Showdown at the Cotton Mill (1978) Review

“Showdown at the Cotton Mill” DVD Cover

Director: Wu Ma
Cast: Chi Kuan Chun, Dorian Tan Tao Liang, Tong Siu Man, Lee Keung, Fai Wan, Cheung Paang, Chang Chi Ping, Chan Sam Lam, Cheng Sai Gang, Hoh Gong
Running Time: 84 min.

By Ian Whittle

Originally planned as a Chang Cheh production, part of his Chang’s Film Co productions for Shaws, this ended up becoming orphaned when the company collapsed. It’s the third version of the story of Shaolin hero Hu Huei-Chien to be produced by Chang and to star Chi Kuan-Chun, but at least here he is the star, rather than being ignored in favour of Fu Sheng. And since he’s directed by Wu Ma rather than Chang Cheh, Chi is rather better at acting here, as Chang would often direct him by saying “Expression 5!” (that’s Chi’s excuse anyway!)

The film gets off to a dynamic start, with Hu avenging his father’s murder, and beating the life out of Shan Mao (an actor who sadly was dead from a real life fight by the time of the film’s release). The choreography is very effective, retaining the styles but also being fast and ferocious. Call me a heretic, but I find this more powerful than Lau Kar-Leung’s Shaolin choreography…

On the other hand, the film now has a bit of a problem. It’s opened with a very dramatic fight, and will build towards a grand finale, but it’s got to fill up the middle. So we have a few too many scenes of Hu making short work of various Manchu ner-do-wells. Had the film begun with the events leading up to Hu’s father being killed, the film could have given us some Shaolin training scenes (noticeably missing from this version of the story) and built towards a mid-way climax. But then we’d likely have lost the impact of the kick-ass opening so it’s not as straight forward as that.

Another distinctive improvement of this film over the previous versions is that we get to see Hu’s wife and child. They’re not especially involving, but it makes a nice change from the tired topless male-bonding that made the dialogue scenes of Chang Cheh’s Shaolin films rather dull.

As with Chang Cheh’s later Two Champions of Shaolin, the film introduces its villain, Kao, part way through. In both films, Kao (played by Lu Feng in the Chang film, and here by Tan Tao-Liang) infiltrates the Shaolin patriots with overt gestures of friendship. Tan, like Chi, can be rather wooden at times but here is quite effective, selling his menace subtly by ordering a memorial plaque for his “friend”, whom he will kill.

Tan is, of course, an amazing kicker, so the final clashes between him and Chi are brilliant, two distinctive styles of martial arts fighting to the death, and with a brilliantly morbid atmosphere, as we know Hu is dying from his injuries and therefore there is real tension as we hope he gets to really destroy his opponent. And to make things even grimmer, the music uses a stock cue from Dawn of the Dead, so we can think of our hero dying horribly, and the zombie apocalypse nightmare!

Ian Whittle’s Rating: 7/10