![]() Martial arts film fans will surely recognise Jimmy Wang Yu who’d already starred in more than 40 action movies. He walks on and we only get to glimpse his face as he lifts his eyes to read another sign above the ‘Hou Zhen Gate’. It could easily be mistaken for the desert of a spaghetti western, but as the man nears we see that, instead of a Stetson, the hat he wears is the distinctive Asian dǒulì ‘sedge-hat’, and when he pauses to read the inscription on a simple way-marker we learn this is no dry desert but the ‘Beach of the War Gods’. ![]() For China, pre-war Japan is often used in the same narrative terms as Nazi Germany in European and American cinema: instant villains.Īfter lingering shots of turbulent waters breaking around rugged rocks, the film opens with a wide panorama of a barren landscape as a tiny figure approaches from the distance. The anti-Japanese rhetoric is almost propagandist in its intensity. Historically, the Wokou raiders were a mixed bunch that included Portuguese soldiers and plenty of Chinese pirates too. Thus, the sporadic raids of pirates are presented as a concerted invasion by the Japanese. So, although the story takes place in feudal China, it intentionally parallels the events of the 20th-century. Though this is certainly a period piece, there are a few anachronisms, and one must bear in mind that most of those involved in the production were born before or during the Japanese occupation that began in the 1930s and concluded with the defeat of Imperial Japan at the close of World War II. ![]() ![]() The story unfolds during the Jiajing Wokou raids of the mid-16th-century, when Japanese led pirates and raiding parties repeatedly attacked China’s coastal towns and settlements. If that’s all you want from a movie, then it’s sure to please. The final battle involves hundreds of people-reputedly the film called upon 3,500 extras-who pretty much all add to the already impressive body count. Once the action kicks-in, it’s non-stop as fight scenes escalate exponentially from one versus a few to several verses a multitude. By the mid-’70s, to borrow a lyric from Carl Douglas, everybody really was kung fu fighting.īeach of the War Gods is a remarkable showcase of kung fu prowess and showy skills with novel weaponry, relying on stunning old-school stunt work. Just one year after forming, Golden Harvest signed-up a martial arts champion by the name of Bruce Lee, who starred in The Big Boss (1971), the first of four films that would consolidate their success and make kung fu a global craze. They offered lucrative production deals and attractive fees to court new, independent talent and lure some stalwarts away from Shaw Brothers. Chow and Ho wanted to build on this while freeing themselves of the restrictive studio systems and, in 1970, they founded Golden Harvest in Hong Kong. Shaw Brothers Studios dominated the domestic box office throughout the 1960s and 1970s and forged a fresh foreign market for kung fu films. The legendary production company was set-up by Raymond Chow and Leonard Ho, both renegades from the seminal Shaw Brothers Studios where they helped establish the martial arts genre in Chinese cinema. Beach of the War Gods / Zhan shen tan is a great example of what Golden Harvest was doing in the 1970s: spectacular action movies with amazing martial arts fight choreography.
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