The Magic Blade

Fu Hung-hsueh and Yen Nan-fei are two rival swordsmen who have to break off their duel; a far greater danger is after them both. The weapon called the Peacock Dart gives whoever holds it a power nothing can stand against, and a man in pursuit of power is about to get hold of it. The two of them set out to find it first. The source is a novel by Gu Long; Chor Yuen made a run of films from that writer's books and established the best known strand of the Shaw Brothers studio in the seventies. The mould is wuxia but it is not realistic; the sets are plainly studio, the fog machine is always on, and every enemy arrives with a strange weapon of his own. Ti Lung and Lo Lieh face each other. The film is remembered for its atmosphere rather than its plot and is counted among the most stylised examples of the genre.