HEAVEN SWORD AND DRAGON SABRE is the first in a trilogy of Chor Yuen films, made by Shaw Brothers and based on a typically sprawling Louis Cha novel. Derek Yee is the nominal hero, a man who starts out unlucky in life before rising through the ranks to challenge the head of the notorious Ming cult. And there's a heck of a lot more plotting than that, typically involving a dense number of characters, masters, ancients, and rivals. It's a film where everyone seems to specialise in some martial arts form or another, or have some super power or wacky appearance like green eyebrows.This is one of those films where the emphasis is on depicting a sprawling martial world riven by treachery and greed but bolstered by strong alliances and heroism. Unfortunately, the whole point of the film is to set up the sequels, and there's no ending here; it just cuts off with a trailer for the next part of the film, which appears to be more action packed. The action contained herein is limited and the director is more interested in early effects work, achieved by basic camera trickery. Lo Lieh has an early cameo but other stars like Norman Chu and Yuen Wah are underutilised and most people just stand around and act like scenery dressing for the most part. It's not the most gripping or eventful Shaw film out there, although I'd still like to check out the sequels.

Over the years, kung fu films have picked up the reputation of being thin on plot. Anyone going into HEAVEN SWORD AND DRAGON SABRE thinking this will be in for an enormous shock.Very simply, the story follows the exploits of Cheung Mo-Kei (played by now director/writer Derek Yee), a child of a doomed romance between a swordsman from one of the major (i.e., 'righteous') martial arts clans and a woman from the Ming Cult. Cheung finds himself orphaned and poisoned at a young age. He's also the only person who knows the whereabouts of his godfather, the Golden Lion King, a master martial artist of the Ming Cult and possessor of the all-powerful Dragon Sabre. Through a series of adventures, Cheung is cured of his poison, learns tremendously powerful fighting techniques, and finds his loyalties tested by the righteous clans and the Ming Cult. All the while, he and many others of the martial arts world seek to unite the Dragon Sabre with its sister blade, the Heaven Sword, for legend says that the two will reveal a secret of great power when brought together.Again, the above is a simplification of the plot. Like other Chor Yuen movies, the story is as rich as the landscape. The sets, the costumes, and the sheer number of characters is quite impressive for a martial arts epic of this era and will be a treat for anyone who enjoys lavish productions.Derek Yee spearheads a rather sizeable cast and plays the lead hero straightfaced throughout. His fighting abilities do not threaten to supplant other stars of that period (such as Gordon Liu) but they are adequate for the effects-laden fights in the story.For anyone who is wondering, this movie tells the same story as THE KUNG FU CULT MASTER (http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0108624) starring Jet Li. The two films even end on the roughly the same cliffhanger. For those of you who always wondered how KFCM would end, see this film and its conclusion, HEAVEN SWORD AND DRAGON SABRE 2.