Dao bing fu (1973) User Reviews

Women - the heroes behind the scene

[ckormos1 · 6/10 · 19 June 2015]

A curious thing about Shaw Brothers movies is that when they played in theaters the average ticket buyer was a married woman between the ages of 34-65. I cannot imagine myself sitting in a theater in Hong Kong watching "The Venoms" and being the only guy in the audience in the 1970s. Before the golden age of martial arts movies a common theme was the suffering self-sacrificing female protagonist who often went to her death or worse endure life-long torment to do the right thing, whatever that might be. This movie is a throwback to those days. I would not recommend this for the average kung fu movie fan though it does have a respectable amount of action. It is certainly not action driven but female sacrifice driven. I liked it respecting that context.