Even during an era in which martial arts spectacles flooded the market, there was something unique about the way that The 14 Amazons (1972) took mainstream conventions to new heights and transformed them into something refreshingly modern.
Director-writer Cheng Kang’s take on the legendary Song dynasty tale was both typical and atypical of the super-productions churned out by Shaw Brothers, Hong Kong’s largest film enterprise. Not for him the celluloid poetry of former studio colleague King Hu, nor the attention to period minutiae of the then-reigning Shaw Brothers maestro Li Han-hsiang.
Rather, Cheng was an efficient storyteller and master of pictorial narrative — qualities ideally suited for breathing new life into an 11th-century yarn detailing the patriotism and sacrifice by female as well as male Yang clan warriors that’s so familiar to Chinese audiences.
Cheng’s big-budget spin utilised an approach akin to a thoroughly cinematic graphic novel that simplified the epic’s plethora of personalities and plot twists while simultaneously enriching the adventure through exciting visuals. The studio’s wide-screen “Shawscope” process had rarely been put to better use, the vast sets and rhythmic editing complementing the stirringly choreographed action scenes, many designed by the director’s son, Tony Ching Siu-tung.
What gives the production a certain extra something is its female focus. The film deals with a lady-dominant chapter of the Yang saga; that is, the efforts organised by the clan’s octogenarian Grand Dame (Lisa Lu Yan) to fight the invading Western Xia barbarians following the death of her grandson and heir. All but one of the lady’s extensive surviving progeny are women, making the ensuing battles ring with a nascent 1970s-style feminism.
The main concession to the genre’s theatrical gender-bending roots is the entertaining miscasting of top Shaw vixen Lily Ho Li-li as the clan’s sole surviving masculine offspring. The portrayal was extremely baffling to me when I watched from the balcony of the old London Theatre during the picture’s run in 1972, my first Hong Kong movie experience and an eye-opening introduction to both wuxia (martial chivalry) and local cinema.