[KFCC] Eight Diagram Pole Fighter Review

Story: Seven brothers and the father of the Yang family are renowned for their spear fighting skills, but they are led into a trap in battle. Their betrayer is Pan Mei, who used to be in league with the Yangs, but now recognises them as a threat to his own power. Pan Mei calls upon a group of bandits known as the Tartars to kill all but two of the brothers, one of whom goes insane (Alexander Fu Sheng), and the other seeks to join a Shaolin Temple (Gordon Liu). The temple do not initially believe that their new applicant has the temperament to be a monk, but in a painful display of his determination, he is eventually accepted, despite his need to avenge the deaths of his brothers.

Review: In the middle of production, Alexander Fu Sheng, the original star of ‘Eight Diagram Pole Fighter’ was tragically killed in a car crash at the age of 29. Wanting to complete the project, drastic rewrites were made so that Fu Sheng’s completed scenes were left in tact, but bringing Gordon Liu to the fore of the plot. The result is a fantastic Kung Fu film, and a great finale for Alexander Fu Sheng’s movie career.

‘Eight Diagram Pole Fighter’ came quite late in the Shaw Brothers main body of output, and as such, the studio was well versed in how to produce tales of vengeance. This is a solid movie, and by the final battle, you are right there with our hero. Yang endures so much hardship at the hands of Pan Mei and the Tartars, and you keep assuring yourself that sooner or later, somebody is going to get their ass kicked.

The film opens up with an extremely theatrical battle on ‘Jinsha Beach’, which is actually a very unconvincing studio set. It’s a throwback to much earlier Shaw Brothers fight scenes, and looks very stylised and rigidly choreographed. Suddenly, the Yang’s start getting skewered, shot with arrows, and crucified in the style of a Chang Cheh battle, and Eight Diagram slowly starts to unravel it’s vengeful beauty.

This is a movie with no sense of humour at all, and is definitely a dark tale. Some extremely nasty things happen throughout the film, and Fu Sheng and Liu’s performances can be best described as ‘a right headcase’ and ‘really pissed off’, in that order. Gordon Liu walks away with the best actor award for this one, but only because he gets the majority of screen time. Liu is especially compelling in a powerful but hard to watch ‘head shaving’ scene that looks suspiciously real. And painful.

As for the fight action, there is a fair amount of it, and master director and action choreographer Lau Kar-Leung delivers some real beauties, with the expected emphasis on spear and pole combat. After the highly stylised opening battle, there is a battle with the director himself, and then against Tartar fighters trying to invade his home. There is an inventive training sequence involving wooden wolves, and to say too much about the final battle would spoil the fun. Needless to say, it’s worth the wait, and pretty unforgettable stuff.

Now, not one to break tradition and write in the first person, I’m going to break character as a reviewer, and say that I’ve watched a good two or three hundred Asian movies, and while I have a solid list of all-time favourites, Eight Diagram Pole Fighter has so far passed me by. It has come out of nowhere, and from now on I will be mentioning the movie with the reverence deserving of only a few dozen movies. This is one of the best kung fu films in the world – EVER!