In the early 1990s, Tim Burton's batman series was a huge success.
Although there were already high-grossing "Superman" films in Hollywood in the seventies, it was not until the "Batman" series that superhero films gradually developed into a Hollywood blockbuster genre.
Hong Kong filmmakers who were keen to follow the trend at that time quickly smelled business opportunities.
In 1993, the great director Du Qifeng found three popular goddesses in the Hong Kong circle, Mui Yanfang, Maggie Cheung, and Yang Ziqiong, and mixed Hollywood superhero movies, Japanese special-time movies and Hong Kong-made martial arts movies to create an alternative science fiction martial arts film "Three Heroes of the East".
At that time, the most popular hong Kong film industry was the new wave of martial arts led by Xu Ke, and all kinds of martial arts masters flew on the screen, but science fiction martial arts films like "Three Heroes of the East" were extremely rare.
It may also be because the style of the film is too advanced, resulting in the poor response of this film after its release that year, and the box office was dismal to only 1.93 million Hong Kong dollars, ranking 105th in the annual box office list. For a movie with such a strong lineup, there are really some things that should not be done.
In this issue of the "Cult Movie Awards", let's introduce this cult martial arts film from 28 years ago——
The Three Heroes of the East
The Heroic Trio
The film was released during the Spring Festival in 1993.
Director Du Qifeng just won the annual box office championship in the previous year, and "The Trial Officer" cooperated with Stephen Chow.
Therefore, he took advantage of the victory to pursue, and the screenwriter shao Liqiong of "The Inquisitor" and the heroine Mei Yanfang joined hands again, and found Maggie Cheung and Yang Ziqiong, the first dozen women who had just returned from divorce and returned to the film world, to create this avant-garde alternative cult martial arts film.
The film at that time in the Hong Kong film industry can be described as a clean style, a collection of doomsday, police bandits, science fiction, martial arts, thrillers, crime and other elements, and emulated the image of Catwoman in "Batman Returns", shaping the image of three strong chivalrous female superheroes.
Many people commented that this is a cross-era martial arts film because its appearance is isolated from the traditional martial arts films that were popular in Hong Kong before. The whole film has both oriental martial arts vendetta elements and a clear desire to learn from Hollywood superhero movies.
On the one hand, the film has the usual chivalrous women in Hong Kong martial arts films, and the two heroines have adopted and learned martial arts from a young age to the world's high-ranking people, hoping that they will learn to be successful in the mountains and walk heroic righteousness, and the main villain is the widow of the last dynasty.
In the design of action scenes, the protagonist and the villain are both martial arts masters, who will lightly function the flying cornices and use traditional cold weapons to fight, such as: Yang Ziqiong with an iron whip, Mei Yanfang's soft sword and darts, of which the villain uses a very Hong Kong martial arts attribute of blood droplets and so on.
But on the other hand, the film borrows from Western superhero films, deliberately blurring the background of the entire story, the film's fictional crime-ridden city is like Gotham City in DC's "Batman" comics, there are police as representatives of the existence of law enforcers, but there are also bounty hunters and Mei Yanfang played by female flying man such as criminal nemesis, together to maintain the order and light of the city.
Speaking of the story, the main plot of this film can be summed up in one sentence:
The three modern heroines join forces to eliminate the old eunuchs of the former dynasty.
At the beginning of the story, the heroine Dongdong (Played by Mei Yanfang) and her husband Liu Qiwen (Played by Liu Songren) move to a dilapidated abandoned villa in the suburbs under the introduction of a black-hearted intermediary.
Husband Liu Qiwen is the sheriff of the police station's serious crime team, and his wife Dongdong is gentle and virtuous, in the eyes of outsiders, the couple seems to be nothing unusual, but in fact, in addition to the identity of the virtuous wife, there is another secret identity, a female flying man who acts heroically in the city.
She is armed with extraordinary martial arts, changes into a uniform and mask every time she moves, specializes in assisting the police in fighting crime, can appear in a crisis, has a two-sided personality and life, tries to protect everything seen around her, even her husband Liu Qiwen knows nothing about his wife's hidden identity.
At this time, the police force led by Liu Qiwen just happened to encounter a very difficult case.
Recently, there have been many cases of missing babies in the city, and the most bizarre thing is that during the internal meeting of the police, the pen placed in front of the director actually moved on its own, leaving a threatening sentence: The next child to be stolen will be the director's newborn son.
The director was scared, but Officer Liu reassured him that he would send more manpower at the hospital. Unexpectedly, the two newborn children who were originally placed in the hospital's baby room would actually float up for no reason and fly out of the window together.
