a.k.a. Tie Han
company: Lee Ming Film Company
year: 1974
runtime: 86′
countries: Taiwan
director: Cheung Yat-Woo
cast: Jimmy Wang Yu, Lung Fei,
Cheung Lee-Man, Sit Hon,
Chow Chung-Lim, Han Chiang,
Yu Chung-Chiu, Tsai Hung
writer: Cheung Yat-Woo
action director: Leung Siu-Chung
cinematographer: Chen Yu-Pu
original music: Chow Leung
not on home video in the USA*
Plot: Chin (Wang Yu), whose family was killed and left hand cut off by brutal Japanese general Fang Woo (Lung Fei) during the occupation of China in World War II, travels to Japan to seek revenge.
The Iron Man was an odd film for action star and Wtf-Film favorite Jimmy Wang Yu, here looking to move beyond his popular one-armed personas (as seen in the Shaw Brothers One Armed Swordsman efforts and the independently produced One Armed Boxer) while retaining his popular underdog hero image. The result was a compromise that offered Wang Yu’s character of surmountable disability while allowing him to remain bodily intact, more or less. Whether or not The Iron Man was any sort of popular success is beyond me (Wang Yu would return to one-armed-dom with the inimitable Master of the Flying Guillotine just two years later), but that doesn’t much matter in retrospect.
What does matter is whether or not The Iron Man is worth watching, and the answer to that is a whole fistful of yes!
Things begin with a fine sepia toned flashback in which young Chin and his family are brutalized by a mean Japanese general after two family friends turn traitor and rat Chin’s father out as a member of the Chinese resistance. General Fang Woo is none too pleased to find out about this, and takes to shooting, raping, and maiming his way through the family. Once all is said and done only young Chin is left standing, a bloody stump in the place of his left hand. The child survives and trains in the martial arts (a sequence that takes up all of two shots that play behind the opening credits, which amusingly list the star as Jimmy Wong Yu) then travels to Japan to give the baddies their just and appropriately violent deserves.
The basic plot for The Iron Man is a reversal of that of Knight Errant the year before, with Wang Yu taking over the place of the child wronged and out for revenge. The one-handed element of the story acts as a springboard for Wang Yu’s noble revenge more than anything else, as he spends the rest of the film with a prosthetic replacement in a black glove. It’s easy to forget he ever lost his hand at all (especially when the prosthesis unexpectedly moves!). The plot point only arises again when the time inevitably comes for Wang Yu to reveal his identity to his nemesis Fang Woo.
Fang Woo himself is a cookie-cutter villain for those familiar with the Wang Yu universe – a back-stabbing and cruel Japanese man with a secret weapon (poison darts shot from a cigar holder in this case) and seemingly endless droves of minions at his disposal. This is another in the long history of Chinese films in which a resentment of the Japanese is espoused and explicitly linked to the atrocities of World War II – it doesn’t take a huge stretch of the imagination to link the rape, murder, and dismemberment of the opening flashback to the horrors of Nanking.
What’s really interesting about The Iron Man, as far as post WWII Chinese-Japanese relations are concerned, is what it does with the concept. Wang Yu’s tracking down of Fang Woo leads him to an unlikely romantic entanglement with a young Japanese woman (whom Fang Woo, naturally, demands to have as his own), an entanglement Wang Yu refuses to accept for much of the film (“I hate all Japanese!”). But Wang Yu’s character grows as the film progresses, and comes to realize that not all of the Japanese were responsible for his personal ills. The young woman with whom he involves himself could very well be seen as an embodiment of the peaceful Japanese society that emerged out of the ashes of the last world war, one far removed from the militant imperialism of the past generation.
This is far more thoughtfulness than I’m accustomed to in a low budget martial arts effort, but rest assured that The Iron Man knows that it’s an action picture first and foremost. There’s no shortage of hand to hand combat here (none of the minions in these films seem allowed to own firearms), and its of a higher caliber than one generally expects from a lower rung Wang Yu effort. Action director Leung Siu-Chung (The One-Armed Magic Nun) keeps the choreography smooth and professional even as those lovable old-school foley effects threaten to spoil the illusion.
While Cheung Yat-Woo (The Thunderbolt Fists) is credited as both writer and director, it’s obvious from the start that Wang Yu himself was in control of most aspects of the production. As such, similarities between The Iron Man and Wang Yu’s other work are plentiful, including primary-colored expositional flashback bits just like those on display in the later Master of the Flying Guillotine. Wang Yu took great care in his work, wisely realizing that he wasn’t just selling his films to the public, but himself as well. Though he worked with any number of producers, writers, and directors in his prolific post-Shaw Brothers career he managed to maintain a consistent level of quality through it all.
A big part of that consistency lies with the actors Wang Yu worked with so frequently. Lung Fei (Master of the Flying Guillotine, Savage Killers, Knight Errant) is on board, once again playing the villain. Sit Hon (Master of the Flying Guillotine, Knight Errant) gets a bigger role than is the norm, playing a gambling-addicted brother who nearly ruins the life of Wang Yu’s love interest before taking a noble turn. Tsai Hung (The One Armed Boxer, Knight Errant, Tsu Hong Wu) is present as well, here playing one of Wang Yu’s father’s traitorous friends. Familiar faces are a big part of the appeal of these films for me, and reviewing a Wang Yu picture feels more like spending an afternoon with old friends than work.
Of course, a Wang Yu film wouldn’t be worthy of its namesake without the trademark ridiculousness the man is known for, and The Iron Man has plenty to spare. The highlight has to be the battle between hero Chin and a gang of motorcyclists who appear out of nowhere to aid Fang Woo during the final confrontation. Other notable moments include Chin’s knife-edge exposé of a cheating casino boss and the sneaky murder plot of Chin’s love interest’s blind sister. There’s a raunchy edge to the proceedings as well. It’s the first Wang Yu film I’ve seen that can list bare breasts (brief as their revelation may be) among its assets, though viewers will have to contend with some uncomfortable close-ups of Sit Hon’s sex-face to see them.
It’s a pity The Iron Man isn’t better known or more readily available, but that’s just the nature of the beast. The Iron Man is out there, even if it takes a little work to track it down, and well worth the effort it may take to see it. Highly recommended.
* Not that I can tell, at least. This release of a film of the same title on Amazon.com seems to be for something else entirely, Young Hero of Shaolin II under the Iron Man title, though the Amazon details obviously originate with the Wang Yu film. The only official home video release of the film anywhere that I’m aware of is from Hong Kong outfit Ocean Shores Video, which is long out of print but crops up on eBay from time to time.
