HK
Spy films had always been popular in Chinese-language cinema, with stories set mostly in WWII or the warlord era. The Tender Trap of Espionage, made two years before Dr. No (1962) which kickstarted the Bond film craze, is a story of intrigue between spies and counterspies within the Japanese Occupation force. The film was shot in Taiwan, offering unique visages, with cat-and-mouse mind games set in motion against trust, betrayal and seduction. Based on the British film The Two-Headed Spy (1958), future action maestro Chang Cheh wrote the script while husband-and-wife team Lo Wei and Lau Leung-wah star together as agents, with Lo doubling as director.
May 1960
Lau Leung-wah plays the titled character, a Chinese Robin Hood who robs the rich to help the poor. She is an early Republican Era Mulan, who switches effortlessly between charming gentility and agile ferocity, and Lau personifies her character's duality with a balance of grace and vigour. Chang Cheh, on the verge of fostering seismic changes in cinema with his martial-arts machismo, pens a script that captures the spirit of changing Chinese womanhood, underscored by a conflict between Black Butterfly and her father, a veteran detective.
Dec 1960
