Movie Review: Moonlight Sword and Jade Lion (1977) directed by Karl Liao (Chinese title Yin xiao yu jian cui yu shi)
Chu Siew Yen (Angela Mao) is sent by her martial arts instructor to look up his brother, who he hasn’t heard from in a while. No one in the town he was living in knows where he is now. Or if they know, they aren’t saying. Miss Chu is no great shakes as a detective, so she knows at least some of these people are lying or holding back information, but darned if she can figure out which. It doesn’t help that several of this people are engaged in internal politics that pit them against each other as well as her as an outsider.
Turns out her master’s brother is also the only person who knows who killed Miss Chu’s parents. There’s another wandering martial artist looking for a missing girl for some reason, and a pair of jade lions that would somehow make the possessor of the pair the king of kung fu. (This is never explained.)
And that’s about it for the coherent parts of the plot. Mostly it’s a set up for fights as the poorly explained motivations and alliances clash.
The fight sequences are varied in quality; the most interesting ones are about two thirds in where first Chu Siew Yen must use her telescoping spear to battle about twenty women (?) armed with giant artificial lotus flowers that have various gimmicks, then infiltrates a prison filled with traps and guards that clearly have practiced what to do if someone breaks in and sets off the traps a lot.
The only commercially available cut has poor formatting and dub sound quality. But Angela Mao looks good in this.
Really only for Angela Mao completists and those who really enjoy C-grade kung fu movies.
