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Bookmark this pageExecutioners from Shaolin (1977)
Director: Lau Kar-Leung Liu Jialiang
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Not as finely crafted as Lau's later Shaw Brothers films, but this reframing of one of the key Shaolin legends in explicitly sexual terms is an amazing achievement. After the sack of the Shaolin Temple, monk Hong Xiguan (Chen) goes into hiding and marries; but he neglects his wife and son because he's set on fighting the eunuch Bai Mei (Lo), who destroyed Shaolin. His macho 'Tiger Stance' cannot equal the eunuch's quasi-mystical power, and he dies in the duel. His widow (Li) trains their son Wending (Wong) in the feminine 'Crane' style, which is all she knows, and the boy is ridiculed as a sissy by his schoolmates. Wending eventually picks up scraps of his father's techniques from a worm-eaten training manual and confronts his father's killer as a 'bi-sexual' fighter: half male, half female. The eunuch, conversely, is a sexual 'black hole' who can suck opponents into his body through the void where his genitals once were. If only Freud could have seen it.Author: TR
Cast & crew
Director: Lau Kar-Leung Liu Jialiang
Cast: Chen Guantai, Wong Yu, Lo Lieh, Lily Li, Gordon Liu, Cheng Kang Yeh
Genre(s): Period/Swashbucklers
Duration: 103 mins
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