To Kill with Intrigue [Blu-ray]

To Kill With Intrigue is a 1977 kung fu movie starring a pre-fame Jackie Chan. The film is directed and produced by Lo Wei, known for many films including the Bruce Lee classics, Fist of Fury and The Big Boss. The film also stars the fantastic and beautiful, Hsu Feng. She starred in a number of action films in her short career but is most commonly known for the Kung Hu wuxia films, including A Touch of Zen, Raining In The Mountain and its sister film Legend of the Mountain.

The film is about Hsiao Lei (Jackie Chan) and his quest to find his lost love, who he has sent away knowing that the Killer Bee gang (dressed like a Peter Gabriel Genesis fan club) is out to kill his family. After the events play through, he is attacked by a group (dressed like the Spanish Inquisition) and seeks his friend. His chum has taken advantage of the situation and has carted off the lovely and heart broken Qian-qian as his own. During his time searching, he has numerous encounters with Ting Chan Yen (Hsu Feng), the leader of the Bee’s. She has fallen in love with him.

From what I’ve read online, this film is generally considered an awfully confusing movie and was apparently a frustrating mess for the people involved. I think I followed the movie fairly well. The characters were all outlined perfectly fine and easy to differentiate from others. The quick cuts and character outfits can make this a bit confusing at the start of the movie but becomes less of a problem later on. The film is roughly an hour and forty five minutes long. I thought it was paced rather well and didn’t get bored for a moment. The action sequences were very good, much better than Dragon Fist (one of the films I purchased alongside this one) and probably the best pre-Drunken Master fights I have seen. The choreography was quick and very well done, for the most part. There is some silly trampoline jumping and some not very subtle cuts, but it was few and far between. Hsu Feng stole the show, in my opinion. She is a natural beautify on screen and has the chops to go alongside it. Her character arc is the most interesting of the lot and her fight sequences are the best of the movie.

Putting the action sequences aside, I thought the director had a good eye for colour and scenery. Each scene is in a stunning location and all of the outfits are made of bright colourful flowing material. It’s a real treat on the eyes. Though, I did notice that the actors appeared to be extremely cold and certain scenes just had that aura of cold bitterness. I didn’t realise how bad it was until there was a pond in the foreground that was clearly frozen over. This must have made working on the film really difficult. But it does give the film a certain look, one that I enjoyed.

The 88 Films re-release looks quite nice. The skin textures look a bit waxy in places but nowhere near as bad as abominations like Predator and the early bluray for Evil Dead 2. The colours are very strong and the clarity is very consistent throughout. I watched the film using the Mandarin 5.1 audio track. It came through really well at times. The use of sound effects in the back channels was a nice touch and added a little extra to the film experience. Sadly, this copy of the film is quite lacking in extras and that is a shame. I would have loved to have seen a bit of behind the scenes for this one.

To Kill With Intrigue is one of the better early Jackie Chan films I’ve seen. There’s some gorgeous scenery and some excellent fight scenes, more than enough to be happy with my purchase. The video quality is pretty good through out and will make a nice edition to people looking for a good old school kung fu film.