Seminal wuxia film, slicker than your average and bubbling with a colourful elan, although contrary to popular belief this isn’t quite the best martial arts film ever made. To western eyes, the stalwart knight-lady at the heart of the film appears more radical now than it did back in 1960s Hong Kong, a place already familiar with strong female protagonists from traditional Beijing Opera stories to wuxia novels and movies. Cheng Pei-pei, aged 19, commands the role of the lethal Golden Swallow with enough intensity to put an absent Bruce Lee in his place. Directed by King Hu – still technically under contract at Shaw Brothers as an actor and scriptwriter – he demonstrates his excellence in staging and photography while providing a more modern, violent take on the wuxia template. It blew people’s minds at the time, becoming a surprise hit for Shaws and sparking a slew of copycat productions. The story sees Ching rebels kidnap a Chinese official in return for their leader’s freedom, only to face the gender-bending Golden Swallow in their wake. Lots of fun is had, particularly via the loveable Yueh Hua who plays the Drunken Cat, an Opera-trained upstart who steals Pei-pei’s thunder with the mastery of a powerful hand technique which allows him to eject dry ice into the faces of his opponents. This film is commonly referred to as the first of King Hu‘s ‘inn trilogy’, due to his device of using a single tavern setting as a microcosm of the jianghu, or ‘martial world’. The other films in Hu’s ‘inn trilogy’ include Dragon Inn in 1967, and The Fate of Lee Khan in 1973.