Eureka is really catching me up on Lo Wei. When I first got into Hong Kong films, I only knew him as the director of Bruce Lee vehicles and the one who tried to make Jackie Chan the next Bruce Lee. Those were regrettable but he did some good work I’m glad to discover again. Martial Law collects three of his Shaw Brothers movies.
The Black Butterfly (Chiao Chiao) is a bandit so it’s more about her sneaking around gracefully, and she has some neat tricks and wire assisted jumps. When she fights, it’s a little more basic but still entertaining how she outsmarts and evades armies of guards.
The targets of Black Butterfly also set tons of booby traps to catch her and other parties. So it’s a cross between House of Traps and 36th Chamber of Shaolin too.
Death Valley is the most traditional Shaw Brothers movie of the trio. A master has died leaving a swordsman (Chen Hung-lieh) to avenge him. It gets complicated with the swordsman getting mistaken for the heir (Yueh Hua) but it all leads to lots of group fights with various weapons and trained performers.
Vengeance of a Snow Girl is either great or terrible for representation. Shen Ping-Hung (Ching Lee) walks on crutches and uses them as weapons. It makes her fights unique and includes a lot of high jumps. It also adds to the wuxia mythos of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon style flying as a compensation for her earthbound disability.
We wouldn’t use the C-word to describe disability now. That’s a translation anyway, though there is history of Shaw Brothers using it, sometimes even in the titles of their movies. Whatever the intentions, it distinguishes the action from other generic Shaw Brothers movies.
Since all three of these are Shaw Brothers movies, they look as good as the Shawscope sets: Bright, vivid colors in their lush studio sets and outdoor locations.
Mike Leeder and Arne Venema really help with their commentaries. Ching and Chiao especially were new to me so I was glad to learn more about them, but also Lo’s career outside of the major films I knew. They do address the depiction of disability in Snow Girl.
Wayne Wong explains Lo’s style vs. other Shaw directors in a video essay on the Snow Girl disc.