Guest Blog Post: Loic Fernandi on Chang Che's FLAG OF IRON (1980)

As I mentioned in my post a couple of years ago, I teach an advanced topics course on Hong Kong Cinema during the spring semester for which students write an extended analysis of their research topic film for eventual publication as a guest blog post on The Crawling Eye.

Here is an essay on Chang Cheh's Flag of Iron by SMU senior English major Loic Fernandi.

Flag of Iron is a 1980 Shaw Brothers martial arts film directed by Chang Cheh and starring the Venom Mob. It was one of many films that Chang Cheh directed as an employee of Shaw Brothers Studio. The film comes after the successful run of The Five Venoms (also known as The Five Deadly Venoms), one of Chang Cheh’s greatest films next to the One-Armed Swordsman and The Assassin. Flag of Iron, while not as successful, still showed moderate success in the Hong Kong and surrounding markets. It achieved a cult classic status among American viewers when it was released and shown on television by World Northal in the 1980s under the title Spearmen of Death as part of its “Black Belt Theater” and “Kung Fu Theater” syndication packages often shown Saturday afternoons on local UHF stations and the USA Network.   The Five Deadly Venoms and other films in the series were hugely influential on American hip-hop culture and have been endlessly sampled and cited by artists such as WU TANG CLAN ETC

Shaw Brothers Studio was the premiere Hong Kong film studio in the 1960s, owning a theater chain which stretched across the Pacific Rim and extended into Chinese communities in Europe and the U.S.  Under company head Run-Run Shaw, they innovated widescreen color films with high production values and major stars, and they invented the modern action picture with their wuxia pian martial arts movies in period settings, producing one major film a week at their Clearwater Bay sudio, Movie Town. Shaw Bros’ star director was the prolific martial arts movie innovator Chang Cheh, who had introduced the wuxia pian to the world with The One-Armed Swordsman in 1967.  However, by 1980, rival studio Golden Harvest had begun to eclipse Shaw Bros in theater ownership, new modes of production, and international co-productions.  Flag of Iron was made during the years that Chang Cheh’s allotted budgets were declining and the studio was beginning to focus on producing programming for their Hong Kong station TVB and for syndication throughout the region. 

Still, Flag of Iron continues Chang Cheh’s fascination with the brotherhood between men, and Venom gang members provide him and his longtime screenwriter Ni Kuang with a typology of male characters to act out Chang’s obsessive themes. There are very few female characters in his movies due to a mixture of this interest and the difficulties he found working with female actresses. When Chang Cheh made his classic The Five Venoms, he had gathered up a group of talented fighters and actors known as the Venom Mob. Three of them are present in the Flag of Iron, Philip Kwok, Chiang Sheng and Lu Feng were all major characters in the Five Venoms. Philip Kwok more importantly reprises his role of lead character, which he plays in almost every movie made with Chang Cheh. A new change that occurred in this movie was that instead of the Shaw Brothers usual fight choreographer Lau Kar-leung, the Venom Mob members, particularly Phillip Kwok, took over the choreography. The fights were much more fast paced and intense because of this, and had many new and innovative techniques, such as the use of the flag spears in the movies ending fight scene.

Kwok plays the lead role of Iron Leopard Luo Xin, one of the head members of the Iron Flag Clan, he is extremely loyal to is brothers and decides to take the blame for the deaths caused in their fight against the Eagle Hall Clan. He is exiled for a year until things cool down. While away he is stuck working at a restaurant without receiving his promised amounts of money from the clan for support. Eventually he is attacked by assassins and realizes that something is amiss and that he must return to his clan.  Chiang Sheng plays Iron Monkey Yuan Lang, a very close friend of Luo Xin and who has undying loyalty to him. When things start to go awry in the Iron Flag Clan, he goes to warn Luo Xin of what is happening, eventually fighting by his side as they try to retake the clan back from Cao Fung.  

