The Five Deadly Venoms
The Five Deadly Venoms is considered as one of the cult films of the Shaw Brothers despite the late date of its production. Indeed, the end of the 70s is not the golden age of the SB anymore, and this movie belongs to the late filmography of Chang Cheh.
The film blends kung fu and mystery/thriller.
It starts with a conversation between a dying master, the head of the Five Venoms House and his last student, Yang De. The dying master confesses to Yang De that before he came, five students were accepted. Unlike Yang De, each one of them excels in one style, which noone can beat. Yang De learned each of the the styles, but his skills aren't as perfect as theirs. Since then, the five venoms have done bad things and the House holds now a bad reputation. So, the old master decides to abort the House and leave the responsability to his last student to keep an eye on their behaviours, clean up the mess and let alone the one who behaves well and rightful, as he might be able to team up with him to take the villainous ones who went wrong.
As Yang De (Chiang Sheng) enters the now dusty and humid training rooms of the Five Venoms, the old master explains to him in details their skills. The credits and the title appear as we are about to learn the art of the House....
The introduction lasts over 10 minutes. Each presentation of the venoms is clearly separated and demonstrates each of their martial art style, that they performed individually in their own training room in front of their venomous respective animal, sculpted on the wall and lit by a coloured filter (the colour of the animal).
The eldest venom is Zhang Yiaotian (Lu Feng). He wears a red masks and a red suit, practising the Centipede style. His nickname is Thousand Hands.
The second one is Qi Dong (Wei Pai), dressed in a white suit, practising the Snake style. His nickname is Snake Spirit Dude - great nickname! His right hand is the head of the snake and the left the tail.
The third one is Gao Ji (Sun Chien), in black suit. He performs the Scorpion Style : his hand moves like a cutter and his feet like a scorpion's tail.
Before them three, the Master took in Fourth and Fifth seniors.
The fourth senior is Meng Tianxia (Philip Kwok), who is older than the second and the third ones. He wears a brown suit (although now it does not matter as the last two unfortunately won't keep their colour suit later in the movie). He performs the Gecko style and was trained to have a light body and strong legs. He can crawl with ease on the walls, and rebound to enhance his power.
Finally, the fifth senior is Liang Shen (Lo Meng) who performs the Toad style. He can resist the attacks of swords and spears and break hard objects.
Those two seniors didn't know the other three, but knew each others.
At the end of this introduction, the old master reveals to Yang De that one more disciple, who happened to be his classmate, is still alive in a town and possesses a precious treasure that the five venoms are looking for.
When the students leave the House, they must take a new name and keep their backround secret. So the Five venoms are now know under another name...
Cross-fading on the face of Yang De.
We are now in the small town...
Yang De has disguised himself as a vagabond beggar to spy on the village in order to discover the venoms that are all ploting. The venoms are also disguised in another social function. The old classmate of the old master is killed by two venoms (seen and identified) and the treasure is stolen by another venoms (unidentified) afterwards. Unfortunately, we can guess directly who is who, and who did who, even if it is still slightly well hidden, but the suspens goes flat. Each venom does ressemble to their respective animal, especially in their facial expression, and their styles imitate the moves and behaviours of their animal. It's particularly obvious with the Snake Spirit Dude, who does have a serpentesque, fierce look and makes the sounds of the snake when he performs his style.
All of the venoms keep also their stoic, martial, viril presence (characterisric to Chang Cheh), though not as much as The One-Armed Swordsman series. But their male heroism (no female presence in this movie, we are very far from the 60s wu xia pian) is pushed at its extreme, as it's the most valuable and moral duty to exterminate the evil, divergent venoms.
Honour is also the other valuable quality as much as brotherhood, though not as flagrant as it was in some of his other movies (which made it quite ambigious, as it was so overdone).
The choregraphy is still sober in order to display the quality of their skills, close-ups are to focus on the movements and the postures of their specialities (hands of the snake), slow motions are reserved for the acrobatic movements. Exit the gory excess of his 60s/beginning of 70s movies (in this film, there is not much bloodshed, but one main scene of torture with the coat of thousand sharp needles which compare to the older movies is not as extreme, remember that quartering of the all body members completely tear off by four horses in The Heroic Ones!), exit the flamboyant, spectacular scenes that were so impressive in The One-Armed Swordsman series or even in the final scene of Golden Swallow for instance.
At this period of time, the collaboration with the famous choregrapher Liu Chia-liang had stopped. Here, the choregrapher is Robert Tai.
The final scene as usual contains the last ultime fight and lasts about ten minutes. The dexterity of the moves and the precision of the touches are well shown thanks to the editing work and of course to the prowess of the martial artists. The acrobaties seem close to the ones of the Chinese Opera. In general, the pace is constant, yet, not as nervous as it could have been.
The music enhances the mystery of the movie and the sound effects accentuate the action scenes. The costumes could have been worked more. It's a shame that they didn't keep the original colours, if Thousand Hands kept the red, The Snake Spirit Dude, the white and the Scorpion the black, the other two didn't continue to wear their colours, but Yang De's clothes (in white with a kind of patchwork in various colours) at the final battle made him cooler.
Five Deadly Venoms has revealed actors such as Phillip Kwok, who became also the choregrapher for various movies. But all the actors do not replace the charismatic, mythical actors of the SB, such as Wang Yu, David Chiang or Ti Lung.
