SCORCHING SUN, FIERCE WIND, WILD FIRE (1977)
Directed by: Suen Chin-yuen
Starring: Angela Mao, Lo Lieh, Flashlegs Tan Tao-liang
Long before Sigourney Weaver and Thelma & Louise appeared on the cover of TIME magazine, Angela Mao was the world's top action queen, and despite the critical praise going to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for its feminist overtones, Angela Mao did it firstest and bestest thirty years ago. Scorching Sun, Fierce Wind, WIld Fire is a kung fu melodrama with the relentless drive of an old timey Republic serial and the snappy, satisfying taste of a Saturday matinee. It's set in the Twenties, during the political free-for-all known as the Republican Period when China's Emperor was overthrown and warlords chopped out their own bloody fiefdoms all over the country. The rule of law was established by whoever had the most guns, the glorious Democratic Revolution had turned into a head-throbbing morning after, and banditry was the order of the day.
Into this chaos strides Mao's Violet, a masked revolutionary (sort of Batgirl by way of Karl Marx), whose father, Master Tung, is one of the biggest and baddest despots around. Tung's right-hand psycho is Master Wu (Lo Lieh), a mad dog whose idea of fun is a rousing night in the torture chamber. Deciding to flush out Violet, the two put in an order for heavy artillery with Captain Mo, who runs a cannibalistic black market off the corpse of the Republican army. Mo, however, is more interested in a treasure map that Master Tung has and suddenly a white-robed revolutionary shows up and humiliates Wu's men with some paint brush fu, sending Wu into revenge mode. Add in an escaped pair of convicts (one of whom is super-kicker, Tan Tao-liang), a gang of bandits, Violet's sister, and love blossoming amidst the bloodshed, and you have twelve episodes worth of plot and incident packed into a tight ninety minutes.
Unfolding with unnatural speed, the narrative sends your head spinning as it leaps from climax to cliffhanger to climax again. Fight scenes break out every ten minutes, and the camera style is likely to induce whiplash as it cuts from close-up to long-shot with all the helpless propulsion of a celluloid seizure. Add in a decided taste for the bizarre (at one point General Mo is ridden around like a horse by a hooker, the soundtrack supplying the appropriate effects) and you've got a two-fisted swashbuckler with a decidedly freaked-out edge. Anchoring this amphetamine pulp is the commanding presence of Angela Mao. Able to freeze the screen with a single look she's a warrior queen who can assess a situation and snap into action in the time it takes most of us to pull up our socks. Best known to international audiences as Bruce Lee's sister in Enter the Dragon, that performance is a far cry from the Angela Mao her fans knew. Suicide? Defeat? Surrender? For Angela Mao those words have no meaning. Scorching Sun, Fierce Wind, Wild Fire is a temple to Angela Mao, the world's first Action Queen, and a memorial to the kind of breathless, genre entertainment that was once the hallmark of the martial arts movie.