Lu Feng plays Iron Tiger Cao Fung, the true villain of the movie. Cao Fung betrays Luo Xin and is the main cause for their previous master’s untimely demise. He is a manipulative liar that will do anything to remain the head of the Iron Flag Clan, even if it means killing his own brothers in arms. 

Lung Tien-Hsiang is the wandering knight White-Robed Rambler Yan Xiu, a powerful and well renown assassin that is the true killer of the original Iron Flag Clan’s Leader. He was paid and tricked by Cao Fung and now wishes for revenge. He helps Luo Xin and Yuan Lang for the second half of the film to kill Cao Fung.  

As in most Chang Cheh films, the lead female character is a passive object of exchange present only to motivate the male characters and to demonstrate their chivalry or brutality:  Lam Sau-Kwan plays Lan Xin, country girl that is being brought to become apart of a brothel at the beginning of the film. Luo Xin and Yuan Lang save her, but she eventually ends up in the brothel. Toward the end of the film, she and the the develop a romantic connection, but this only serves to demonstrate the Rambler’s selfless sacrifice on her behalf and to underscore the tragedy of his eventual death.

Flag of Iron starts with Luo Xin and Yuan Lang playing a drinking game until they notice two men carrying what looks like a person caught in a bag. Upon further investigation they realize that it is a young country girl, Lan Xin that has been captured and was about to be brought to the local brothel owned by the Eagle Hall Clan. They force the men to lead them to the brothel where they kidnap the brothel manager and then bring him to the casino, which is also owned by the Eagle Hall Clan. There they begin to use the brothel manager’s limbs as betting tokens and cause havoc in the casino until Eagle Hall members show up and fight with them. Cai Fung arrives and the fighting stops, and our two heroes return back to the Iron Flag Clan. Once there they receive an invitation from the Eagle Hall Clan Chief saying that he would like to have them over for a peaceful dinner. The Iron Flag Clan leader realizes that this is a trap and prepares a countermeasure with the help of the White-Robed Rambler. Upon arrival they begin to eat and are attacked by the Eagle Hall clan members. Much of the Eagle members are slain including the chief, but during the fight the Iron Flag Clan’s chief is fatally wounded by an unknown assailant. During his final moment,s he tries to appoint Luo Xin as his successor but Cao Fung steps in front of him as the Clan leader dies, thus making it seem that he was the one that was actually chosen. With Cao Fung as the new chief, Luo Xin agrees to leave the clan temporarily to let the aftermath of the events die down. 

Luo Xin begins working at a restaurant and some time passes by, with him obviously bored and tired from the constant badgering by his coworkers. While cleaning some of the dishes he is attacked by an assassin carrying a big ax, he is one of ten deadly assassins that are apparently looking for him. He continues to fight them as they come, and is visited by his friend Yuan Lang, whom he does not trust at first. Lang tells him of the changes that have occurred in the Iron Flag Clan, such as the brothel and casino now being run by them, and Luo Xin becomes furious as he suspects something is amiss. The rambler Yan Xiu comes to visit and they all head back to where the Iron Flag Clan is located. Eventually Luo Xin finds out that the rambler is the one who assassinated his master and vows to kill him, only after he has killed Cao Fung who he finds out was the one who hired the rambler and is the cause for the great changes that occurred in the Iron Flag Clan. After an epic fight with Yan Xiu (due to being forced by Cao Fung) Luo Xin finally is able to fight Cao Fung in a battle cumulating in both using the iconic “Iron Flag” that is associated with the clan. Thank to help from Yuan Lang, Luo Xin is able to defeat Cao Fung and end his reign of tyranny.

The Flag of Iron deals with themes of brotherhood and betrayal as well as political corruption. Much of the fighting is caused by the betrayal of Cao Fung and the corruption of the Eagle Hall Clan. Luo Xin and Yuan Lang only intervene because they see an innocent girl being taken to a brothel house where she would likely be transformed into a sex worker, and the politics within the clan are greatly skewed as they pay off politicians to turn a blind eye even though they seem to be on the side of justice. The initial assassination of the Iron Flag Chief is just another point being made as to the betrayal of honor, as the chief dies realizing that Cao Fung is the one who has had him killed.