Fortunately, the female flying man arrived in time to save one of the babies. The flying woman saw a figure next to the floating baby in the light, so she shot a dart at the shadow, injuring it, and the shadow flew away with another baby.
The vanished shadow reveals her true identity after fleeing the scene with the baby, and it is chen san (Yang Ziqiong), another heroine of the film, who is a dangerous and mysterious female killer who is hired by a mysterious organization hidden underground.
Chen San took the baby to a sewer in the city, and no one expected that under the ground of the city, there was actually a group of lawless criminal organizations hidden.
The leader of the organization is an old eunuch (Ren Shiguan) from the former dynasty, who has miraculous skills and special functions, and is bent on restoring the imperial system, and the missing baby in the city is stolen by Chen San in order to select the next emperor, and the eliminated babies will be trained as killers like Chen San.
In addition to Chen San, the old eunuch also had a powerful helper, the physically modified killer Chen Jiu, who was a monster without physical pain, and the weapon he was good at using was a vicious blood droplet.
Here in the full version, there is a scene in the shadow of a very childhood, Chen San who returned to the cave fought with Chen Jiu and cut off one of Chen Jiu's fingers, and as a result, Chen Jiu actually ate his own severed finger directly, and the picture was very cult.
After Chen San brought the child back, the old eunuch gave Chen San another task, asking her to approach the genius doctor who invented the invisibility cloak. Because the invisibility cloak now has one of the biggest flaws, it will fail under ultraviolet light, and the Doctor has been trying to solve this functional defect of the invisibility cloak for all these years.
Although Chen San was trained by the old eunuch to be an emotionless killing machine since childhood, with the relationship with the doctor, Chen San developed undeserved feelings for the doctor. Because of his research on the invisibility cloak, the doctor was exposed to radiation, and now he is seriously ill, which makes Chen San even more unbearable.
Then, in a robbery in the city, a group of gunmen took hostages and hid in a nearby chemical plant, confronting the police team led by Officer Liu, and the police fell into passivity.
At this time, the third heroine Chen Qi (Maggie Cheung) appeared, she is a professional bounty hunter, riding a motorcycle with a shotgun, a punk girl look very stylish. In order to earn the bounty, Chen Qi, on his own initiative, helped the police subdue the criminals.
Chen Qi, at the same time, is also the funny person in this film, such as the scene of eliminating gangsters, Chen Qi's direct throwing of explosives into an empty oil barrel, using the shock wave of the explosion, directly turning the oil barrel into a rocket, and then eliminating the bandits with three strokes and five divisions.
Although Chen Qi, on the surface, is only interested in profit and is willing to do anything for money, she actually has her own sense of justice. Chen Qi, too, wanted to deal with the invisible man who had been stealing babies in the city, so he went to the hospital to steal the director's son and wanted to lure the snake out of the hole.
Unexpectedly, the female flying man Dongdong also used the relationship of her husband Officer Liu to keep watch outside the hospital, so she stared at Chen Qi, and the two of them fought. As a result, Chen San, wearing an invisibility cloak, took advantage of the chaos and tried to steal the baby, triggering a scuffle between the three of them.
As a result, the baby fell down the stairs in the melee and died tragically, which made all three of them feel very regretful. In particular, Chen Qi, believing that her impulsive actions led to the killing of innocent babies, and her conscience deliberately did not go, she was determined to get rid of the old eunuch who had committed many evils.
So she found Chen San, who had escaped, and it turned out that the two had known each other for a long time. At that time, Chen Qi's training under the old eunuch was also brutal, but later by chance, Chen Qi's luck escaped. Chen Qi's persuasion chen san not to aid and abett the abuse anymore, but although Chen San was also very conflicted in his heart, he did not dare to rebel against the old eunuch.
Chen Qi's persuasion was fruitless and he planned to go to the old eunuch's lair alone to assassinate, but he was defeated by the monster Chen Jiu and was hit by the old eunuch's poisonous needle. At this time, Chen San appeared and took the initiative to help Chen Qi's detoxification.
Dongdong also finally found Chen San, she had already recognized each other's identities, it turned out that Dongdong and Chen San were also orphan sisters who grew up together. Around the age of 10, he was adopted by a martial arts master and taught them to learn martial arts, hoping that the two would become a pair of heroines who practiced chivalry and righteousness.
As a result, when Chen San was 12 years old, he was caught by several mysterious masters, and since then the news has been heard. In fact, she was abducted by the old eunuch's men, brainwashed, and trained to be an emotionless killing machine.
At this point in the story, the memories and fates of the three people's past are entangled.
At the same time, the old eunuch was dissatisfied with the female flying man's repeated obstruction of himself at this time, so he let Chen Jiu kill the ring at the railway station, and deliberately induced the female flying man to take action, resulting in Dongdong's husband Officer Liu being seriously injured in the accident.
