Jiang hu san nu xia

The movie opens with a needy Lo Lieh. He needs to be the number one swordsman and is convinced, since his skills are inferior, that the Mighty Steel Sword will compensate. Despite plans and disguises all he needs to do to obtain the sword is ask "Can I hold that minute?" Lo Lieh started at Shaw Brothers with good guy roles and by the 1980s moved on to roles as the villain. He is probably most remembered as the villain but I liked him more in his earlier hero roles. In this movie he is the villain. The story tries to make him a sympathetic or misunderstood bad guy but doesn't effectively succeed at that. His character comes across more as vague rather than complex. From the title, the three ladies protecting the valuable sword should be the focus of the story. I think that was not well developed either. The greatest team of action directors in movie history, Tong Kai and the Grandmaster Liu Chia-Liang, seemed to phone it in for the fight sequences. Regardless, a phone call from either of those two could beat any other action director. The fights are sword fights which are the best way to go with actors having no martial arts ability. The best fight is Lo Lieh versus Chang Yi at the end. I rate it a bit above average for the year and genre mostly because of the final fight. It was good to see the variety of weapons used.