BLOODY AVENGERS (1976) is one of a handful of historical kung fu epics directed by Hong Kong master filmmaker Chang Cheh. The focus here is on the 1900 Boxer Rebellion as told from the Chinese point-of-view, in contrast with the 1963 Hollywood film, 55 DAYS AT PEKING, which told the story chiefly from the English and American standpoint.
The three heroes are young men caught up in the fervor of the times who join the Boxers, a cult which claims supernatural powers in its campaign to drive foreigners out of China. The heroes are played by Shaw Bros. kung fu stars Fu Sheng, Chi Kuan-Chun, and Leung Kar Yan (Liang Chia-Jen). Chi Kuan-Chun is the one who is most skeptical of the Boxer leader's claims of invulnerability and warns against attacks on foreign troops without adequate reconnaissance. The sect leader, Li (Wang Lung-Wei), turns a disastrous loss at the hands of the Japanese into a public relations victory that gets embellished as word spreads until the Empress Dowager hears-and believes-an outlandish tale of 9000 Japanese soldiers killed by the Boxers.
The Boxer Rebellion itself occurs offscreen and the rest of the movie involves its aftermath as foreign troops-chiefly Japanese and Russian soldiers-overrun Peking, pillaging, plundering and slaughtering. The heroes fight and kill quite a few soldiers but their efforts ultimately amount to little. At one point, they confront the German officer in charge of all the foreign troops (played by American actor Richard Harrison, a fixture in Italian films of the 1960s and 70s and a handful of Hong Kong films afterwards), who attempts to fence with them, but they let him live, allowing him to release sketches of the two remaining heroes, making it difficult for them to escape the city undetected. The Americans are notably absent from the action until the very end, when a handful show up in Civil War uniforms (!) and take off their hats for the heroes.
The fights are all staged by Liu Chia-Liang, who became a top-notch kung fu director in his own right the same year. For this film he has created a large number of exciting brawls with kung fu used effectively against rifles, bayonets and, in one memorable encounter, a Gatling gun. In addition, there are large-scale battles involving dozens of costumed extras, shot on outdoor Shaw Bros. sets and familiar Hong Kong locations.
The main actors are all at their peak and the rest of the cast is rounded out with familiar faces, including Billy Tang as a Boxer martyr and Gordon Liu in a small part as one of the Boxers. Li-Li Hua plays the Empress Dowager. There are many westerners in the large cast as well, although Harrison is the only name among them. This is an extremely difficult film to find in a good copy; if a new print is ever released in the world market, it will be an occasion of great joy for kung fu and Hong Kong fans everywhere.
ADDENDUM (5/26/08): Since the above review was submitted, the film has been released on Region 3 DVD by Celestial Pictures under its original title, BOXER REBELLION, in its original cut of 137 minutes, roughly 30-45 minutes longer than the version I saw for review, which was an English dub taped off broadcast TV back in the 1980s. The DVD is in Mandarin with English, German, and Japanese characters speaking in their own languages. Without digging my VHS copy out of storage, it would be hard to identify exactly what scenes were cut from the TV broadcast, although I can say with some certainty that there are longer scenes with the Empress Dowager, including a nearly ten-minute scene at the beginning showing her getting ready, step-by-painstaking-step, for an evening's entertainment, all while keeping her ministers, who have important news about the Boxers, waiting. There are also significant scenes with another important woman character, "Master Cai" or "Second Master," played by Hu Chin, who turns out to have once been a lover of the German officer (Richard Harrison) in charge of the Allied occupation of Peking. I don't recall these scenes from the TV version.
The emphasis in this longer cut is less on martial arts or bloody battle scenes than on the whole arc of the disaster caused by the Boxers, from the Empress Dowager's tacit support of them, enabled by lies spread about an outright defeat the Boxers suffered at the hands of the Japanese that became a "victory" in its retelling, to the complete failure, from a military and strategic standpoint, of their attack on the Foreign Legation in Peking, to the pillage of the city by foreign troops in the wake of it. The thread throughout the film is the peculiar devotion of the three brothers, played by Chi Kuan Chun, Alexander Fu Sheng, and Leung Kar Yan, to a cause they see through right at the beginning, one they know is lost, but one they cannot tear away from. Near the end, the two surviving brothers perform a wise and heroic act that saves the lives of many Chinese while putting their own in danger. It's a fascinating film and quite a change of pace from the usual all-star Chang Cheh martial arts spectacle.
