A Shaw movie with "Death" in the title can only mean plenty of onscreen deaths, and Sweet Jesus did they really deliver on their promise!
Death Valley is a 1968 Wuxia movie directed by Lo Wei, produced by Shaw Brothers starring Shaw veterans Yueh Hua, Chan Hung-lit, and Angela Yu Chien in a rare villainous role for once.
The ruthless, power-hungry daughter of the Chiu Family Clan, Chiu Chien-Ying (Angela), after being denied leadership from her retiring adoptive uncle, decides to take over the clans firstly by plotting her own uncle's murder and then systematically had her own clan massacred by coercing her lover, the swordsman Jin Fu, to perform multiple assassinations on her behalf. The only remaining obstacle is her brother, the righteous swordsman Chiu Yu-Lung (Yueh) who is returning from his own adventures with his sidekick, Tu-Chi, but problems arise when Yu-Lung saves Jin Fu from several killers, right before Jin Fu receives the orders to kill Yu-Lung...
Not to be confused with the TV Series.
Death Valley contains examples of:
- An Arm and a Leg: Chiu Yu-Lung really likes removing limbs from his enemies. This include Bandit Lord Lam Hung, his final onscreen kill, whose arms he hacked away one at a time - one each for Little Doggy and Doggy's grandmother - right before killing the villain.
- And This Is for...: Before delivering the Coup de Grâce on Bandit Lord Lam Hung, the hero Chiu Yu-Lung dedicates his kills to Little Doggy and Doggy's grandmother, both of them whom were killed by Lam earlier in the film.
- Back-to-Back Badasses: The warriors Chiu Yu-Lung and Jin Fu against Bandit Lord Lam Hung and his army of mooks, where the two heroes takes dozens of names with ridiculous ease. Culminating in Yu Lung killing Bandit Lord Lam Hung.
- Beauty Is Bad: Chiu Chien-Ying, the main villainess of the picture, played by Shaws' Ms. Fanservice Angela Yu, who is really gorgeous to look at if she weren't nigh-despicable in her actions.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: Chiu Chien-Ying is working in tandem with Lam Hung, a Bandit Lord and a tyrant terrorizing the populace, who serves as The Heavy supplying mooks and carrying out Chien-Ying's misdeeds on her behalf.
- Bound and Gagged: The first fight between the Chiu siblings, the heroic brother Yu Long and the villainous sister Chien-Ying, ends with the latter easily defeated in a Curb-Stomp Battle and subsequently tied up and gagged. The reason being that Yu Lung doesn't intend to kill his own sister, despite knowing full well of how horrible a person she is, but that doesn't stop her from plotting his assassination once she breaks free.
- Bully Hunter: Chiu Yu-Lung often fight for the poor and oppressed, beating up and killing villains whom are terrorizing innocents. This is notably how Yu-Lung meets his sidekick Tu-Chi at the start of the film when Tu-Chi is being bullied by the Snow Five Devils, and later on Yu-Lung befriends the urchin Little Doggy when the boy is being robbed by several punks of his food.
- Bumbling Sidekick: Tu-Chi to Chiu Yu-Lung, a clumsy oaf and the film's resident Plucky Comic Relief character.
- Cain and Abel: The Chiu siblings shares this dynamic, where Chiu Yu-Lung the brother is a righteous swordsman and noble warrior, compared to his sister Chiu Chien-Ying who is power-hungry and utterly ruthless, intending to have her entire family and clan slaughtered after being denied power in the family.
- Catch and Return: Chiu Yu-Lung's first onscreen kill is one of the Snow Five Devils who attempts to throw a dart at his direction. Yu-Lung simply catches the dart with his wooden cup, then throws it back.... into the villain's face, killing him.
- Cowardly Sidekick: Tu-chi spends much of his screentime hiding behind the hero Chiu Yu-Lung. Although it was subverted when he bravely volunteers himself as a bait to lure several guards away so that Chiu Yu-Lung can confront his evil sister Chien-Ying.
- Dark Action Girl: Chiu Chien-Ying, the villainess, who is a capable fighter and swordswoman herself who can put up a fight when confronted by her brother.
- Dual Wielding: Chiu Yu-Lung uses twin, dual swords in his battles.
