THE BEACH OF THE WAR GODS

Hong Kong, Taiwan | 1973 | DCP | 101 min. | Mandarin with English subtitles
Director: (Jimmy) Wang Yu
Cast: (Jimmy) Wang Yu, Fei Lung, Tien Yeh

In the final days of the Ming dynasty, a lone swordsman (Wang Yu) rallies a group of elite fighters to defend a coastal town from Japanese marauders. As the villagers are trained for war, a brutal showdown unfolds on the title location. Director and star Wang Yu (One-Armed Swordsman, Master of the Flying Guillotine) blends his signature style of martial arts mayhem with a narrative that should be familiar to anyone who has seen Seven Samurai or The Magnificent Seven. The movie’s “magnificent climactic battle…, at night, lit by torchlight, takes up the whole second half of the picture. It’s the most cinematically impressive large-scale battle sequence in all of Hong Kong seventies martial arts cinema” (Quentin Tarantino).