The Killer
1971 ended may have ended with wuxia, but 1972 kicked off fully in the kung fu era with Chor Yuen’s first start-to-finish project for Shaw Brothers.
Despite the success of The Chinese Boxer not that many movies had followed Jimmy Wang Yu’s model in the intervening 14 months. The Big Boss had a similar plot – Chinese hand-and-fist combat versus non-Chinese baddies – but was set in the modern day instead of during the Republican period.fn1 Other films mixed in hand-to-hand combat, but usually inside a wuxia narrative.
The Killer clearly follows The Chinese Boxer model. Republican setting, Japanese villains, lots of punching, a Shaw Brothers star dressed unconvincingly as a samurai. All the usual genre expectations.
Though it conforms to the rules of the genre the script offers additional complexity. Instead of the usual black & white morality of these movies writer Kuo Chia goes for nuance. There is no clear hero, but rather a pair of conflicted, fallible men. The lead, Tsung Wah, is being used as a pawn of the Japanese. But even once he suspects that he continues to be pompous, quick to anger, and dismissive of advice (especially when it comes from Wang Ping, the woman he supposedly loves). Chin Han, the second male lead, acts more morally and reasonably, but is still fooled into believing the worst about his friend.
Kuo Chia only wrote scripts for seven movies and apparently left the film industry in 1973. I’ve seen three of the seven movies he wrote and in all three he added nuance and depth to movies that could have been generic genre exercises. I’d love to learn more about him, but the name he used is the same as a famous character from Chinese history, making him impossible to research.
Eventually the film needs to resolve all of this depth and complexity so the bad guys just show up and say, “Ha hah, we’ve been fooling you this whole time!” This seems counter-productive to their plan, but it does lead to a long and very gory fight. No one ever answers the question of, “How did no one notice all these dudes wearing Karate gis and samurai outfits at the town’s main inn?” but whatever.
Chor Yuen directs all of this efficiently and cleverly. The new eye he brought to Movie Town studio continues to find fresh angles. In this film he starts to develop two features of his Shaw brothers filmography. The first is shots staged with plants or other materials in the foregrounds, partially blocking the view and adding depth to the composition. The second is his exaggeration of the artificiality of the Movie Town sets. Through most of the film the sets are used fairly naturally. But in the one set where our leads declare their love Chor Yuen really amps up the color and fake-ness. Rich color floods the entire space, and the floor is covered with what are clearly squares of astroturf. I don’t think of either as mistakes, but rather as intentional parts of Chor Yuen’s style.
The fights were handled by the Yuen Clan, with Yuen Cheung-Yan and Yuen Woo-Ping being credited. Though I think all of them except Simon show up in the movie in one role or another. This would be Shaws first movie released with Yuen Woo-Ping in the job, though he was no stranger to the studio. The Yuen’s normal style was hampered by having to have most of the fights look realistic and by making Chin Han look like a credible action star. But in the final fight they were able to express themselves fully and things get wild. Weirdly the Yuens had just made a different movie with a nearly identical title (in both Chinese and English) written by Kuo Chia, The Mad Killer. But other than the overlap in staff and title the films have nothing to do with one another.
fn1: Much like how earlier Classical Chinese films were set in a nebulous Chinese Past, these films are usually set in a nebulous Chinese Modernist period. I’m using “Republican period” in a generic “Anywhere from late 1800s through 1940ish” way.
Ian Whitney
Published: 2026-09-27