Flag of Iron was released in Hong Kong on August 14, 1980 and then West Germany on April 1, 1983. It was later released in the U.S.A. and France in 1984.

The film was distributed in America by the Weinstein Company’s Dragon Dynasty.  The Flag of Iron was released to moderate success in the Asian countries, and in America it became incredibly popular through its screenings on American television thanks to Dragon Dynasty. It has received a 7.1/10 on IMDb and a 58% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, though this rating is very skewed as a few of the reviews are what can be considered as “trolls”. The overall consensus was that, while a fun action movie, it lacked some of the depth of other venom movies, especially when compared to The Five Venoms. The movie was followed by other venom films, such as Masked Avengers, House of Traps, and The Nine Demons. Flag of Iron helped to increase interest in Hong Kong Cinema along with other great Shaw Brothers films of the time.

A Friendly Guide to Some of My Favorite Horror Movie Podcasts

A rare behind-the-scenes photo from a recording session of The Projection Booth podcast in which host Mike White (center) is flanked by guest co-hosts Heather Drain (L) and Samm Deighan (R)

As I take humble stock of the ways in which I and my fellow university media studies professors try to deepen our collective understanding of popular culture, I am obliged to remind students, readers, and fans that academic writers are never the first group of critics to appreciate, analyze, and understand the subtlety, artistry, and complexity of the lower-prestige (and often lower-budget) films belonging to the “body genres” of the tearjerker melodrama, the sci-fi anime feature, the martial arts movie, the horror picture, and the sex film. 

Instead, this task has fallen to obsessive members of media subcultures, viewers and critics comprised of autodidactic fans and collectors who provide an initial appraisal and categorization of entire groups of films that most “respectable” critics and moviegoers mistakenly assume are stale, formulaic, and interchangeable.  The initial curation and canonization of key works by these intrepid enthusiasts provide a roadmap that successive generations of both fans and academic critics rely upon in their exploration, appreciation, and elucidation.

In the U.S., there is a direct and unbroken line of brilliant commentary on popular movies stretching from urban gay male audiences of the 1940s-1960s who flocked to Hollywood melodramas and women’s pictures, often shouting comments back at the screen to deconstruct the movies’ presentation of gender and power, to hippie underground newspapers publishing mocking and/or celebratory political analyses of movies shown at drive-ins and grind houses.  In the 1980s, this continued in the “zine” phenomenon in which fans and collectors would send Xeroxed, stapled copies of their essays on films through the mail to their compatriot obsessives, and these DIY "publications" often carried ads for post office box-based sources of grainy, wavy, multiple-generation VHS dupes of the films under discussion.  

The brilliance of the zines continues in the current internet-based culture of fandom and criticism found online in discussion boards, blogs, and podcasts.  While some media academics have entered the horror / cult movie podcast field, we have done so late, and our work can never match the groundbreaking and continuing excellence of work done by non-academic, self-taught fan critics from zines, blogs, and now, podcasts.

The approaches of these critics in the podcast form usually fall into one or more of the following categories:  (1) The hosts and guests take on the imagined personae of the movies’ intended audience, namely barely-literate, sexist, voyeuristic, “NEET” (look it up) young adult white males.  They praise films based on their body count, bloodletting, and undraped female bodies on display, and they seem to mock efforts of other critics to find anything of value in the films apart from their salacious spectacle.  In my experience, this anti-intellectual and philistine perspective is almost always a completely artificial construction.  (2) The dominant tone is one of nostalgia in which a viewer’s initial response to movies seen years before at an earlier stage of their psychosocial development is fetishized and preserved in amber.  Some of these critics can get quite defensive when new, “revisionist” approaches to their favorite movies are proffered by younger critics or when films are remade.  Others in this group find the new responses of successive generations of fans and viewers a source of endless fascination and amusement.  (3)  The hosts interview stars and filmmakers who are either currently active orwho played a major role in making acknowledged “classics” or “turkeys” of the past.  (4)  Discussions of the films focus on long-range developments of key motifs in the genre over different periods and cycles of popularity.  (5) Movies are discussed in terms of their engagement with social issues of their time and over time.  In these last two modes, there is often an overlap with issues of great interest to academic critics.  The very best horror movie podcasts often shift seamlessly in and out of three or more of these registers, often with remarkable wit and verve. 

