Taiwan Black Movies Part 1

Introduction:

The following is based upon an online, free-to-watch streaming festival from the Anthology Film Archive, which screened between the 2nd to the 15th December 2020¹. This multi-part review as a result, covering five films and a documentary, is as much a time capsule, a diary, to remember this event as it is a review covering these films.

Attempting to review the documentary Taiwan Black Movies (2005), a production by Hou Chi-Jan about an hour or so long about a period of Taiwanese genre films made from 1979 to 1982/3, will be difficult to review fully for me personally. Talking head documentaries for me are difficult as they are very much analytical pieces, talking to figures from this era and film critics, but it is a great guide to these films, a cultural landmark that was entirely unknown to me. Sadly, it was not appreciated and rediscovered until a time later, having to be preserved from immensely damaged materials in many cases, a hindrance in a 4k fixated world for cultural growth. Taiwan Black Movies does point out that, from first film being Never Too Late to Repent (1979), they were made as pulp, enticing with lurid content particularly in terms of female nudity, but they had much more in hindsight in their meaning.

******

 

The Challenge of the Lady Ninja (1983)

Director: Tso Nam Lee

Screenplay: Hsin-Yi Chang and Hsin Wei

Cast: Hui-Shan Yang, Kuan Tai Chen, Yun-Peng Hsiang, Yi-Tao Chang, Ying-Chi Chang, Kai-Chun Chen, Sung Young Chen, Yi-Chun Chiang

 

What, a whore can't love her country?

Contextually the first of these films I saw may seem an outlier to that introduction, as it is closer to something I am very familiar with, as The Challenge of the Lady Ninja is not only a martial arts film, but belonging to a type I have bought old second hand DVDs of countless times in my past. Not just Godfrey Ho films but the many martial arts films which have always been a huge market, made in this era not only in Hong Kong but in countries like South Korea and Taiwan. This could have easily appeared on one of those DVDs, its premise a clear one - in a period setting, in the midst of the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, the opening scene has a figure named Li Tong betray his country for the Japanese imperial army, his uncle being killed. This slain man's daughter Xiaohui, learning the gifts of the Iga ninja clan in Japan whilst this is happening, returns to her home for revenge and patriotism.

This patriotic side, where she joins the Anti-Traitor Squad against Li Tong and his four unconventional bodyguards, does develop a new meaning when you learn, as documented in Taiwan Black Movies, the Taiwanese genre films started borrowing ideas from "patriotism" films to avoid controversy in their more explicit content. Despite a lead taught magic Japanese ninjutsu, from a ninja clan who do not discriminate against a Chinese woman good enough to pass their ultimate text, and oppose militarism contrary to their country's behaviour, as a result of this tone we end up with a film very anti-Japanese at least in them being moustache twirling villains. It definitely feels out of place among a movement which pushed for "social realist" genre films, but again one has to be reminded these were still genre films to sell. The evocation of Godfrey Ho, who is held as a notorious director, is not an insult as not only are the coloured smoke bombs used through something he (and the films by his frequent producer  Joseph Lai) was obsessed with especially in his infamous cut-and-paste ninja films, but one evokes the pure manic unpredictability of lower budget martial arts films particularly from their group, the sound effects of swords clashing enough in themselves to evoke the numerous I have binged in over the years.

Xiaohu's final test in her introduction does immediate shown this - spinning to change your red ninja costume to a pink bikini to seductively win over four male ninja, only for this to be an illusion that explodes; fake hand decoys to chop off; shadow clones; even a final part which involves an actual puzzle, of acquiring the prize out of a tube too long to reach by hand. Throughout the film you can suddenly have tangents involving unexpected techniques and fights transpiring: a moment requiring someone having to be poisoned involved letting the woman tasked to the job of seducing have multiple back up contingencies and even poisoned fake front teeth, and the final fight even includes the act of spinning deep into the ground and charge your opponent under the soil like a giant mole. The main conceit as well is that, with emphasis on the men being doubtful the women are able to get the job done, Xiaohui not only disproves them by training a small band of women, including Zhi Zhi the sex worker and an acrobat, but that they are better at the job, especially after training. Said training, involving painful limb stretching exercises with ropes pulling one's limbs, to seduction training, where using editing the women can create seductive illusions of themselves that can also explode, feels just on the sane side of a type of cinema which, to use a Godrey Ho example from one of his films, where he had a lead learn to be a better martial artist by kicking mirrors.

Li Tong's bodyguards are a trope in martial arts cinema themselves, of figures with distinct abilities from a female fighter, or a man armed with a razor sharp boomerang and net, to the most prominent, a man with a sky blue scorpion tattoo that goes down from his bald head to where his eyebrows should be like they are painted on. The four even get, long after their introductions shots, out of time against black, footage showing their techniques fighting people. The film does become conventional as it goes along, which is Lady Ninja's biggest flaw but not one which does any real damage to the film, merely that there is a bit of predictability among what is the more overtly genre structured film of those I saw.

