A martial arts riposte to James Bond, and Donnie Yen as a eunuch – how King Hu and Tsui Hark told the Dragon Inn story 25 years apart
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A martial arts riposte to James Bond, and Donnie Yen as a eunuch – how King Hu and Tsui Hark told the Dragon Inn story 25 years apart
Polly Shang-Kuan Ling-Feng in a still from King Hu’s 1967 film Dragon Inn – her debut role. Tsui Hark filmed a remake, New Dragon Gate Inn, in 1992.
The relationship between legendary martial arts film director King Hu, who made the original Dragon Inn in 1967, and Tsui Hark, who produced the remake New Dragon Gate Inn in 1992, is said to have been complicated.
According to Hu, Tsui used to write to him for filmmaking advice while he was a film student. After becoming a successful filmmaker, Tsui hired Hu to direct Swordsman in 1990, the first in his new-style wuxia series which would see massive success with Swordsman II in 1992.
Creative differences meant that Tsui fired Hu from Swordsman and initially brought in Ann Hui On-wah – who had worked as a kind of intern for Hu after graduating from film school – to reshoot footage for the film.
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In interviews, Hui has said that none of the footage that she and Hu shot was used in the film, which in the end was directed by Tsui himself and Raymond Lee Wai-man.
Hong Kong martial arts cinema: everything you need to know
The disagreement did not stop Tsui producing – and co-directing, although he was uncredited – a remake of Hu’s 1967 smash hit Dragon Inn, the second of Hu’s wuxia films following his groundbreaking Come Drink With Me in 1966.
Tsui’s 1992 remake kept vaguely to Hu’s original storyline but adapted the details for a 1990s audience. New Dragon Gate Inn, which stars Maggie Cheung Man-yuk, Brigitte Lin Ching-hsia, Tony Leung Ka-fai and Donnie Yen Ji-dan, was also a big hit.
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Dragon Inn (1967)
King Hu had made Come Drink With Me for Shaw Brothers, but Dragon Inn was made for the Union Film Company in Taiwan, although Shaw Brothers was still involved, as the studio had the distribution rights.
The story focuses on a real historical group, called the East Chamber (Dong Chang), an elite section of the Chinese imperial palace guard run by eunuchs. The East Chamber – or Eastern Special Investigative Bureau – operated as a state-within-a-state during the Ming dynasty, and was used by the eunuchs to consolidate their power within the imperial system. Powerful, violent and corrupt, the feared East Chamber would often frame and execute officials to further their own ends.
© Provided by South China Morning Post Shih Chun in a still from Dragon Inn (1967).
The story, which Hu wrote, features a group of rebels – played by actors including Shih Chun, who would later star in Hu’s A Touch of Zen , and martial arts heroine Polly Shang-Kuan Ling-Feng, in her debut – who try to save the children of a murdered general from death at the hands of the East Chamber.
The children – one of whom is played by future martial arts star Hsu Feng – have been exiled to the dusty Dragon Inn on the outskirts of the empire. Operatives of the East Chamber are lying in wait there for the children. The arrival of the rebels leads to a battle of wits between the two sides.
The film has a beautifully designed story arc that leads up to a final confrontation between an almost invincible Eunuch and the heroes. The focus is on the plotting and the action, with the characters mainly consisting of archetypes – the scholar-hero, the young swordswoman – which Hu would flesh out and develop in his masterpiece, A Touch of Zen.
© Provided by South China Morning Post A still from Dragon Inn (1967).
The action, choreographed by Hu regular Han Yingjie, is laced with espionage and intrigue. Much of it is set inside the close confines of an inn, an approach that Hu would hone to perfection in The Fate of Lee Khan (1973). The action is accentuated by Hu’s use of a wooden board instrument (a ban) to provide a rhythmic accompaniment, a technique he took from Peking Opera.
Hu always described his heroes and villains as agents, an idea that stemmed from the popularity of the James Bond films. “When I wrote the script for Dragon Inn, I wanted to focus on a central theme. Around this time, the James Bond 007 series was very popular and made a lot of money at the box office,” Hu told Taiwan Public Television in 1993.
“I thought the series was a very bad influence on people. It seemed to condone people who worked in special missions and suggest that it was OK to kill people on a whim … I wanted to make a kind of anti-special-missions movie,” Hu said.
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New Dragon Gate Inn (1992)
For the remake, Tsui kept the broad framework of Hu’s story but added themes to modernise it. Brigitte Lin, who had just finished playing the androgynous Asia the Invincible in Swordsman II, is disguised as a boy much of the time, and there’s a scene of lesbian flirtation between Lin and the sexually voracious innkeeper, played by Maggie Cheung.
Tsui also added some raunchy lowbrow humour, much of which comes from Cheung, who is playing way against type.
The storyline is similar, but the denouement hinges around a fractured romantic love triangle featuring Cheung, Lin, and the male hero, played by Tony Leung Ka-fai. To find the whereabouts of a secret exit from the inn, Leung’s character is forced to marry the innkeeper, and she won’t let him out of the bridal chamber to join the fight with the East Chamber that is beginning outside before they have consummated the marriage.
© Provided by South China Morning Post Brigitte Lin in a still from New Dragon Gate Inn (1992).
New Dragon Gate Inn is certainly one of Tsui’s most accomplished scripts, as all the elements knit together cleverly.
The film was shot simultaneously in Dunhuang in Gansu province, northwest China, and in Hong Kong, with Tsui directing the Hong Kong portion and Raymond Lee working in China. The desert location was so remote that the production had to build their own road to the set.
New Dragon Gate Inn was one of the first Hong Kong films to be shot in China, and the shoot became well known because of an eye injury that Lin sustained from an arrow. Lin had to be flown back to Hong Kong for treatment, and a double was found to finish the shoot in China.
Donnie Yen plays the Eunuch in a similar manner to the original. “Donnie Yen is very picky about his roles, and was not that impressed with the eunuch, as he loses,” Tsui told the New York Asian Film Festival. “But we had a good relationship from Once Upon a Time in China 2 , and he agreed to do it.”
© Provided by South China Morning Post Tony Leung Ka-fai and Maggie Cheung in a still from New Dragon Gate Inn (1992).
In this regular feature series on the best of Hong Kong martial arts cinema, we examine the legacy of classic films, re-evaluate the careers of its greatest stars, and revisit some of the lesser-known aspects of the beloved genre. Read our comprehensive explainer here.
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