Before Ti Lung and David Chiang and Chang Cheh gave us DUEL OF THE IRON FIST, there was HAVE SWORD, WILL TRAVEL. We're introduced to Lung as he attempts to woo the lady Li. He's interrupted by some pesky members of the Flying Tiger Clan, but he casually dispatches them as he puts OTHER moves on Ms. Li. Chiang, meanwhile, is accosted when he tries to enter a seven-story pagoda to rest for the night: it's inhabited by members of- surprise- The Flying Tiger Clan, and they don't want him around. He, too, proves too much for the gang but moves on of his own accord. Lung and Chiang bump into each other and have a brief but inconclusive encounter... during which Chiang and Li lock eyes and, well... The trio effectively becomes a triangle at that point. Later, when Chiang arrives at Lung's Invincible Village still looking for a place to bed down for the night, Lung attempts to impress Chiang by turning a chopstick into a PAIR of chopsticks with one stroke of his sword. Chiang, rising to the challenge, splits a chopstick into THREE separate chopsticks with a single thrust... Needless to say, these guys are GOOD swordsmen. In Akira Kurosawa's THE HIDDEN FORTRESS, a hidden fortune is transported by the surviving princess of a fallen House and her bodyguard (Toshiro Mifune). Here, the shipment is to be watched over by Lung and Chiang (who volunteers, after putting two and two together and being threatened with death, though his volunteering has nothing whatsoever to do with fear of Death). In an interesting sequence, Chiang has a vision of his own death and its aftermath (which happens to come true). Although many of Chang Cheh's movies end abruptly, HAVE SWORD, WILL TRAVEL allows for a longer and more poignant resolution. There's a GAME OF DEATH type of ascension to the top of the pagoda and the often slow motion Finale prefigures the ending of DUEL OF THE IRON FIST (with Chiang, at one point, sporting more arrows than a pin-cushion). Just one of the many reasons why I think Easterns are better than Westerns.
Review of Have Sword, Will Travel
