or against the syndicate bosses, are more intricate and interesting, but even these aren’t all that memorable. Additionally, wires are used too much in the fights to create physics-defying motions that are awkward and unnecessary given that the physical talents of the actors. There are a lot of fight scenes at least, which is the biggest reason I watch “kung fu” movies anyway, but again the quality of these fight scenes isn’t stellar.
Hapkido on the other hand does have better quality fight scenes, with Ying doing a great job as did Sammo Hung and Carter Huang and the other lead roles. There are a lot of the “throwaway” fight scenes in which a bunch of Japanese martial arts students are knocked down like bowling pins by Ying, Hung, or Huang, but the “boss” fights are quite good. Anyway, the story in Hapkido has three skilled Hapkido students (Ying, Hung, and Huang) departing Korea to return to China to start a Hapkido dojo. They come in peace, reaching out to neighboring schools to introduce themselves and promote comradery, but the Black Bear dojo, a Japanese run school, won’t have it. The Japanese at this time are threatening to take over Korea, China, and more of Asia, and the sense of entitlement has gotten to the Black Bear dojo to the point where they all behave as outlaws. A fierce rivalry between the three Hapkido fighters and the Black Bears ensues, playing itself out across many fights including several to the death. Hapkido has a tighter, more captivating story than Lady Whirlwind, and its fight scenes are also more entertaining, too. It’s the better movie of the two, yet both are perfect for a quick “kung fu movie” fix, and it’s convenient that both films are on the same disc.
I thought Shout! did a fine job putting this release together. For collectors, just having these two films on DVD alone would have been worth the price of admission, but the 2:35:1 widescreen with mostly-clean image quality presentation is a plus. Stereo audio for original Mandarin and the dubbed English audio are present for Lady Whirlwind, while Hapkido has 5.1 Mandarin and English tracks. Both films have English subtitles. I watched each movie with subtitles only and partly with the English dub track enabled. The latter method can be outright confusing or amusing depending on how you look at it, given the often significant difference between what the subs say and what you hear. Anyone who enjoys this genre is used to those oddities though, so it’s not hard to look past. Similarly, these films are pretty old, roughly forty years now, and their image quality does waiver some. Hapkido was a more consistent and cleaner watch than Lady Whirlwind, but both have their flaws but these are rare enough as to not greatly detract from the viewing experience.
To my surprise, both films have extra features, too. For Lady Whirlwind, it’s not much, but you will get optional “English Opening Titles,” whereby the first two or so minutes of the movie (i.e., the opening credits) are presented in English. There is also a nearly four minute vintage trailer in Mandarin, and a one-and-a-half minute trailer for the American release of the movie, in which the movie was renamed, embarrassingly, as Deep Thrust. Hapkido’s features include three American TV spots running about three minutes total, and one original trailer lasting over three minutes. Plus, there are some interviews that are actually quite candid and interesting. I’m not sure when these interviews were conducted, but if I had to guess I would say over ten years ago.
The first interview is with Angela Mao Ying herself. It runs about seventeen minutes, in which she talks about some of her films, her time at the Peking Opera House, meeting and working with Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, the one time she was almost going to get robbed but protected herself by kicking her attacker, and other biographical tidbits. It’s an interesting interview that’s well worth a watch.
The second one also runs about seventeen minutes and is with Carter Huang, who played one of the three Hapkido students in Hapkido, which was actually his first film. Before signing on with Golden Harvest and doing Hapkido, he was training police in Hong Kong. He too met and worked with Bruce Lee a little bit, and the interview shows three really neat still images of Huang and Bruce that I had never seen before.
Interview number three lasts just over nine minutes and has Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao. Sammo does most of the talking, in English by the way, as they reminisce about growing up in the opera school, including a story whereby Jackie Chan and Sammo got into a fight over “twenty cents” (apparently Sammo won) when they were all very young. While worth ten minutes, its not a terribly interesting interview, but it’s nice to have included in this release.
And with that, let’s get to the summary…
