Dragon Inn is one of the greatest martial arts films of all time, and it’s follow up from King Hu, A Touch of Zen – one of the genre’s greatest epics. The problem is, how do you follow a film as acclaimed as A Touch of Zen when critics love it, but the audiences in cinemas didn’t quite connect in the same way? The reaction is the fire and brimstone that great directors are forged by. The answer to this particular question is to make The Fate of Lee Khan, newly issued on Eureka’s Master of Cinema line.

And, to be perfectly dismissive, it returns to the well that created Dragon Inn to tell a similar tale. Where King Hu’s 1967 title was about as tense as martial arts cinema has ever been, Lee Khan does something entirely different. The set-up remains the same in that we join an ensemble of workers at a remote restaurant before events escalate in the eventual kung-fu blow-out; the difference here, however, is that King Hu pre-empted the hangout movie by a good half decade or so.

Dragon Inn had an emperor’s political opponent murdered. With the exile of his children, the emperor’s eunuch takes it upon himself to have them murdered too – which all leads to a tense, slow build that – as I said earlier – is one of the masterpieces of martial arts cinema. In the Fate of Lee Khan, the titular character (Tien Feng) and his sister, Lee Wan’er (Hsu Feng), travel to a remote inn to obtain a map detailing the actions of a group of resistance fighters. That leads to a face-off stretching between the inn built into the mountain and a nearby quarry. The revolutionaries in question are the heroes of this feature. The Inn has recently expanded, incorporating gambling as part of its provided services. As a means to cope with the newfound rowdiness, the owner, Li Hua Li, has hired a few new waitresses (the most recognisable being Ying Bai (Hapkido)) who happens to be strong martial artists in preparation for any foulness that may be afoot.

Eventually, the fate of Lee Khan is every bit as tense as its forebearer, for that opening stretch – Hu’s film has a complexion much closer to that of the knockabout comedy. Patrons will gamble and, where there is gambling, there is also cheating – in step the girls who break up the fights. There are also drunkards getting handsy or low-level government affiliates expecting more from the girls. Regardless of the reason, the waitresses stand up for themselves psychically in scenes that would be played for laughs as staple scenes in Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest productions.

Each scenario sees the girls use a style of martial arts that compliments their frame rather than jumping around and fighting as the male counterparts would. Say whatever you want about the style and credibility of King Hu as a director of Martial Arts cinema, while he will never compare to the likes of Chang Cheh, Lau Kar-Leung or Sammo Hung (who did the fight choreography): Hu is something much more important. He was the first feminist in a big boys club that treated women as little more than mothers and objects of lust. All of his female characters between this: Dragon Inn, Legend of the Mountain, Come Drink with Me, and Touch of Zen, never once surrender their feminity. Yet still, they are all strong-minded and capable fighters within their respective worlds.

Elsewhere in that opening stretch are scenes that establish the dynamics of the local community and the personalities therein. Typically, martial arts cinema is impatient, in a rush to get to the fighting, so character development is sacrificed for arduous training montages and beatdowns. That King Hu is this patient, waiting well into the second hour before any real action takes place – it’s a nice change of pace.

Another aspect of King Hu’s style is his location work. As much as I love Hong Kong martial arts cinema, if you have seen one historical feature, you know the sights and scenes from them all. They will be shot on a sound stage, where the lighting makes everything look substanceless – a conscious decision for how quickly produced these films used to be. As consistent as this was for the shaw brothers and golden harvest, it was never true for Hu. He shot almost exclusively on location and quite often in Taiwan. The panoramic vistas in the visual language of his work saw him referred to as an artist by his peers (Chang Cheh, as referenced in the excellent essay by Stephen Teo). Also, the natural light makes his work feel more substantial than the cartoon stylings that became the norm in the 1970s and 80s. King Hu makes beautiful films, and on this fantastic print, I dare say it has never looked more visually arresting.

To call the third art of King Hu’s Wuxia trilogy anything other than excellent would be entirely unfair. Fair enough, it is not a patch on its two forebearers, but to say it isn’t as good as two of the finest films the genre ever produced isn’t the same thing as calling it bad. That being said, it is a big sell for the martial arts movie fan, before you’ve reached that point of seeing all the titles you can get your hands on, all you want is to see some people fight, whether it is brutal, slapstick, or somewhere in between. As fun and lighting paced as the film is, fans of classical kung fu movies will leave disappointed. The more seasoned fan, who has seen everything the genre has to offer, will be at that point in their fandom where they are looking for something that stands on its own two feet, something different from the hackneyed norm. Now Masters of Cinema have issued the entire trilogy, I can comfortably say that whatever divergent itch you want scratching, Eureka have you covered.

Thanks for reading our review of the Fate of Lee Khan

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