The Invincible Eight (1971)

A group of heroes are dining in an inn when they witness a lone swordsman attempt to assassinate a notorious general. The attempt fails and the man seems doomed, so they decide to rescue him. It turns out they share a common past - they are the offspring of heroes that were betrayed and killed by the general in the past. In total, there are eight such scions - if they could be united, they'd surely be able to take him down.

THE INVINCIBLE EIGHT is mostly noteworthy for being the first Golden Harvest production, an ambitious venture by the fledgeling studio to challenge Shaw Brothers dominance of the lucrative wuxia genre. You can tell they didn't have Shaw's resources to work with - in fact it feels closer to the Taiwanese wuxia from Union Films... mostly because it was clearly filmed in Taiwan using sets and cast members seen in many of their films.

It's tempting to describe the cast as "all-star", but many of them only rose to prominence later. It was the debut for Nora Miao and perhaps Angela Mao, and James Tien had only really been in bit parts previously, so it's more like a launching pad for the new slate of talent Golden Harvest had signed.

Lo Wei is in the director's chair, which is never a good sign, and the film suffers from his typical weaknesses - lack of distinctive style, generally a bit slapdash. I guess he was reliably mediocre at least, and since the company was new they probably put a premium on reliability.

Han Ying-Chieh and Sammo Hung share the action choreographer credits, also a reliable pair but at this point Sammo was clearly the junior partner and perhaps hadn't really begun to formulate his ideas for refreshing the approach to filming martial arts in a more impactful way.

The film doesn't have much going for it other than historical signficance - It's a pretty bog-standard wuxia, far below the best of the genre, a little more robust than the worst examples. Apparently this film helped convince Bruce Lee to sign with Golden Harvest instead of Shaw Brothers, so it certainly cast a long shadow despite its lack of substance.

There is no reason to see the film unless you're interested in it from this angle, or just really want to watch anything with Angela Mao in it (fair).