The three heroes are young men caught up in the fervor of the times who join the Boxers, a cult which claims supernatural powers in its campaign to drive foreigners out of China. The heroes are played by Shaw Bros. kung fu stars Fu Sheng, Chi Kuan-Chun, and Leung Kar Yan (Liang Chia-Jen). Chi Kuan-Chun is the one who is most skeptical of the Boxer leader's claims of invulnerability and warns against attacks on foreign troops without adequate reconnaissance. The sect leader, Li (Wang Lung-Wei), turns a disastrous loss at the hands of the Japanese into a public relations victory that gets embellished as word spreads until the Empress Dowager hears-and believes-an outlandish tale of 9000 Japanese soldiers killed by the Boxers.
The Boxer Rebellion itself occurs offscreen and the rest of the movie involves its aftermath as foreign troops-chiefly Japanese and Russian soldiers-overrun Peking, pillaging, plundering and slaughtering. The heroes fight and kill quite a few soldiers but their efforts ultimately amount to little. At one point, they confront the German officer in charge of all the foreign troops (played by American actor Richard Harrison, a fixture in Italian films of the 1960s and 70s and a handful of Hong Kong films afterwards), who attempts to fence with them, but they let him live, allowing him to release sketches of the two remaining heroes, making it difficult for them to escape the city undetected. The Americans are notably absent from the action until the very end, when a handful show up in Civil War uniforms (!) and take off their hats for the heroes.
The fights are all staged by Liu Chia-Liang, who became a top-notch kung fu director in his own right the same year. For this film he has created a large number of exciting brawls with kung fu used effectively against rifles, bayonets and, in one memorable encounter, a Gatling gun. In addition, there are large-scale battles involving dozens of costumed extras, shot on outdoor Shaw Bros. sets and familiar Hong Kong locations.
The main actors are all at their peak and the rest of the cast is rounded out with familiar faces, including Billy Tang as a Boxer martyr and Gordon Liu in a small part as one of the Boxers. Li-Li Hua plays the Empress Dowager. There are many westerners in the large cast as well, although Harrison is the only name among them. This is an extremely difficult film to find in a good copy; if a new print is ever released in the world market, it will be an occasion of great joy for kung fu and Hong Kong fans everywhere.
ADDENDUM (5/26/08): Since the above review was submitted, the film has been released on Region 3 DVD by Celestial Pictures under its original title, BOXER REBELLION, in its original cut of 137 minutes, roughly 30-45 minutes longer than the version I saw for review, which was an English dub taped off broadcast TV back in the 1980s. The DVD is in Mandarin with English, German, and Japanese characters speaking in their own languages. Without digging my VHS copy out of storage, it would be hard to identify exactly what scenes were cut from the TV broadcast, although I can say with some certainty that there are longer scenes with the Empress Dowager, including a nearly ten-minute scene at the beginning showing her getting ready, step-by-painstaking-step, for an evening's entertainment, all while keeping her ministers, who have important news about the Boxers, waiting. There are also significant scenes with another important woman character, "Master Cai" or "Second Master," played by Hu Chin, who turns out to have once been a lover of the German officer (Richard Harrison) in charge of the Allied occupation of Peking. I don't recall these scenes from the TV version.
The emphasis in this longer cut is less on martial arts or bloody battle scenes than on the whole arc of the disaster caused by the Boxers, from the Empress Dowager's tacit support of them, enabled by lies spread about an outright defeat the Boxers suffered at the hands of the Japanese that became a "victory" in its retelling, to the complete failure, from a military and strategic standpoint, of their attack on the Foreign Legation in Peking, to the pillage of the city by foreign troops in the wake of it. The thread throughout the film is the peculiar devotion of the three brothers, played by Chi Kuan Chun, Alexander Fu Sheng, and Leung Kar Yan, to a cause they see through right at the beginning, one they know is lost, but one they cannot tear away from. Near the end, the two surviving brothers perform a wise and heroic act that saves the lives of many Chinese while putting their own in danger. It's a fascinating film and quite a change of pace from the usual all-star Chang Cheh martial arts spectacle.