Come Drink With Me 1966 King Hu

I first saw this movie in 2005 at a Shaw Brothers Retrospective.  It was probably the best time I've ever had at the movies.  Watching it again now on DVD at home, it's not as good, of course, but it is still a great movie.  Cheng Pei Pei stars as Golden Swallow and she's been tasked to find her kidnapped brother and return him to safety, while at the same time bring in the outlaws who kidnapped him in the first place.  She's helped out in this by the town drunk, Drunken Cat.  It's a good thing too, because the outlaws are headed up by the fey but deadly Jade Faced Tiger and his right hand man Smiling Tiger.  Oh, and then there's the evil monk with superpowers towards the end.  He's pretty tough. 

The reason why there's an evil monk with superpowers towards the end of this movie is apparently because Run Run Shaw thought the movie wasn't that good, and a superpowered evil monk would be just the thing to save this movie.  Up until then, it's just been a really good, old school swordplay movie.  Here comes the evil abbot, and now it's a really good, old school swordplay movie with dry ice.  For the superpowers.  Visually.  It's dry ice.

I'm really just being nitpicky.  If you like swordplay movies, or if you want to see an old school Hong Kong Cinema classic, even if it's only to see all the ways it was referenced (cough, ripped off, cough) in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, give this movie a look.  You won't be disappointed.

The DVD put out by Dragon Dynasty is pretty loaded with special features.  There's a retrospective on the film by Bey Logan, an interview with Tsui Hark about King Hu (He produced one of King Hu's last movies, Swordsman, and actually fired him from that movie, but that's not mentioned), an interview with Cheng Pei Pei, an interview with Yueh Hua, who plays Drunken Cat, trailers, and a commentary by Bey Logan and Cheng Pei Pei.  The commentary is hilarious, because Pei Pei keeps correcting "Hong Kong Film Expert Bey Logan's" pronunciation of every single Chinese word and name he says.  And she does it in Mandarin and Cantonese.  Priceless.

The only drawback to this DVD is that it contains the single worst subtitle translation I have ever seen on a legally produced DVD ever.  The bad guys, Jade Faced Tiger and Smiling Tiger,  are called, respectively, "Sleek Face" and the astounding "Smiley Face Backbone Hu".  There are other classic phrases like "Shunt aside!" and "Why are you the bad people?", which take me back to the old days of watching bootleg VHS tapes of these movies.  It's kind of fun, but mostly annoying.  Other than that, this DVD is definitely worth picking up