So here is a list of my favorite podcasts likely to be a source of insight and delight to those studying horror movies and seeking deeper sources of engagement with them.

The Projection Booth 

http://projection-booth.blogspot.com/

Not exclusively devoted to horror, this is nevertheless far and away, by leaps and bounds, the very best English-language podcast on movies.  Host Mike White covers the entire history of world cinema, both high and low, and his co-hosts and guest interviewees on each episode treat the movie in question in great depth and breadth from its conception and production through its reception and the place that it has assumed in movie history.  Some of the episodes can run over two hours and are packed with wit, insight, and the stories of people who were there.  It’s been my pleasure to be Mike’s guest on a few episodes and offer my thoughts on 1960s Czech cinema, low-budget horror, American film comedy, film noir, and porn.

You Must Remember This

http://www.youmustrememberthispodcast.com/episodes/2017/10/16/bela-and-boris-episode-1-where-the-monsters-came-from

Writer, producer, and host Karina Longworth has put together a stellar movie podcast devoted to “exploring the secret and/or forgotten histories of Hollywood's first century,” and this Panoply program has won almost every major award for which a podcast treating media and the arts is eligible.  Previous seasons have focused on “Star Wars,” the careers of Hollywood performers and filmmakers in times of war, The Hollywood Blacklist, “Dead Blondes,” and the many-faceted career of iconic star Joan Crawford.  The podcast website is full of rare photos and links to online resources, and Longworth also maintains a very discussion forum and book club.  This season, horror fans will be delighted on Karina’s six-part series Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and their crucial role in the history of the American horror film.  

Daughters of Darkness

https://diaboliquemagazine.com/category/podcasts/daughters-of-darkness-podcast/

Kat Ellinger and Samm Deighan, co-editors of the great horror magazine Diabolique, explore the sweet spot of international genre cinema where horror, exploitation, and erotic movies intersect with literary adaptations and works by art-cinema auteurs.   Daughters of Darkness episodes often cluster into multi-part discussions of broad trends in international genre cinema, such as the lesbian vampire in movies and literature, or they treat a series of movies and directors drawn from key book-length studies of genre film criticism such as Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs’ Immoral Tales: European Sex & Horror Movies, 1956-1984 or Stephen Thrower's Nightmare USA:  The Untold Story of the Exploitation Independents.

Kat and Samm are funny, irreverent, and possess an encyclopedic knowledge of cinema and literature which would put many tenured university professors to shame.

Castle of Horror

http://directory.libsyn.com/shows/view/id/castleofhorror

This podcast has a completely unique perspective because it is hosted not by seemingly detached fans or critics but by a group of creative artists active in music, graphic novels, illustration, and game design who integrate elements of horror film history into their current artistic work.  Host Jason Henderson and co-hosts Drew Edwards and Tony Salvaggio understand not only the repetition and variation of horror motifs throughout film history but, as creative artists themselves, have a deep insight into the successful (and sometimes not-so-successful) logic of their selection, recombination, and transformation.  “Color commentary” is provided by brilliant civil-rights attorney Julia Guzman, who is married to host Henderson and often serves as the witty and hilarious contrarian voice of the recent convert to horror fandom who patiently endures the manic, testosterone-fueled fanboy geekery into which she has married and in which she is being asked to participate.

