Hand of Death (1976)

In 1976 John Woo had yet to become the king of heroic bloodshed; indeed he had yet to even become John Woo (the director credit here is “Wu Yu-Sheng”). In fact he nearly became the king of comedy before he moved into gangster films, but apparently that’s another story altogether. Here we have him still making conventional wu xia near the start of his career, along with later luminaries like Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao, none of whom were big enough at the time, apparently, to merit having their names listed in the credits in English. If I harp on about the names, it’s because they are, to some extent, the most interesting thing about the film, and probably what causes it to still be remembered and reissued these days. Narratively, Hand of Death is really just one of god/dess knows how many variations on the Shaolin Temple story, where they’ve been betrayed to Manchu agents and one of their heroes must take out the latter while also ensuring the safety of a travelling scholar who must send vital information through Manchu territory. I first saw this in my early days of exploring HK cinema, would’ve likely been around 1997, on a fairly shitty videotape; my second encounter with it last night on DVD was far more pleasant. I don’t think anyone would call it top drawer Woo, but it’s still enjoyable stuff—it may not be quite as action-packed as The Killer, but what is?—and while it’s not exactly ground-breaking it’s still a pretty good example of the genre; plus it’s nice to see a barely recognisable Chan and a villainous Sammo (whose teeth are probably the most evil thing about him here) in early roles. As for actual star Dorian Tan, I can only wonder why he never got as big as the other future big names here; he’s good but doesn’t seem to have that sort of iconic presence. Best of all, though, the “ultra-bit” DVD (the sort which skimps on extras to maximise the bitrate available for the film transfer) shows off gloriously the film’s Korean locations; decidedly unusual for the dominant colour in a John Woo film to be that astonishingly lush green rather than blood red, but so it is…