The film blends kung fu and mystery/thriller.
It starts with a conversation between a dying master, the head of the Five Venoms House and his last student, Yang De. The dying master confesses to Yang De that before he came, five students were accepted. Unlike Yang De, each one of them excels in one style, which noone can beat. Yang De learned each of the the styles, but his skills aren't as perfect as theirs. Since then, the five venoms have done bad things and the House holds now a bad reputation. So, the old master decides to abort the House and leave the responsability to his last student to keep an eye on their behaviours, clean up the mess and let alone the one who behaves well and rightful, as he might be able to team up with him to take the villainous ones who went wrong.
As Yang De (Chiang Sheng) enters the now dusty and humid training rooms of the Five Venoms, the old master explains to him in details their skills. The credits and the title appear as we are about to learn the art of the House....
The introduction lasts over 10 minutes. Each presentation of the venoms is clearly separated and demonstrates each of their martial art style, that they performed individually in their own training room in front of their venomous respective animal, sculpted on the wall and lit by a coloured filter (the colour of the animal).
The eldest venom is Zhang Yiaotian (Lu Feng). He wears a red masks and a red suit, practising the Centipede style. His nickname is Thousand Hands.
The second one is Qi Dong (Wei Pai), dressed in a white suit, practising the Snake style. His nickname is Snake Spirit Dude - great nickname! His right hand is the head of the snake and the left the tail.
The third one is Gao Ji (Sun Chien), in black suit. He performs the Scorpion Style : his hand moves like a cutter and his feet like a scorpion's tail.
Before them three, the Master took in Fourth and Fifth seniors.
The fourth senior is Meng Tianxia (Philip Kwok), who is older than the second and the third ones. He wears a brown suit (although now it does not matter as the last two unfortunately won't keep their colour suit later in the movie). He performs the Gecko style and was trained to have a light body and strong legs. He can crawl with ease on the walls, and rebound to enhance his power.
Finally, the fifth senior is Liang Shen (Lo Meng) who performs the Toad style. He can resist the attacks of swords and spears and break hard objects.
Those two seniors didn't know the other three, but knew each others.
At the end of this introduction, the old master reveals to Yang De that one more disciple, who happened to be his classmate, is still alive in a town and possesses a precious treasure that the five venoms are looking for.
When the students leave the House, they must take a new name and keep their backround secret. So the Five venoms are now know under another name...
Cross-fading on the face of Yang De.
We are now in the small town...
Yang De has disguised himself as a vagabond beggar to spy on the village in order to discover the venoms that are all ploting. The venoms are also disguised in another social function. The old classmate of the old master is killed by two venoms (seen and identified) and the treasure is stolen by another venoms (unidentified) afterwards. Unfortunately, we can guess directly who is who, and who did who, even if it is still slightly well hidden, but the suspens goes flat. Each venom does ressemble to their respective animal, especially in their facial expression, and their styles imitate the moves and behaviours of their animal. It's particularly obvious with the Snake Spirit Dude, who does have a serpentesque, fierce look and makes the sounds of the snake when he performs his style.
All of the venoms keep also their stoic, martial, viril presence (characterisric to Chang Cheh), though not as much as The One-Armed Swordsman series. But their male heroism (no female presence in this movie, we are very far from the 60s wu xia pian) is pushed at its extreme, as it's the most valuable and moral duty to exterminate the evil, divergent venoms.
Honour is also the other valuable quality as much as brotherhood, though not as flagrant as it was in some of his other movies (which made it quite ambigious, as it was so overdone).
The choregraphy is still sober in order to display the quality of their skills, close-ups are to focus on the movements and the postures of their specialities (hands of the snake), slow motions are reserved for the acrobatic movements. Exit the gory excess of his 60s/beginning of 70s movies (in this film, there is not much bloodshed, but one main scene of torture with the coat of thousand sharp needles which compare to the older movies is not as extreme, remember that quartering of the all body members completely tear off by four horses in The Heroic Ones!), exit the flamboyant, spectacular scenes that were so impressive in The One-Armed Swordsman series or even in the final scene of Golden Swallow for instance.
At this period of time, the collaboration with the famous choregrapher Liu Chia-liang had stopped. Here, the choregrapher is Robert Tai.
The final scene as usual contains the last ultime fight and lasts about ten minutes. The dexterity of the moves and the precision of the touches are well shown thanks to the editing work and of course to the prowess of the martial artists. The acrobaties seem close to the ones of the Chinese Opera. In general, the pace is constant, yet, not as nervous as it could have been.
The music enhances the mystery of the movie and the sound effects accentuate the action scenes. The costumes could have been worked more. It's a shame that they didn't keep the original colours, if Thousand Hands kept the red, The Snake Spirit Dude, the white and the Scorpion the black, the other two didn't continue to wear their colours, but Yang De's clothes (in white with a kind of patchwork in various colours) at the final battle made him cooler.
Five Deadly Venoms has revealed actors such as Phillip Kwok, who became also the choregrapher for various movies. But all the actors do not replace the charismatic, mythical actors of the SB, such as Wang Yu, David Chiang or Ti Lung.
posted by Ouyang Feng at 2:46 PM
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