On the other hand, Chen San's most concerned doctor finally found an equation to solve the failure of the invisibility cloak. The old eunuch then sent his subordinate Chen Jiu to kill the doctor, witnessing the tragic death of his beloved, making Chen San completely dead hearted, and finally decided to deal with the old eunuch.
Chen San decided to join forces with Dongdong and Chen Qi, and the three of them broke into the underground demon palace and engaged in a life-and-death battle with the old eunuch.
However, the old eunuch's martial arts were too high, and the three of them were invincible, plus the underground palace was full of biogas, so Chen Qi's explosives blew up the underground palace, forcing the old eunuch to come to the ground to fight with the three people.
After a great scuffle, Chen Qi,000 used explosives again, trying to make the old eunuch disappear. However, the most evil scene in this film came, although the old eunuch was blown up and destroyed, like a skeleton corpse, he still had explosive combat power.
It was even attached to Chen San's body, wanting to use Chen San to kill the other two.
Fortunately, in the end, Chen San's memory awakened at a critical moment, and he used his consciousness to blast the old eunuch who tried to control her body.
At the end, after a big war, the three sisters looked at each other and smiled, and the three of them put on their cloaks and walked out of the fire, and since then they have had a nickname: The Three Heroes of the East.
Many people think that the inspiration for "Three Heroes of the East" may have come from the work "Three Sisters" by Japanese manga artist HojoJi, but according to director Du Qifeng in the documentary "Kung Fu Film Years", the inspiration for the creation of "Three Heroes of the East" came from a Hong Kong black-and-white Cantonese fragment "Black Rose" in the 1960s.
This "Three Heroes of the East" is essentially a female martial arts film, the most special thing about the whole movie is the mixed aesthetic style deliberately created by the film, the title of "Three Heroes of the East" is obviously from the Tang legend's "Three Heroes of the Wind and Dust", but the character of the three heroines is a mixture of super heroes and females and snakes and scorpion beauties that are often seen in the context of Western movies.
Mui Yanfang, Yang Ziqiong, Maggie Cheung, three sisters in the Hong Kong film industry at that time, the image modeling in the film was very avant-garde, and the makeup and hair styles of the three in the film all reflected the American comic style of the time, the tights style plus the slender physique, with the "dark black" clothing style, perfectly interpreted the style of modern women.
Dongdong, played by Mei Yanfang, is the wife of the sheriff on weekdays, and at the same time, she is omnipotent and chivalrous, and this two-faced persona is very similar to the superhero settings such as Batman in Hollywood.
Chen San, played by Yang Ziqiong, is from an evil organization, and his red clothes look charming and charming, but at the same time, this role is very emotional, and his heart is also conscience, which is also the existence of good and evil in the movie.
As for Chen Qi, played by Maggie Cheung, the setting is the most interesting, she is a hot and greedy bounty hunter, but at the same time she is spontaneous, longing for freedom, acting debauchery, and the surface is vulgar and practical, but delicate and affectionate. Therefore, the contrast with the calm and stable Dongdong and Chen San is great, and it is the most prominent.
The whole story is also almost the home of three women, with male characters either as supporting characters or villains. For example, the weak doctor, the greedy and fearful director, the brave and unscrupulous Officer Liu, and even the cruel and monster-like Chen Jiu, etc., the shaping of these personalities is obviously the screenwriter's intention to highlight the dominance of female characters in the film.
In addition, the most commendable thing about the film is its art style, director Du Qifeng boldly created a dark and eerie world that can exist in any time and space. Whether it was the underground demon palace hidden in the sewers, or the scene where Chen Jiu used blood droplets to kill at the train station, it was chilling.
On the other hand, the martial arts director of this film is Cheng Xiaodong, who is known for his elegance and magnificence, who is especially good at designing martial arts actions for female characters, and the martial arts actions he designed in this "Three Heroes of the East" are as wild as ever, romantic and beautiful, fully showing the flowing beauty of several women fighting and fighting.
It is worth mentioning that in the same year, the film also launched a sequel "The Legend of Modern Heroes".
The story of this sequel is more like a superhero movie that saves the world, and compared to the previous game, the righteous deeds of "The Three Heroes of the East" are elevated to another level: they finally find a pure source of water and kill the careerists who control everything behind the scenes. Thus saving all humanity, and the future of humanity.
Although these two films were not successful in those years, when we look back at this set of films, we have to sigh that in the atmosphere of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong film industry in the 1990s, the imagination and creativity of the screenwriters and directors are enough to amaze today's filmmakers.