THE MALLOW FOREST is a wuxia swordplay epic from Hong Kong about a gold shipment being transported to a distant mountain and the efforts of various spies and Manchurian villains to get their hands on it. The story is clearly derivative of the popular Shaw Brothers wuxia films being made at the time and while it has a far lower budget than those acknowledged classics, it's still worth a look for fans of this particular genre.
The film was directed by the little-known Wang Ping who had a brief career making movies in the late '60s and he brings together the elements very well. Most of the action takes place outside on mountainsides or in forests which I found a positive as low budget sets just wouldn't have been as effective. Chia Kuo wrote the script and is best known for writing Shaw's THE KILLER in 1971. The film was made by Cathay Organisation, a Hong Kong production studio who made a great deal of movies for local audiences in the 1960s, although I should imagine the majority of their output is long-forgotten these days.
Hero Paul Chang had a long career in Hong Kong cinema while his co-star Manling Chen is a great fighter in the Cheng Pei-Pei mould. There's plentiful action here and while the choreography isn't as assured as in a rival Shaw film, I found it surprisingly engaging in places. THE MALLOW FOREST is certainly no classic and feels a bit slow and heavy going but at times I was pleasantly surprised by it.
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