Come Drink with Me (1966)

Come Drink with Me (1966)

Director: King Hu

Starring: Cheng-Pei-pei

One swallow may not make a summer, but a Golden Swallow will make bad guys fall before her.

A gang of criminals kidnap a general’s son in hopes of exchanging his life for that of their leader, but they didn’t count on the general’s other child staging a daring rescue mission. Who is this brave soldier? Well her name is Golden Swallow.

Reviewing a classic old movie is always hard. While some of the great old films seem as fresh and vibrant today as they did when they were made such as the timeless Casablanca, Psycho and Some Like it Hot others seem dated and that can especially be in the action genre where stunt work and fight cerography became so improved throughout the decades. The reason I decided to start my reviews from North by Northwest’s release in 1959 and review them chronologically was so I could see the big milestone movies such as the birth of the kung-fu flick, the first of John Woo’s Heroic Bloodshed films, Die Hard and all of its many clones and Terminator 2’s introduction of CGI in the context of what came before and so I could evaluate what a films impact would have been at the time it came out. Come Drink with Me is without question one such important milestone, however it is sadly one that is dated more than a little.

Coming from legendary producers of martial arts movies The Shaw Brothers and equally important director King Hu Come Drink with Me was the first great wuxia movie and forever changed Hong Kong cinema. Its influence can be seen in so many future movies within the same genre perhaps most obviously in Ang Lee’s famous Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. There is a scene in Drink with Me where a group of thugs surround our hero in an inn, underestimating her, before being quickly humiliated and beaten. The Inn scene has become a bit of a staple in martial arts movies since this film including a memorable moment where Zhang Ziyi fights several guys in an inn in Crouching Tiger. That masterpiece from 2000 even had Come Drink with Me’s leading lady Cheng Pei-pei play Dragon’s villain Jade Fox too in a lovely touch too.

Come Drink with Me is a really good film but it is hurt by some technical problems such as our old enemy the jump cut and it made the final fight between the Drunken Cat (Yueh Hua) and the Abbot (Yeung Chi-hing) almost unwatchable to me. It’s not just the end fight either, but they happen all movie long and they always look just as awful as the ones in Dr No did. Secondly perhaps it was just my version but there seemed to be times when we get a close-up of somebody but the camera seems slightly out of focus. I don’t know what was going on there. It is slightly more forgivable in this compared than say compared to the end of Thunderball which had the one-two punch of a horrid jump cut and awful rear-screen projection as I imagine the budget for this movie would be a fraction of what 007’s fourth adventure had to work with, but it still hindered my enjoyment somewhat.

I also didn’t like use of magic during the climactic battle either. I know in wuxia movies you have to be able to suspend your disbelief a little, but I felt the summoning of mini tornados emerging from the fighter’s hands was a bit much and it didn’t really gel with the rest of the film and I don’t think it was really needed either as the rest of the film is fairly serious in tone. Also in the final fight it felt like all of a sudden both men were covered in tons of blood which seemed to come from nowhere. Speaking of the blood this movie is by far the bloodiest one I have reviewed so far with lots of squibs and even limbs getting cut clean off (though the severed arms did look incredibly fake) which was pretty shocking for to me compared with the previous nine films viewed in my marathon.

The villain of the movie was called Jade Faced Tiger, played by Chang Hun-lit, and he was incredibly hateable, one of the best bad guys so far. His face was painted white and I am confused as to why to be honest and it doesn’t even make sense with his name as jade is green. Tiger goes as far to kill a child monk who was eavesdropping onto a conversation he and his men were having and while a child was killed off-screen in For a Few Dollars More it still stunned me seeing the boy get stabbed and made me hate Jade Faced Tiger even more than I did because of his silly face paint. The fact I hated the bad guy so much made it very frustrating that he escapes at the movies end with no resolution! That’s two of the last three films I have seen where the bad guy gets away! What is it with 1965? About two thirds into the movie we are introduced to the abbot character and the movie dives into his history with the Drunken Cat and we are supposed to be happy with the confrontation between them two rather than a battle with Cheng Pei-pei’s Golden Swallow (stop sniggering!) defeating Jade Faced Assassin which is what the film seemed to be building up towards.

When the Drunken Cat character first stumbled into the movie I was concerned as often comedy in martial arts movies does fall flat for me (it is the worst part about the otherwise excellent Legendary Weapons of China which we’ll be talking about when I get to 1982) but in the end I rather liked his character and upon watching the inn scene again, where he first is introduced, I saw that his annoyingly random interruptions were all done to help Golden Swallow and distract her enemies and it made me appreciate him more. Although he drinks a lot he doesn’t fight in a drunken boxing style sadly but nevertheless he still was an inspiration to Jackie Chan’s 1978 breakout role in Drunken Master. Supposedly a very young Jackie Chan is even in Come Drink with Me as one of orphans that Drunken Cat looks after and Chan’s website lists the film amongst his filmography but Cheng Pei-pei has since said the rumours are sadly not true. So I liked Drunken Cat but not enough to see him hijack the films finale from Golden Swallow.

Golden Swallow is the first great female action star we’ve seen so far and I loved Cheng Pei-pei’s portrayal of her and find Swallow perfectly believable as this arse-kicker. While I have been critical of some of the editing I have to say there are a couple of nice long takes where we see Pei-pei fighting without interruptions and while she’s not exactly the quickest or best fighter we’ll see she does bring a rather balletic style to the role that I like. Much in the same way that Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi have no formal martial arts background, but instead one in dance, Pei-pei’s uses her ballet skills to give the combat a nice poetic grace which makes her different to some of the other martial arts stars we will talk about soon.

Overall despite a lack of polish which you have to accept from the cheaper production values of a 1960’s Hong Kong movie and a rather by-the-numbers script I think Come Drink with Me is still a highly enjoyable movie with a kick-ass female lead.

7/10- While the importance of the film cannot be overstated I wish it wasn’t as hurt by editing issues as it is. We’ll be talking about director King Hu again in this column so it’ll be interesting to see if his next picture is a tidier affair.

Best quote: “I want to pay that lady’s bill. She’ll be too dead to pay.”

Best scene: I am going for the battle at the Buddhist temple where Golden Swallow fights several men with ease.

Kick-ass moment: Two of Swallow’s female soldier allies are in trouble in a battle against two men until Swallow throws two daggers in the men’s backs at the same time.

Next time on A Bloody Tomorrow we are going back not just to the west, but to the Wild West and will be analysing the Good and the Bad of one of the true Western great. Oh and the Ugly too…