Yao Hao (Chen Sing), is a young man whose father was assassinated and whose mother was killed in an attack on the funeral procession. He survives the attack and winds up at a Shaolin temple where he insists he wants to stay and become a monk. His beautiful fiancée (Lu Shu Chin) pleads with him to come back with her, but he refuses. The head monk, Brother Fa (Chan Wai Man), an orphan who's been at the monastery all his life and is expecting to succeed the current Shaolin Abbot, is jealous of the privileges Yao Hao has had in life and asks him questions about the outside world, including what it's like to touch a woman. Brother Fa's weakening resolve soon finds him leaving the monastery and falling into the clutches of Lord Eagle (Kam Kong), the Manchu ruler in the area who's trying to wipe out all resistance to Manchu/Ching rule.
Acting
Michael Chan Wai-Man's spiral from monk to monster.
Direction
Tsai Yang-Ming's tight 81-minute moral collapse.
Practical Effects
Raw 1975 fight choreography, zero wirework pretension.
Director
Tsai Yang-Ming
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This 1975 Taiwan production quietly encodes anti-Manchu sentiment as anti-Ching resistance, resonating with contemporary Taiwanese identity politics.
Michael Chan Wai-Man was a real-life triad member before acting; his authentic menace made Brother Fa's corruption terrifyingly believable.
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