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Late on the night of September 25, 1980, Wen Rui'an was arrested by Taiwanese police for founding the Shenzhou Poetry Society.
After a difficult three months in prison, he was expelled from Taiwan and exiled to Hong Kong, where he began serializing martial arts novels in Jin Yong's Ming Pao.
Soon, Wen Rui'an wrote a novella "Tang Chop the Murderer" in "Qingxiu Xiaozhuang", which incorporated a resentment in his chest and made this novella present a cruel image of corpses strewn across the field.
In 1993, the Hong Kong Yindu Agency cooperated with mainland film companies to bring "Tang Chop the Murderer" to the big screen.
The film is directed by Zhong Shaoxiong, and the cast is starring Zhang Fengyi, Guan Zhilin, Mo Shaocong, Ni Dahong, and Zhang Guangbei.
The two screenwriters, Situ Huizhuo and Zhang Tan, while retaining the artistic conception of the novel, made a drastic "plastic surgery" adaptation of the storyline, deleted many important characters and plots, and borrowed "a sword to the end" song from Gu Long's "Full Moon Curved Knife" and inserted it into the film.
The overall tone of the film is gray and dark, the characters are vicious, and a large number of violent shots are filled with it, just like a large-scale cult film.
As a result, after the film was released in Hong Kong in 1993, it was eventually banned from the mainland for 10 years.
It was not until 2003 that the copyright owner made a large number of deletions to the film on the basis of the original version, from the original 87 minutes to the current 77 minutes, that it passed the censorship and was able to distribute it in the mainland market, but the scale of plot violence was still very large.
Pi Ge held the spirit of perseverance in the excavation of the old Hong Kong film, and after excavation, he finally found the 87-minute full version, and was able to get a glimpse of the true face of this cult martial arts film.
During the Ming Dynasty, eunuchs had exclusive power
Tang Baojia (played by Zhang Fengyi) and the girl Lu Yao (played by Guan Zhilin) are in love and elope.
They spent a wonderful night by the river, but unfortunately they were caught by the pursuing villagers the next day.
Tang Bao's family was sent to prison for abducting women, where they were subjected to inhuman torture and "closed-eye punishment".
What is "the punishment of closing one's eyes"? --------------------------------------- The plot is presented in extremely straightforward and bloody shots, some of which have been cut down in the Mainland version.
Later, the Tang Bao family won a life-and-death duel of prisoners, and was selected by Li Gonggong of Xichang to join the team of "murderers".
The Tang Bao family has since changed its name to Tang Cho.
Killer Team: West Factory's department responsible for assassination activities
Tang Cho is clean and neat, has a superior IQ, and he and Wang Kou, another rookie in the team, are like-minded and become a golden partner.
After completing several missions well, they quickly became the main players in the "Killer" team.
For a while, Tang Chou and Wang Kou did not know that they had already become the thorns in the eyes of another ace killer in the team, "Song Zhong"
Song Zhongyuan was the number one killer in the "murderer", and the rapid rise in the status of Tang Chou and Wang Kou made him feel threatened and hated them to the bone.
At an internal celebration banquet, Wei Zhongxian personally came to the scene to give wine, because of the ranking reasons, it also completely intensified the contradiction between the three people, fortunately, the clever Tang Chopper pretended to be drunk, and avoided a big war.
Two:
Soon after, Wei Zhongxian arranged for Tang Cho and Wang Kou to lead the team on a "lantern" mission— assassinating a small living Buddha from Tibet.
The place of action, located in the downtown area, Tang Chopper and his gang were originally like a bamboo, but unfortunately, when Tang Chopper was about to kill, he suddenly encountered Lu Yao, who had been lost for many years.
A chance encounter with his old lover caught Tang Chou by surprise, and the knife was suspended in the air.
In order to complete the assassination mission, Wang Kou, who was standing nearby, hurried over to mend the sword.
Although the task was completed, Tang Chou lost his hand after all, breaking the rules of the "murderer", in order to escape the investigation of the factory, Tang Chou simply followed the road and disappeared from the rivers and lakes.
Tang Chou followed Lu Yao and returned to the original village, and Tang Chou also used his previous name and became a member of this small mountain village.
Wang Kou returned with the head of the living Buddha, was commended by the organization, and was soon promoted to the number one killer of the organization.
But people in the jianghu, involuntarily, the "murderer" organization never allows betrayal.
Soon Song Zhong was in pursuit, and he set fire to the villagers' thatched huts, forcing Tang to cut them out and duel him.
Although Song Zhong had always refused to accept defeat, he was indeed not Tang Chop's opponent, and after less than two rounds of fighting, he was killed by Tang Chop.
After killing Song Zhong, Tang Chou knew that his whereabouts had been revealed and he could no longer stay in the village.
Reluctantly, he returned to the "Killer" organization, and soon took over Wei Zhongxian's new task——
He and Wang Kou went to assassinate his subordinate Li Gonggong.
Now that the imperial court has been controlled by Wei Zhongxian for the most part, and gradually there is no need for the "murderer" organization, Wei Zhongxian wants the killers in the organization to kill each other and bring this organization to ruin.
After arranging for Wang Kou and Tang Chou to assassinate Li Gonggong together, Wei Zhongxian ordered Tang Chou and Wang Kou to have a life-and-death duel.
Although Wang Kou and Tang Chou knew about Wei Zhongxian's plot, they could not help themselves and could only kill each other.
When his friend Wang Kou fell under Tang Chou's sword, Tang Chou truly realized that the only way to live a truly peaceful life was to get rid of Wei Zhongxian.
In the end, Tang killed Wei Zhongxian.
The duel between Wang Kou and Tang Chou is actually the highlight of the novel, and the killing of Wei Zhongxian is a re-creation of the film.
Such a change also gave the film a relatively good ending, but the overall story line is single, flat and direct, the character image and dialogue are very blunt, and the personality characteristics of each character cannot be well shaped, which is a major shortcoming of the film.
Zhang Fengyi was originally a good actor with great strength, but the shaping of the role did not give him more space to play, and the image of Mu Ne was really unpleasant, and this kind of mainland actor was also very common in Hong Kong movies.
Wang Kou, played by Mo Shaocong, is more than agile, but in the movie, it is just a high-level dragon set, and there are not too many shots for him to show, and his change of thought and inner drama are basically nothing, which is really a pity.
There are some new attempts in the design of the character image, because it is selected in the interior, there are more wilderness backgrounds, and the characters are also rustic, but there is a little more real texture.
The style of fighting is also biased towards realism, but because Zhang Fengyi, Mo Shaocong, Zhang Guangbei and Ni Dahong are not related to martial arts stars, they need to use a lot of stand-in shots, and the fight is also biased towards blurring, making people look blurry.
Some people compare "Tang Chop the Murderer" with Xu Ke's "Knife", saying that this is the pearl of a stylized film, and the two films can be compared to each other, which Pi Ge does not dare to agree with.
Although "Knife" is also a cult movie, it also makes the characters unkempt, but Zhao Wenzhuo and Xiong Xinxin are both martial arts experts, and the classic martial arts at the end is fast and fast, and the fight is dark, not comparable to the messy fights that rely on editing in "Tang Chop the Murderer".
The large number of bloody scenes in the film made the distribution difficult, and the mainland release was hopeless, and the release in Hong Kong at the end of 1993 lasted only two weeks, and finally earned 3.39 million Hong Kong dollars at the box office.
It's a pity that such a good subject matter, such a good actor
Text/Pippi Film Editorial Department: Bloody Dan Heart
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