Colors Inside the Mountains

Come Drink With Me (1966)
directed by King Hu
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

With all the money the Weinsteins spent revamping the prints for their Dragon Dynasty series, there must not have been much left over for subtitles. Unless the action is supposed to speak for itself, in which case... it doesn't. For one thing, I could never tell who thought the woman was really a man, who knew the truth, and at what point everyone else caught on. Maybe: no one, everyone, and from the beginning. Maybe not. The oddest thing about Pei-Pei Cheng's famous role as Golden Swallow, the warrior daughter of a feudal island's provincial governor, is the plot's deferral to the story of Hua Yueh's Drunken Cat in the last half hour. Drunken Cat is not who he seems, but only because every town likes its singing drunk and doesn't bother to dig too far. Somehow his conflict with a corrupt monk supersedes Golden Swallow's vengeance (and her mission), but not before King Hu makes more than adequate use of a fog machine, the time of day, and Hong Kong's green, green hills.