Why you need to see this movie: You are a compulsive completist and your ego demands that you be able to say that you've seen more obscure Golden Harvest movies than that other guy on the INTERNET! Or...you're an academic slaving away for a citation in a peer-reviewed film-studies journal and you need to write about something that hasn't already been done to death.
Why should probably skip this movie: Like a lot of older Wuxias and Kung Fu flicks, "The Angry River" has a plot that unfolds like that of a video-game, and an 8-bit video game at that. Angela Mao and her ally travel across China's great outdoors, get attacked, obtain a magic item, get attacked again, travel to the origin of the attacks, confront the boss, kill his minions, kill the boss, and conclude the story. This is not King Hu.
Miscellaneous Observations:The composer of the movie's must have been listening to a lot of the acid-rock coming out of Britain and America at that time. The movie opens kind of like Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" with a thunderous drop-D. After that the music doesn't really sound like "Iron Man" at all. It feels like "Paint It Black" but sounds completely different. It is interesting to note how under-choreographed the fight scenes in many older wuxia were. The excitement comes more from the editing rather than the stunt-work. Wirework is a lost art. For the first time ever I found myself feeling startled when a Chinese swordsman leapt a tall building in a single bound. The movie is much better edited than any movie like this deserves to be.
Stargazing: Sammo Hung ( in his stuntman, punching-bag phase) plays a mini-boss and gets cut up real bad. Lam Ching-Ying stands around as part of the big bosse's entourage but doesn't fight and presumably survives. Angela Mao is the heroine and loses a fight to a dinosaur in what might have been a dream sequence.
Why should probably skip this movie: Like a lot of older Wuxias and Kung Fu flicks, "The Angry River" has a plot that unfolds like that of a video-game, and an 8-bit video game at that. Angela Mao and her ally travel across China's great outdoors, get attacked, obtain a magic item, get attacked again, travel to the origin of the attacks, confront the boss, kill his minions, kill the boss, and conclude the story. This is not King Hu.
Miscellaneous Observations:The composer of the movie's must have been listening to a lot of the acid-rock coming out of Britain and America at that time. The movie opens kind of like Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" with a thunderous drop-D. After that the music doesn't really sound like "Iron Man" at all. It feels like "Paint It Black" but sounds completely different. It is interesting to note how under-choreographed the fight scenes in many older wuxia were. The excitement comes more from the editing rather than the stunt-work. Wirework is a lost art. For the first time ever I found myself feeling startled when a Chinese swordsman leapt a tall building in a single bound. The movie is much better edited than any movie like this deserves to be.
Stargazing: Sammo Hung ( in his stuntman, punching-bag phase) plays a mini-boss and gets cut up real bad. Lam Ching-Ying stands around as part of the big bosse's entourage but doesn't fight and presumably survives. Angela Mao is the heroine and loses a fight to a dinosaur in what might have been a dream sequence.