Even if set in, say, the nineteen forties the hair and the headbands are of the eighties, and undeniably this was a film made to entertain, a film that can abruptly include a fight scene between two women in an oil filled ring, which does have a kinky edge in their leotards until it gets ugly and violent, and plenty of deeply silly material trying to side with a film meant to be taken seriously as there is drama in these characters fighting a force in the Japanese Imperial Army which is all powerful. You see the tug and pull between what this movement was here as, undeniably, this production was entirely for entertainment, some of which is just lurid, but also means we have the sense of unpredictability from these martial arts films that I grew to enjoy amongst these production issues.

*******

Woman Revenger (1981)

a.ka. The Nude Body Case in Tokyo

Director: Yang-Ming Tsai

Screenplay: Chen Kuo Tai and Chen-hsiang Tai

Cast: Hui-Shan Yang, Te-Kai Liu, Sha Ma, Emily Y. Chang, Yi-Fung Lu

Woman Revenger also feels part of the films closer to pulp then this movement's shift to "social realist" genre films, belaying an attempt of mirroring a world where, when made, Taiwan was experiencing political upheavals in the late seventies to the early eighties, from the United States officially ending their relationship with Taiwan, to much more severe concerns such as protests and even the murder of Lin Yi-hsiung, a leader of the democratic movement, and his family in February 1980. for their politics. This feels closer instead to a film like Girls' Concentration Camp (1983) which, with the trailer shown in Taiwan Black Movies, sounds in premise exactly as it sounds.

To Woman Revenger's defence, it is still prominent, with the same lead Hui-Shan Yang as in Lady Ninja, how it still emphasises strong female characters even with the nudity and violence. Also with its set up emphasises the notion of many of these genre films of "de-Taiwanisation", in which the lead Lingling comes to Japan after a friend from when they were orphans at the Sacred Heart Orphangae was killed by the underworld after acquiring money for the orphanage from them. This was where these films deliberately avoided cultural symbolism or landmarks which directly evoked the country, in being based in other countries in the plot (like The Challenge of the Lady Ninja (1983)) or here setting and shooting the film in Japan, with Lingling trying to rescue her late friend's younger sister Meifeng from criminals who are after the drugs her older sister is said to have ran off with. Quite a bit of tourism on film is seen as a result, be it a scene near Mt. Fuji or live footage of a real sumo wrestling show, which makes this a vast contrast to Lady Ninja's anti-Japanese tone.  The most elaborate use, the first, is actually one of the most creative scenes when Meifeng is first being tracked down, shot in the midst of a huge real crowd of people in the middle of urban Japan, vast and as far as one's eyes can see with a cacophony of music and sound.  It is a fascinating piece of verité in what you see, from retro rockabilly dancers, young Japanese men and women dressed as American fifties bikers and in dresses performing rock n roll dancing, eighties shell suits, and four guys as a cheap makeshift KISS, with the band's makeup on, heads through a giant black cloth all of them are holding up as they have tiny little puppet bodies with instruments attacked under their heads.

I see the film actually being influenced by the Japanese films of the decade before, even if with some nuisances are missed, such as a scene of attempted hara-kiri where a gangster (played by a non-Japanese actor speaking Mandarin) just plunges the blade into the stomach (only to be stopped) without any of the ritual found in Japanese pulp films. Especially when very late on, when the lead has her eye stabbed out, this feels like the result of a film like Lady Snowblood (1973) getting imported to Taiwan, including such scenes as one in the snow, after an attempt at a kidnap while women are bathing in a small room, or how the setup for the film is the lead's friend being murdered in a giant bathhouse.  One thing that Taiwan Black Movies also clarified is that, with a set piece of Lingling winning Meifeng's freedom briefly with a game of dice, using inner strength to crack a die, is that it was surfing a trend when "piles of gambling films" by 1982 were being made, to the point that it became a concern in terms of moral indecency.

These moral guardians would have likely blushed at the nudity, or a woman being held upside down on a wooden cross, with the legs outwards, with honey and ants on the legs with the poor actress involved having real ants on her. Such moments are a reminder that a couple of these films were clearly shot for less than high minded content, which will be a concern for many modern viewers. This does become a conventional crime film with some fight scenes eventually too, about an evil prostitution ring and Lingling trying to rescue Meifeng, but I have softened to this film too as an example of unpredictable, lurid pulp. Any film where a male gangster gets a comeuppance, in the docks in one of the containers stacked up high, by having a gold snake slid under his gold thong is distinct at least. It does get interesting by the climax when you have a band of women being created to finally defeat the villains, a striking image even with the titillation when you have them with blades, wearing white bikinis closer to gauze, getting revenge on a crime leader in his lounge. Especially when it comes to the tragic ending - [Major Spoiler] when the lead is arrested for finally getting revenge, the final shot with the "End" title over a close-up of handcuffs on her wrists [Spoilers End] - alongside how it has the melancholic song playing over the images, this does get a lot right in terms of this type of filmmaking even if it is also predictable.

To Be Continued...

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1) The online festival, whilst closed, thankfully still has its introduction text up HERE.