Gu Long’s martial arts stories on the big screen: how Chor Yuen adapted 17 of his magical novels, and our pick of the movies
- Chor Yuen’s beautiful set designs supply a surreal touch to Gu Long’s strange stories of sensitive swordsmen fighting martial artists and spirits
- The director scripted most of the films himself and said they were quite faithful to the original stories
His lyrical and poetic – but still violent – fantasies feature troubled, sensitive swordsmen continually trying to discern truth from fiction and good from evil, as they fight against conniving martial artists and, sometimes, cruel supernatural beings.
The heroes, who often fall into doomed love affairs with the heroines who help them, inhabit a fantastical netherworld of picturesque forests – all meticulously crafted on Shaw Brothers studio sets rather than being shot on location – and glamorous houses with multiple rooms, doors and secret nooks.
To create this milieu, Chor Yuen made full use of the Shaw Studio standing sets at Clear Water Bay in Hong Kong’s New Territories, and the lack of forests and lush foliage in the city meant that he had no option but to create such exterior locations inside.
For five years, I made nothing but Gu Long pictures
The beautiful set designs, which brought out the best in Shaw’s vast army of set dressers and props makers, worked to his advantage, with the artifice and artificial lighting supplying a genuinely surreal touch to complement the strangeness of the storylines.
“The illusory mansions and landscapes of Gu Long’s swordsman novels, devoid of any specific historical time frame, was, to Chor Yuen, the ideal setting for the Machiavellian setting of the superhuman swordsmen,” wrote Grace Ng and Kwok Ching-ling in their essay “A Lifetime in the Studio”.
“It was a realm of ancient distant times and worldly intrigues, in which the essence of the chivalrous knights-errant was more important than historical accuracy. The studio became the perfect environment to conjure up the backdrops over which these metaphorical dark dramas of human deception could be played out. As the director, Chor Yuen could manipulate the performances with ease in the studio setting,” Ng and Kwok wrote.
The Magic Blade features a swordfight set amid a game of human Chinese chess, and, most beguilingly, Swordsman and Enchantress depicts a miniature mansion house which the hero believes he has been shrunk to inhabit.
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The heroes lack the moral certainty of most martial arts heroes as well as the extreme willpower of Chang Cheh’s yanggang (Chinese macho) protagonists. They understand what is right and wrong, but find it difficult to make correct judgments in the morally ambivalent worlds that they live in. The pursuit of power and fame are viewed negatively, and fighting is not a pleasure, or even a discipline, but simply a necessity.
“The concept of Gu Long’s heroes traces a direct shift in the genre from the virtuous and moralistic to a combination of gallantry and generosity,” wrote Liu Damu in his epic 1980 essay “From Chivalric Fiction to Martial Arts Film”. “The characters themselves show a disdain for worldly pleasures even though they display a distinct indulgence for alcohol. In effect, they possess a suicidal streak.”
Before turning to martial arts, Chor Yuen was a successful director of Cantonese-language melodramas (wenyi) in the 1960s. In the early 1970s, he became known for the social satire The House of 72 Tenants, and the groundbreaking Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan.
He said that the reason he filmed so many Gu Long novels was that they did well at the box office, so Shaw Brothers chairman Sir Run Run Shaw kept asking him to make them. (Chor Yuen did, however, make other films while he was filming the Gu Long movie cycle.)
“You had to follow the market, more of less … those Gu Long pictures were well received, and for five years, I made nothing but Gu Long pictures,” Chor Yuen told the Hong Kong Film Archive. “Non-stop. All in one go! Every day of the year except Sundays!”
Below are three of our favourite Chor Yuen adaptations from the 1970s.
The Magic Blade (1976)
Chor Yuen ventures wholly into supernatural territory for this martial arts psychodrama about truth, identity and illusion.
The Sentimental Swordsman (1977)
The unusual storyline features a swordfighter whose concern for the welfare and feelings of others makes it difficult for him to act. The villain tries to exploit his tenderness – along with his rivals’ less praiseworthy desire for fame and glory – to take control of the martial arts world.
“You cannot be a sentimental swordsman, only a merciless one,” he tells the hero, played by again Ti Lung. The story involves the pursuit of the magical Golden Vest, but that’s really just a MacGuffin to show how those with good intentions can be trapped by evil doers. “We’ve made our own web to tie us up – we can’t get out,” says the hero.
Swordsman and Enchantress (1978)
This tale of magic, swordsmanship and sorcery revolves around an evil martial artist’s search for the legendary Deer Cutting Sword. But a romance lies at the heart of it, with the cruel protagonist manipulating a triangular love affair among the heroes to further his own ends.
The plot unspools with mechanical precision to develop a mysterious world in which no one is who they claim to be, and the forest setting has all the beautiful Gothic touches of a Hammer horror. One of Chor Yuen’s best.
In this regular feature series on the best of Hong Kong martial arts cinema, we examine the legacy of classic films, re-evaluate the careers of its greatest stars, and revisit some of the lesser-known aspects of the beloved genre. Read our comprehensive explainer here.
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