Tian lang zhai

Two women, Merciless Sword and Pitiless Sword, are hired by the squire to rescue his wife from the bandit fortress. Sek Kin, Scar Face Wolf, is the bandit chief. Another swordsman and next a gambler joins them . The gambler would just as soon double cross everyone. But the double cross comes from higher up. The story is interesting and the pace is good. The fights are ambitious choregraphy and would be really good but the execution is just not there - slow moves, missed focus, and off balance. This was, of course, because actors were actors then and not martial artists. Sek Kin had been doing action for over a decade by then so his action was better than average. Yet, for 1968 this was good stuff. I am watching and reviewing every martial arts movie from the golden age 1867 to 1984. On this mission I have watched a lot of junk and many movies few people have heard of. A movie like this keeps me going. I never heard of this movie before and I acquired it simply because of Sek Kin's name on the credits. I totally enjoyed it start to finish and recommend it for fans of the genre. The copy is a file, widescreen, with dual hard subtitles. The dual subtitles are typical of a laser disk but the picture is not all the way widescreen in that the subtitles are often cut off on each end. There are few scratches but the color is washed out. At one point the screen goes black then numbers appear as if the roll of film ran out of the projector. How this file came from the original film stock remains a mystery to me.