- Duel to the Death: The final battle between Chiu Yu-Lung and Jin Fu. Subverted when they realize it's a set-up, and a whole platoon of bandits, led by the Bandit Lord Lam Hung working on Chiu Chien Ying's behalf, is coming to kill them both after the battle, at which point both heroes decide to work together instead.
- Dying Alone: The fate of the villainess, Chiu Chien-Ying, after being struck by a poisoned disc in her arm. In her haste to bail with the Chiu family's treasures, she fled on horseback to a nearby town, only to succumb halfway through, and when Chiu Yu-Lung and Tu-Chi catches up with her, they find her dead, alone in the middle of a desert and her face blue from poison, rather deservingly.
- Exact Eavesdropping: Chiu Yu-Lung eventually discovers his evil sister's plans to assassinate him by overhearing her speaking to Jin Fu and manipulating Jin Fu, Yu-Lung's close friend at that point, to fight him to the death later.
- Eyedscreen: Used right before the warriors Chiu Yu-Lung and Jin Fu started dueling in the climax.
- Fake a Fight: At the peak of their duel, Chiu Yu-Lung and Jin Fu suddenly noticed they're being surrounded by hordes and hordes of mooks, led by Bandit Lord Lam Hung, at which point they decide to fake the rest of their fight and pretend they've killed each other in order to get the drop on their would-be killers.
- Fighting Your Friend: Chiu Yu-Lung and Jin-Fu ends up fighting each other for the climax, although the fight was interrupted by several mooks sent to Leave No Survivors.
- Fingore: A pair of gamblers in the tavern scene who attempts to scam Yu-Lung and Dou Chi ends up having four fingers each
◊ removed, in typical Shaw Brothers gore.
- Hate Sink: Despite having some Fanservice moments, the Chiu's sole sister, Chiu Chien-Ying, is nothing but an absolute despicable piece of work, being a self-centered Manipulative Bitch who is willing to have her adoptive father assasinated, arrange for her clan's massacre, and try to have her lawful brother killed. Right after her Master Chiu's death, she pretends to mourn for him, only to backstab her own loyal nanny who raised her as a child because "she doesn't need a nanny anymore" in a Kick the Dog moment. She repeatedly backstabs all her allies and cares nothing for her underlings, and ultimately earns even the hate of her lover, Jin-Fu, after he realized she intends to double-cross him and is forcing him to kill her brother, on her behalf by kidnapping his mother.
- I Have Your Wife: Jin-Fu is forced to duel his close friend, Yu-Lung, because his only living relative, his mother, has been captured alive by Chiu Chien-Ying and is locked in a dungeon. In their final confrontation, Chien-Ying reveals she had already killed his mother offscreen.
- In a Single Bound: The heroes Chiu Yu-Lung and Jin-Fu, in classic wuxia fashion. Notably this is how Yu-Lung infiltrates the mansion hideout of Chien-Ying, by leaping over it's walls and onto rooftops without being seen by guards.
- In the Back: This is how Master Chiu, patriarch of the Chiu family, gets assasinated. After being poisoned by his own traitorous adopted daughter, no less!
- Karmic Jackpot: Chiu Yu-Lung saves Little Doggy from a group of thugs in his first day of arrival at the city. In the night infiltration scene after being outnumbered by Chien-Ying and her mooks, and suffering several near-fatal injuries after killing more than twenty mooks single-handedly, the badly-wounded Yu-Lung staggers away from the mansion into the wilderness, and gets subsequently rescued by Little Doggy who then brings the hero home to hide from his enemies. Unfortunately, for Little Doggy and his grandma, it's the other way around. (See No Good Deed Goes Unpunished)
- Manipulative Bitch: Chiu Chien-Ying arranged for her adoptive father's assasination and coerces her lover Jin-Fu to partake in carrying out numerous assasinations in exchange for wealth and power, even though she never really loved him.
- Master Swordsman: Chiu Yu-Lung and Jin-Fu are the best swordsmen in the film, capable of killing loads and loads of enemies.