The Secret History of Hollywood

https://www.attaboyclarence.com/the-secret-history-of-hollywood/

Folks interested in the Universal and RKO / Lewton horror films will be delighted to jump in with both feet to the richly detailed, dramatic, and informative podcast The Secret History of Hollywood.   The podcast is written, produced, and narrated by Adam Roche, an obsessive and passionate fan of studio-era Hollywood films who has no formal education in film history and in fact, earns his living as -- get this -- a professional chef. 

Shadows, Adam's most recent season, is a six-part (so far) series devoted to the life and career of Val Lewton. 

https://tinyurl.com/y6wacagy

In a previous series, Adam takes us through Universal's invention of the horror genre in the 1930s and recounts the huge impact monsters had on the fortunes of both that studio and rivals who attempted to copy their success with horror movies throughout that decade and into the mid-1940s.   

Although this and other early episodes of Secret History of Hollywood are not widely available for download or listening, Adam was so excited to hear about our interest in Hollywood horror movies of the 1930s and 1940s that he shared this download link to his (SEVEN-hour long, richly-detailed and captivating) episode:  

        https://tinyurl.com/ycxrjlsc

This guy is "one of us" and completely on fire.  Check it out!

Cinema Psyops

http://www.legionpodcasts.com/cinema-psyops/  

This is one of my very favorite “smart movie fans pretending to be sleaze movie dolts” podcasts.  Hosts Matt and Cort have a great repartee with Matt as the genre movie obsessive and Cort as the seemingly-coerced co-participant in his obsessions, and each of them tell stories about their supposed basic life ineptitude outside of the media room where they watch horror movies and exploitation films.  Their ability to turn a movie discussion on a dime from how a movie character is like this guy they once knew to a detailed and informed insight into a film’s aesthetic or social engagement is very deft and entertaining, and they really know how to plum the depths of cinematic gore, sex, and tawdriness. 

The Faculty of Horror

http://www.facultyofhorror.com/

Okay, here’s a great horror movie podcast hosted by two university academics, feminist media scholars Alexandra West and Andrea Subissati.  Their multiple award-winning podcast treats everything from current trends in horror and movies currently in release to classics and forgotten / neglected gems, and their discussions shift entertainingly in tone from their own personal responses to films, often expressed in salty and euphemism-free Canadian style, to highly nuanced interpretation and analysis of movies in their historical context.  They are particularly adept at discussing how their experience and perceptions of particularly movies have changed over the years through rethinking and repeat viewings.  Every fan of extreme gore or anyone who takes horror seriously will not want to miss Alexandra’s essential, recently-published book, Films of the New French Extremity:  Visceral Horror and National Identity. 

https://www.amazon.com/Films-New-French-Extremity-Visceral/dp/1476663483

The Bloody Pit

https://rodbarnett68.podbean.com/

Host Rod Barnett is in many respects the finest exemplar of the Baby Boomer-era horror fan / scholar.  He has spent decades watching and re-watching key films and TV programs from the post-World War II era, and he has explored in great depth the literary sources, contemporary reception, fan cultures, and influence the horror genre of the 1930s to the 1960s continues to exert on all aspects of popular culture.  His own analyses of films as well as his discussions with guests talk about his (and their) initial encounter with these movies and his response to them - great information for historians to have documented - but his ideas are always changing, and there’s never a sense of pining nostalgia for older or discontinued trends in the genre.  Rod can move with clarity and purpose from a Hollywood studio-era film made under the strictures of the Production Code one episode to an insightful and appreciative discussion of a “gag-a-rabid-dog-off-a-gut-wagon” Italian zombie splatter fest and back again. 

