The Godfather meets Agatha Christie in Chor Yuen’s wuxia film Killer Clans, 1976 production that brought sophistication to the genre
- Adapted from a work by new wave martial arts novelist Gu Long, a contemporary of better known Jin Yong, Killer Clans set a template for Chor Yuen’s wuxia films
- With references to The Godfather and an intricate plot, the 1976 film shows how Chor brought the suspense and mystery of detective novels to martial arts movies
Wuxia films went out of fashion the early 1970s when kung fu films took off, but Shaw Brothers studio still saw success in the genre with the works of Chor Yuen, who adapted 19 works by new wave martial arts novelist Gu Long for the company.
Chor was an experienced and critically acclaimed filmmaker who had made his name with wenyi (melodrama) films in the 1960s, and his transition to wuxia films resulted in some of the most innovative and accomplished films of the genre.
The sophisticated martial arts drama The Sentimental Swordsman (1977) is the high point of Chor’s martial arts oeuvre, but 1976’s Killer Clans, his first Gu Long adaptation for Shaw, is a powerful and intriguing work which set the template for the adaptations that followed.
“This is an above-par work of the martial arts genre,” critic Sek Kei wrote in 1976. “It signals the departure of Hong Kong cinema from visually dazzling flicks to embracing rich story plots that are well-developed and -executed. It is also a testimony to Chor Yuen’s directorial flair … It is a rounded, tightly woven narrative that pays close attention to the mood.”
Chor believed that his screen adaptations should follow Gu’s books as closely as possible – he reinserted into Killer Clans some characters that had been trimmed from the story by scriptwriter Ni Kuang, for instance – and his storylines are therefore as labyrinthine as the novels.