THE PROUD YOUTH is another complex, evolving story of the martial world from the Shaw Brothers studio, based on a novel by Louis Cha. Wong Yue is the wandering swordsman hero, just on the cusp of being re-styled as a comedy kung fu actor in the Jackie Chan mould by the studio. The film is very much in the same style as the films of Chor Yuen, featuring rival clans, murder, and mucho bloodshed. Good luck following the plotting, which has so many supporting characters trying to upstage each other that you'll be hard pressed to follow every little detail of it. Still, the production values are sumptuous, and the supporting cast is exemplary, with all manner of familiar faces showing up: even one of the Lucky Stars team is here, Stanley Fung, a decade before he became typecast as a comedy actor! Best of all this is an action-packed odyssey packed to the brim with endless sword fights and death, all played out in the finest of sets.

The movie starts as many swords men practice by an elaborate indoor waterfall set that only Shaw Brothers had the resources to build. The clans are gathering to select a new leader. The narrator explains there is a problem with the evil clans. Michael Chan enters as a representative of the evil clans and attempts to rape a nun just to show us how evil these evil clans must be. Wang Yu prevents that but later he touches her hand and that has pretty much the same consequences as being raped according to the rest of the nuns. At the clan house there is a problem because one of the good guys plays music with one of the bad guys and they have even written a song together. The musician ends up dead and Wang Yu has to face the wall for a year. Lucky for him it is a very interesting wall with martial arts training written all over it and he becomes a master. After his "punishment" he leaves to take the sheet music from the controversial song to someone who can read it. He becomes a drinking buddy with many of the "evil clan" people. He meets Shih Szu who can read music and she pretends to be an old lady. Once exposed, he joins her on a mission to get Ku Feng out of the dungeon. The twist at the end is that the master of the good clan actually ordered Michael Chan to do bad things and frame the evil clans. This is the typical Shaw Brothers good stuff and is thoroughly entertaining from start to finish. The waterfall set made for an excellent fight because of the challenging terrain. Wang Yu, a student of the Grandmaster of all martial arts movies – Liu Chia-Liang – also did perfect acrobatics on his trampoline jumps.

Considering that this was made 30yrs ago, it holds up quite well. The quality of the DVD is very impressive. A film of this vintage is usually taken from an old print which is faded and scratched. Because it is a period Kung Fu flick it could almost pass for a recent production. (The wire work and lack of CGI give it away. Nevertheless, it's reasonable given the technology of the day.)The twisty plots and sub-plots are typical of this genre. There's often the "Who's the actual bad guy denouement" and the clash of Good vs Evil. This film differs slightly in that it presents a lot of "Grey" to the mix. The choreography is better than in most films of this genre, and the balance of action to story is good. The bonus here is a story which makes sense.A Shaw Bro's Eastern can be likened to a John Ford Western.

As mentioned in my earlier review of Swordsman, it isn't easy condensing plot elements from Louis Cha's richly textured martial arts novels for the big screen. In The Proud Youth (bad title by the way), somehow it managed to do so, given a screenplay written by Ni Kwang, but it's ultra summarized, with zero room for character development, and scenes which don't seem to flow smoothly from one to the other, resulting in episodic treatment of sub plot development.But the most unforgivable thing done to it, was complete name changes to almost 90% of the characters. Gone are Linghu Chong, Renwo Xing, Dong Fang Bu Bai etc, and in place were some generic names like Gongsun Song for Linghu Chong! My guess was that given the summarized nature, having the actual names will do no justice to the original source material. So the next best thing would be to change the names, while retaining certain character traits that will allow them to be distinguished and mapped back to the original.It's a pity though, while the names of the 5 sword sects are kept, the ultimate swordplay technique had to undergo a complete, unnecessary revamp of title and style, which made it look like a very lame, generic martial arts move, with totally different origins. Fans of Du Gu Jiu Jian, I'm sorry but you won't get to see it demonstrated here. The fight scenes are reminiscent of styles of old though, with the heavy reliance of "ketchup" as a substitute for fake blood. While the fights look interesting, at times they turn out to be quite clumsy, with its special effects being shoddily done (yes, I'm aware it's the 70s), and camera angles being out of position, and revealed quite clearly that swords were flimsy cardboard, and driven into the sides of bodies only.There are familiar plots like the introduction/battle with Dong Fang, the book Kui Hua Bao Dian requiring the practitioner to castrate himself, the rescue of Ren Wo Xing, the driving out of Linghu Chong from Hua Shan sect, and his learning of the Du Gu Jiu Jian, the musical number consisting of the flute and zither, and on hindsight, it's pretty amazing how all these were squeezed into 90 minutes. I was surprised at the exposure of a boob though, and in slow motion some more. And that was in 1978, for a martial arts movie some more!This is no Xiao Ao Jiang Hu. In name only, but definitely not in spirit. Please give this a miss, and proceed to the version starring Sam Hui.Code 3 DVD contains very limited special features. There are a few production and movie stills, one original poster, a one page one paragraph worth of production notes, the theatrical trailer and other trailers of the same genre, and a very short cast and crew biography.No qualms about the transfer, and traditional Chinese and English subtitles are available over a Chinese language soundtrack.