Feeling the Temptation
Where are you when we need you now, Run Me and Run Run?

Ok. Does everyone in class today know where noodles came from and who we have to thank for spaghetti? (There's an opposite end of that with rice, but for the sake of where I'm going with this, we're gonna leave it out.) That's right, from China to Italy with that pool-game Polo fellow. So that's a weak premise for switching coasts from the Italians to the Chinese, for some much needed relief.

Now, the great SB studios have of course come back to light here again in recent years. For the uninitiated, that SB stands for the Shaw Brothers. You didn't think Quentin Tarantino slapped that logo onto the front of Kill Bill for no reason did you? However, I don't write these things to give you the total rundown on film history. Fire up your favorite search engine and you can find likely all you'd ever want to know about the Shaw Brothers. (Ok, ok, here's a good place to start: http://www.kungfucinema.com/)

The reason I bring them up is not for their well-known contribution to the cinema world of some of the finest martial arts films ever committed to celluloid. Let's face it, most anyone who knows the Shaws knows that fact and knows it well. So no need to enter the 36th Chamber on this go around, nor do we need to sample each of the five deadliest venoms. No my friend, that is another day.

Fact is, the Shaw's made all kinds of stuff. Much like the Italians, they would follow world trends in genre pictures. Granted they never made westerns (though martial arts films are often traced to American westerns), but they did follow other popular cinematic genres. One such was the spy/criminal mastermind film which is an odd blend in a way, but let's face it: James Bond didn't do much in terms of what the CIA would consider intelligence or counter-intelligence. The idea may have come from the Cold War, but most of these films didn't deal with it very directly at all. Over the top villains, unbelievable heists, meglomaniacal threats, and a hoard of gadgetry tended to be the order of the day. Most of these films have been forgotten in time which is largely understandable as they often paled in comparison to their Majesty's Secret Service predecessor. They're kitschy as all get out, but for me, that gives them that certain special....something. (I gotta soft spot a mile wide for Coburn's two Flint vehicles.)

I don't know if they made any others, but the Shaw's took at least one crack at the genre.

I'm proud to say, I watched it.

The Temptress of a Thousand Faces (1968, d. Chung Chang Wha)

The Story: After a series of baffling crimes, Hong Kong police become determined to bring to justice the criminal mastermind the Temptress of a Thousand Faces; however, the young female police officer hot on her trail finds that the Temptress may not only want the riches of the world but also her boyfriend...and her life.

The Review: Whoa, did I just write that? Now that's a plot and half...and all in 76 minutes (that's what the case said, I timed it out to 80 minutes and some change)....which means it doesn't always make a whole lot of sense, but damn it's a fun hour and a quarter.

The sets for the temptress are garish and ridiculous. The costumes are garish...well, if you've seen pictures of your relatives in the 60's, the costumes might have just been normal. There's a goofy (by that I mean bad) comic relief guy. The ending, like the very ending just pre-credits, makes no sense. Most of all, if you can't figure out who the Temptress really is in the first 10 to 15 minutes...well, you need help (or to watch a whole lot more movies, Sparky).

Yet, it's infinitely loveable. That's the part that's hard to explain.

For one thing, it's a certain innocent charm that movies of this type and era have. They've aged into a sort of quaintness despite all their would-be hip swagger. After all, the direction isn't inept, in fact it's quite good despite the li'l gaps in logic. The acting is good. There's plenty of action, a little silly romance, and well...yeah, the comic relief which only works because it's hokey. Not to mention that Hong Kong is filled with scenic places for exciting and exotic locales. (It's sort of disappointing that later HK flicks didn't make more use of the scenery rather than just the city.)

Part of the seling point certainly is Tina Chin Fei, our intrepid policewoman, who again has that sort of charm and beauty of the era. She's beautiful. She's sexy. And she can believably whoop a whole lot of @$$ (I can't be sure, but for nearly every fight seen she appears to do her own stunts, excepting of course when she's fighting with the Temptress who's disquised as her). Admitedly, half of this has to do with the fact that she spends a lot of her onscreen time running around and throwing down in her underwear. Think about that for a minute though. Again it harkens to the innocence. It's not sexy lingerie, it's just underwear, and she's never in less than that. Yet, it was enough to make me mention it...sadly we can't go back to that more engaging tease. (Of course, you have to wonder why the Temptress keeps stripping her down each of the three times she kidnaps her.)

Whether you enjoy this movie or kind of movie also depends on how you approach it: watching it for what it is, as opposed to endlessly comparing it to everything since it came out. Take the fact that the Temptress's hundreds of henchmen and henchwomen fire hails of bullets on our heroes, and yet never hit a one (not even one of those "awww, c'mon" shoulder wounds). Now for me, that's part of the fun. For others, it'd be the beginning of the derision (ie. "This sucks...that's so unrealistic."). That's without even going into the whole "that guy's taken 400 shots and hasn't reloaded yet" thing into consideration. (I was tempted to really count the bullets but was caught up in the fun.)

The Temptress of a Thousand Faces is good, clean (well marginally smutty in the same way as a classic pinup), goofy fun of a type I hope to one day rediscover in some new way on the silver screen. (You know, once this golden age of constant porno is over.)

Cheers.