Monster Kid Radio

http://www.monsterkidradio.net/

As you would guess, another Boomer-era focused podcast, and host Derek M. Koch has won numerous awards for his superlative retrospective view of the multi-media culture of horror and monster fandom that exploded in the U.S. after the 1957 release of Universal’s 1930s horror movies to television.   He and his guests discuss movies, monster-related ephemera, theater promotions of horror movie premieres, and the careers of both stellar and lesser-known horror personalities.  The show notes for each episode at the Monster Kid Radio website are particularly rich with online links to novelty songs, digital scans of vintage newspaper ads and magazine articles, and theatrical trailers for horror movies of several decades’ duration.  Derek and his guests are particularly generous and open-minded as they integrate younger fans’ perceptions and responses to “canonic” or “classic” movies into their discussions of how horror films speak in different ways to succeeding generations of viewers.

El Diabolik’s World of Psychotronic Soundtracks

http://eldiabolik.com/

But really, do we even need to watch the movies at all?  What if we spent two hours just listening to the music from genre cinema from all over the world?  Lyrical Italian romantic themes from soft-core sex films, jangly synth scores from 80s slasher flicks, Bollywood psychedelia, and driving jazz funk from violent 70s Eurocrime dramas all get a great treatment from hosts El Diabolik and Lord Thames, who lead us through the sonic landscape of cinema scares and sleaze.  Put this on at a party and you’ll find out fast who your real friends are.

Golden Age Horror Classic Horror Movie Podcast

https://goldenagehorror.com/

Hosts Andrew Lynford and Matt Belvilacqua, inveterate lifelong gamers and horror movie fans, explore decades of film masterpieces in the horror genre from all over the world with wit, irreverence, insight, and passion.  One of my absolute favorite horror podcasts, and episode for episode, they seem to treat more of the films that I have come to value over the years than most other folks talking about horror movies on the web.  They are also masters of the “fake gamer slacker” personae and can pivot effortlessly from discussing what seem like outdated elements of the movies they are discussing to zero in on moments of timeless brilliance in horror movies from virtually anytime and anywhere.  They seem to have a particular sensitivity and fondness for East Asian horror cinema in both its excessive and understated modes.  Matt is also author of the decidedly non-academic but completely nuts and brilliant book All Godless Here: The Golden Age of Horror, 1930-1939, available on Amazon Kindle.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00O1IVMGS/ref=rdr_kindle_ext_tmb

1951 Down Place

http://1951downplace.com/

Part of the same family of horror podcasts that includes Derek Koch’s Monster Kid Radio, 1951 Down Place is the epicenter of Hammer Films fandom and discussion in the podcast world.  Hosts Derek, Casey Criswell, and Scott Morris provide exhaustive analysis, commentary and background on movies from the British film studio that revolutionized horror cinema in the 1950s and 1960s.

B-Movie Cast

http://bmoviecast.com/

Hours and hours of commentary and analysis on horror, exploitation, sleaze, Poverty Row programmers from Hollywood’s studio era, fifties sci-fi programmers from the 1950s, and other lowbrow goodies.  The podcast's originator and host Vince Rotolo passed away in 2016, but long-running co-host Nic Brown has kept the show going strong for the last two years.  B-Movie Cast also has a great discussion board, links page, and swag available at their amazing website.  This is pretty much a one-stop shopping run to examine the cultural detritus that prevented your film professor from every being able to hold down a legitimate job.  It’s really that great.

The Cult Classic Horror Show

http://cultclassichorror.com/

Mostly focused on post-1980s franchise / sequel-based horror with a relatively high gore content, but our hosts, “Blood Brothers” Danny and Scotty Bohnen, never lose a sense of historical perspective and includes classics from masters of the genre such as William Castle, Wes Craven, and George Romero.  This is by far the best horror podcast which discusses the repetition and variation of motifs and mythos over the course of a horror franchise’s many installments. 

So when you tear into those Blu-Rays brought to you under the tree, in your stocking, or by a spin of the dreidel, have a listen to what some of these smart, witty, and perceptive critics have to say about both your new acquisitions and the full range of horror movies already in your collection!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS, Y'ALL!