The Girl With The Thunderbolt Kick aka Golden Swallow (sounds like a Chinese porno title, doesn’t it?) is simply one of the best martial arts films ever made, and its heroine is immeasurably cool.
This bloody romance – directed by Zhang Che in 1968 – centres on Golden Swallow (Zheng Pei Pei) and the errant knights who woo her. One piles up the corpses as part of his courtship, while the other hides his feelings – but neither is content with bloodletting as a token of his affection. You see, these two gents don’t just want Golden Swallow, they want to be martyrs for her. Oh, and to add to the melodrama, there’s a vaguely homoerotic thing going on between the competing suitors.
As we build to the inevitably tragic climax, Zheng, today the presenter and producer of popular Hong Kong talk show Pei Pei’s Time, kicks and punches her way to the finale with increasing aplomb. “I always remember one scene in that movie,” she says. “All the leading players in the film are in this two-storey building. Something happens outside, and my co-stars Wang Yu and Lo Lieh were meant to suddenly jump down to the street out of the window, while I walked down the stairs. I refused, and finally told the director that, unless I got to jump out the window with them, I wouldn’t shoot the scene. He relented and told me that if I hurt myself I wasn’t permitted to complain.” She jumped, leading the way for a thousand female Hong Kong stars – and one Uma Thurman.