THE WHITE BUTTERFLY KILLER is a very cheap and unappetising Taiwanese kung fu film with a mystery plot of sorts. Hsu Feng plays a femme fatale whose family members were butchered by the members of an opium-smuggling gang. She masquerades as a mild-mannered businesswoman while becoming a secret avenger by night, taking down the bad guys one at a time. This film suffers from the usual poorly-quality filming, bad action choreography, and a general dearth of engaging incident. Feng is okay but her co-stars are lacklustre and the story quite predictable, so this frequently drops to bottom-of-the-barrel level.
2 Reviews
Heavy dialog and light action
ckormos128 June 2019
It opens with a dusty day for two men on horseback. They check into an inn. Back on the road, Chen Hui-Lou advises the gang to send a man ahead to check things out. Cut again to another gang waits on the trail to get revenge on the gang that robbed them. They fight. One is injured and takes refuge at the inn.
The first ten minutes of the movie roll out a lot of characters making it hard for the viewer to follow who was the lead and what was the plot.
My copy is a digital file made from an Ocean Shores VHS tape. This plays as a square video on a HDTV. The problem with this format is that it chops off the left and right of the movie image and makes the fights appear to be too close up. It is dubbed in English.
A mysterious woman behind the scene seems to be in charge of the inn and the whole town. The first two fights were fist to fist brawls. The action was okay but the fault I found was poor focus, just too much space between the kick and the target.
Shan Mao rides into town and checks out the inn. Hsu Feng is the mystery woman and she is extremely upset to see him. It later comes out she was raped and parents murdered 6 years ago by Shan Mao's gang.
The story line drags with long exposition dialog that just repeats what the audience already knows. The fights never get better than what I wrote about the first two fights.
This movie would only draw the attention of fans of martial arts movies of the golden age from 1967 to 1984. As such a fan, I cannot recommend it to others. I rate it just below average for the year and genre.
The first ten minutes of the movie roll out a lot of characters making it hard for the viewer to follow who was the lead and what was the plot.
My copy is a digital file made from an Ocean Shores VHS tape. This plays as a square video on a HDTV. The problem with this format is that it chops off the left and right of the movie image and makes the fights appear to be too close up. It is dubbed in English.
A mysterious woman behind the scene seems to be in charge of the inn and the whole town. The first two fights were fist to fist brawls. The action was okay but the fault I found was poor focus, just too much space between the kick and the target.
Shan Mao rides into town and checks out the inn. Hsu Feng is the mystery woman and she is extremely upset to see him. It later comes out she was raped and parents murdered 6 years ago by Shan Mao's gang.
The story line drags with long exposition dialog that just repeats what the audience already knows. The fights never get better than what I wrote about the first two fights.
This movie would only draw the attention of fans of martial arts movies of the golden age from 1967 to 1984. As such a fan, I cannot recommend it to others. I rate it just below average for the year and genre.
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