NIGHT ORCHID (1983)
US Premiere of the 2K Remaster!
Directed by: Chang Peng-I
Starring: Brigitte Lin, Adam Cheng, Don Wong Tao, Eddy Ko, Fung Hak-on
Movies don’t come more star-studded than this hothouse flower. Based on a zeitgeist-changing megahit TV series, and written by Gu Long himself (considered one of the greatest wuxia novelists of all time), this posh flick stars Brigitte Lin, one of Taiwan’s biggest actresses who was soon to find fame in Hong Kong movies, and Adam Cheng, a major Hong Kong pop star and actor.
Cheng plays Chu Liu-xiang, one of Gu Long’s most popular characters and the star of a series of novels. He’s a fun-loving, hard-drinking Robin Hood who refuses to kill his enemies and has a knack for the ladies. Cheng first played Chu (whose name literally translates as “lingering scent”) in a 65-episode TV series that was broadcast in Taiwan in 1982, and it proved to be so popular that producers invited him over to co-star with Brigitte Lin in this movie written by Gu Long, the character’s creator.
It moves a mile-a-minute, characters come and go with alarming frequency, and the whole thing culminates in a booby-trapped temple of wildly outlandish doom. Come for Brigitte Lin, stay for the kung-fu fighting tiger and leopard-men, the murderous, caped little girl who pops in and out from beneath the sand, and an enemy in white nylon who can flatten himself into a two-dimensional sheet and vaporize.