- Mutual Kill
- A faked version, when Chiu Yu-Lung and Jin-Fu pretends they have killed each other in a sword battle, knowing that they're actually being watched by Bandit Lord Lam Hung and numerous mooks. As the bandits watched both heroes "die" and gets in for a closer look, both heroes quickly leaps to their feet and starts slicing up mooks.
- Played straight when Jin-Fu confronts the evil Chiu Chien-Ying at the end of the film. Chien-Ying, tricking Jin-Fu to look under the bed for his captured mother, then gets the drop on the hero by throwing a poisoned hairpin at Jin Fu In the Back, before gloating that she had killed Jin-Fu's mother. But Jin-Fu managed to throw a poisoned disc into Chien-Ying as she leaves, hitting her arm; and in the final scene, Chiu Yu-Lung and Tu-Chi finds Chien-Ying's corpse in the middle of nowhere.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: When Bandit Lord Lam Hung and his mooks sets out to track down the escaped Yu-Lung, they managed to trace the hero's last whereabouts to the home of Little Doggy and his grandmother. Both Little Doggy and his grandma, in order to hide Yu-Lung from his enemies, having grown close to the heroic warrior, doesn't say a word despite fierce interrogation, at which point the Bandit Lord summarily stabs the grandmother to death before strangling Little Doggy. Yu-Lung is predictably horrified when he goes back to visit Little Doggy one last time before his duel with Jin-Fu, only to find out he had indirectly caused the deaths of the grandmother and grandson who helped him in the past.
- One-Man Army: Chiu Yu-Lung and Jin-Fu, especially the former. They're expert killing machines in the martial world who slay plenty of evil men during their screentime.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: The little street urchin is simply called "Little Doggy". Even by his grandmother!
- Patricide: The first of Chiu Chien-Ying's many, many, many misdeeds: arranging for her adoptive father's assasination after being denied leadership of her clans, and then coercing the Bandit Lord Lam into helping her eliminate the rest of her family for money and power.
- Pet the Dog: Chien-Ying telling her last four servants to "leave at once, something terrible is coming" (referring to her vengeful brother, Yu-Lung, on his way to get her) at the end of the film, after she had sent over a hundred of her mooks to their deaths in an ill-planned attempt to assassinate Jin-Fu and Yu-Lung. Of course, it's more likely she wants to hog all the family wealth for herself as she leaves and doesn't want her servants to get a single share of the treasure. And that the poison in her arm is already affecting her.
- Playing Possum: Chiu Yu-Lung and Jin-Fu pretends they have killed each other to get the drop on bandit mooks intending to finish them off.
- The Place: The titular valley is where Chiu Yu-Lung and Jin-Fu had their penultimate Duel to the Death.
- Poisoned Weapons: Both Chiu Chien-Ying and Jin-Fu uses this to kill each other in their final confrontation. She stabs him with a poisoned hairpin, before he flings a poisoned disc in her shoulder. Neither of them survives the movie.
- Showdown at High Noon: A variation not involving guns; the epic duel between Yu-Lung and Jin-Fu takes place at noon. In the night before the duel Yu Lung even flat-out states that "they will settle this tomorrow, at the peak of noon, in Death Valley".
- Sibling Yin-Yang: The Chiu siblings, big brother Chiu Yu-Lung and little sister Chiu Chien-Ying. He's noble and righteous; she's manipulative and evil. He's loyal to his family and clan; she's willing to assasinate her own adoptive father and initiate her family's massacre, as well as luring her brother back home where she can try to kill him. He cares for his friends and treats his allies alike; she's selfish and doesn't hesitate to backstab literally everyone else in exchange for power and leadership.
- Street Urchin: Little Doggy, the young orphan boy Chiu Yu-Lung befriended shortly after his arrival in town.
- Would Harm a Senior: Bandit Lord Lam Hung. Oh boy... one of his scenes had him giving an old farmer A Taste of the Lash, right in front of his family, because said farmer is unable to pay for protection fees for his land, and Lam Hung is close to beating the farmer to death before he's interrupted by a mook telling him about Yu-Lung's arrival. And later on in order to interrogate Little Doggy and his family on Yu-Lung's whereabouts, Lam Hung gleefully stabs his sword into Little Doggy's grandmother in her shoulder, twisting the blade and delightfully torturing the old, blind woman.
- Wuxia
