Last Updated on October 2, 2020 by rob
In this sequel to Temple of the Red Lotus eloping lovers Kwei Wu (Jimmy Wang Yu) and Lien Chu (Chin Ping) are fooled into attempting the rescue of four ‘maids’ (in reality members of the evil Red Lotus Clan) from a Buddhist temple the Clan have tricked out with all manner of deadly traps. Kwei escapes but Lien is captured. When Kwei pleads with Lien’s family for help they refuse. With Kwei locked up an admirer of Lien’s (Lieh Lo) attempts a one man rescue but it goes disastrously wrong and prompts Lien’s family to launch an all out assault on the temple to rescue her. But the Clan’s all powerful leader proves impossible to beat in combat… at least until the arrival of the mysterious Scarlet Maid (Ivy Ling Po).
A noticeable improvement over the first film with some livelier characters, more varied and interesting action (poor Lieh Lo doesn’t half come a cropper in this) and the introduction of plot elements such as the deadly musical lute and the cut-through-anything Fish Intestine Sword (great name, that!) around which the story of the last film in the trilogy The Sword and the Lute (1967) would be built. As with the first installment The Twin Swords has long sequences hampered by overdone melodramatics. Jimmy Wang Yu does a great deal of pleading, begging and sobbing in his efforts to persuade Lien’s family to rescue her. He’s very good at it but the scenes drag on too long and in any case the family’s reason for refusing to help Lien (she broke the rules in leaving home without permission) seems dramatically feeble.
These sort of emotional displays would be greatly toned down once these Shaw adventures found their feet even if they never entirely shed their distinctive melodramatic nature (which in any case is part and parcel of their appeal). On the other hand the backstories of characters such as Lieh Lo’s, whose private thoughts are conveyed through choral song, represent a hangover from Chinese musicals that would very quickly vanish. Of the other cast members Ivy Ling Po (in the first film her character was called the Red Lady but she’s renamed here as Scarlet Maid for reasons never explained) gets a pleasingly expanded role in which we get to see her home, an idyllic paradise on what looks to be the top of a mountain plateau up in the clouds, to which she takes Lien after saving her from the monks. In one memorable scene we see her leave home in a series of gravity defying leaps down the side of a cliff face.
If not a goddess the implication seems to be that Scarlet Maid’s kung fu powers are so supreme she exists on a plane of existence above that of mere mortals. Indeed, she can even understand messages relayed by birds! And if the Red Lotus Clan are just as anonymous a bunch of baddies as they were in the first film it’s made up for by their devilishly ingenious temple of death. With pits full of spikes, a staircase guillotine that chops bodies in two, ceilings that can lower themselves to crush the enemy and all sorts of other delights it’s practically a character in its own right and inarguably the star villain of the show. The highlight of the film is when our heroes invade this temple of death only to quickly find themselves trapped.
About to be squashed flat they’re saved when the family’s youngest member, little Fung Bo Bo (now about 11 years old) breaks into the control room and calmly slaughters the baddies operating the deadly traps with the Fish Intestine Sword recently gifted to her by grandma. You think about that Indiana Jones film Temple of Doom (1984) and how you could just tell the kid wasn’t going to be allowed to kill anybody because he was just a child and his innocence had to be protected. By contrast there’s no such timidity here. With the Fish Intestine Sword Bo Bo cuts her opponents swords in two, slices off an enemy’s hand and then runs the baddies through with her sword. What’s more, she can’t wait to tell her family all about it afterwards. Typical kid! That emphasis on family unity is what always strikes me about the Shaw films.
Although these movies are routinely described as ‘epic’ I think that description is often misplaced. More than anything they always strike me as essentially intimate because the focus is so strongly on narratives of familial bonds tested by love or betrayal. We see that here in the final battle when Jimmy Wang Yu’s quest for revenge turns up both the culprit and an unexpected family survivor who turns out to be none other than… well, see if you can guess! There’s more vigorous swordplay in this one albeit in much the same style as the first film but also a bit more martial arts. Not only is the big villain able to blow a hurricane force gale from his mouth but in her climactic battle with him the Scarlet Maid can move with such speed she literally vanishes in the blink of an eye from one place to another. Both of these represent new additions to the genre that audiences hadn’t seen before.
