The Young Avenger (C-Movie) (HK-Movie) (1972)

Shih Szu fights three bad guys in a pre-credits sequence and then, after the opening credits, we go back in time to see her character, Bao Zhu, as a little girl whose father is a kung fu master faced with a sudden visit by an old enemy. The father is mortally wounded in a sneak attack and Bao Zhu is sent off alone to study the “Poisonous Dragon” sword style with an uncle known as the “mad monk.” When she is old enough to head out on her own, she dresses as a man and adopts the identity of “the Young Avenger” to seek out her father’s killer, Liu Tou (Fan Mei-sheng), and get revenge.

When she returns to her hometown, dressed as a beggar, she causes a scene at the local restaurant, all a ploy to draw out Chen Shi Lun (Yueh Hua), her cousin and childhood sweetheart, and effect a reunion. This encounter takes place at about the half-way mark and it’s quite an emotional and moving scene. Too bad nothing of real substance develops from it. After that point, it becomes a matter of the town preparing for an attack by Liu Tou and his gang, and all the townspeople pitching in to lay traps and set up defenses at the different entrances. The bad guys soon descend on the town and it’s an all-out battle for the rest of the 82-minute film, with everyone participating.