The Black Tavern (Teddy Yip Wing-Cho, Hong Kong, 1972)

Last Updated on October 17, 2020 by rob

Thieves and brigands converge on a remote inn to ambush a government official due to arrive with a treasure chest he’s transporting. The most lethal of the bad guys, the Whip Devil (Ku Feng), cuts down all his competitors except for a fellow thief named Kang (Li Tung) with whom he’s forced into an uneasy alliance. But when the official finally shows up the presence of a beautiful swordswoman with an agenda of her own named Zhang (Szu Shih) forces the Whip Devil and his disciples into a bloody fight to the finish.

A really enjoyable Shaw Bros martial arts yarn with a memorably tough and nasty villain in Ku Feng’s Whip Devil (early on in the proceedings the vicious sod finishes off a pretty swordswoman by decapitating her with his whip) in a cleverly written tale that uses the idea of a treasure chest overflowing with gems as a kind of honey trap designed to lure greedy villains to their doom. Setting virtually all the action in and around the tavern proves great fun as the Whip Devil’s carefully laid plan to ambush the official and his escort comes undone when the supposedly remote and snowbound tavern keeps filling up with unwanted guests equipped with colourful names like “The Three Headed Cobra” and “The Five Ghosts of Xiang-Xi”. These obstacles to what should be – and in any other movie would be – a standard robbery tale, come thick and fast and there’s a genuine sense of mystery and intrigue here as to the motives of the various visitors.

While some clearly have villainy on their mind the intentions of others, such as Szu Shih’s white-robed swordswoman, are hinted at but not fully revealed until the film’s exciting climax. There’s a nice vein of humour running through this too. The “Five Ghosts” sequence, in which Dean Shek’s beggar enrages one of Xiang-Xi’s supposedly undead slaves by spitting food in his face is quite hilarious as is the spectacle of the Whip Devil forced into playing the gracious host. This gives Ku Feng the opportunity to deliver a performance very much in the style of a silent movie. In other words it’s not what he says, it’s the expression on his face that tells you exactly what he’s thinking and Feng has a great old time here what with his initial smarminess and self-confidence rapidly giving way to surprise and (most amusingly) utter bafflement at the visitors flooding through the tavern doors.

The characters are a colourful and entertaining bunch and the film has fun confounding our expectations of them. Ku Feng’s performance as the Whip Devil is so charismatic – despite his cruelty – we do actually feel some sympathy for his troubles. As Kang, Li Tung’s handsome thief sure seems like an unprincipled opportunist but his chivalrous behaviour toward the Whip Devil’s daughter after she falls for him hints at an integrity to the character and it’s a really satisfying moment when Kang makes good on that by switching sides in the final battle. I also got a big laugh out of the baddies who get busy in the kitchen chopping up the former owners to make human buns. The rationale being that while they wait for the treasure to arrive they might as well make some pin money serving any hungry customers who happen by! Even Dean Shek’s comedy beggar who seems like a minor figure turns into a slyly pivotal player in events.

Ku Feng aside, the real star here is pint-sized ass kicker Szu Shih as Zhang. Right from the moment she enters the tavern – as beautiful as she is menacing – one senses an opponent worthy of the Whip Devil and so it proves. Her righteous anger at the Whip Devil – “You shouldn’t have poked your nose into this” he snarls to which our heroine tartly responds “Then you shouldn’t have done so many evil deeds!” – is merely the prelude to several big surprises including the revelation that Shih is playing the same character she did in 1971’s Lady Hermit, in which she was the disciple begging the titular character to train her in martial arts, but now having branched out on her own. So whilst not a direct follow up I think you could reasonably argue The Black Tavern is a semi-sequel of sorts.

There’s a ton of well staged action here. One of the aspects that makes this a superior Shaw entry is that the sets aren’t merely decorative backdrop for the swordfights. The tables, ceiling posts and first floor balcony of the tavern, the stables adjacent to the tavern entrance and assorted props such as the wagon transporting the gold are all imaginatively brought into the action at various points. This approach keeps each fight scene fresh and even if the staging isn’t quite matched by the sometimes choppy editing – which often attempts to compress the time between blows and swordstrikes through jump cuts – I admired the way the action steadily increases in scale and intensity. The climactic fight – a threeway between Zhang, the Whip Devil and Kang – proves really gruelling and really bloody with the Whip Devil’s fate a perfect example of poetic justice given how horribly he dealt with one poor swordswoman at the pic’s start.

I also loved the very Bond-ian gimmick of Feng’s whip being actually a set of whips of decreasing size placed one inside another! Whatever arguments you want to make about nepotism here – the script is by I.Fang Yeh and the director is none other than his own son – the end result is very enjoyable. It’s a funny thing movies like this. I mean nobody would make the case that this is a film of any artistic seriousness and yet compared to some of the more high falutin’ martial arts fare like, say, something by King Hu, this is a movie whose story, characters and action seem much more entertaining and worthy of a rewatch that other, more highly praised efforts. It would be nice to see this come out on BR someday.