The best Chen Ping’s adventure movies

Word of a monster ape ten stories tall living in the Himalayas reaches fortune hunters in Hong Kong. They travel to India to capture it, but wild animals and quicksand dissuade all but Johnny, an adventurer with a broken heart. He finds the monster and discovers it's been raising a scantily-clad woman, Samantha, since she survived a plane crash years before that killed her parents. In the idyllic jungle, Johnny and Samantha fall in love. Then Johnny asks her to convince "Utam" to go to Hong Kong. Lu Tien, an unscrupulous promoter, takes over: Utam is in chains for freak show exhibitions. When Lu Tien assaults Samantha, Utam's protective instincts take over: havoc in Hong Kong.

Despite its stand-alone title, this mixture of martial arts and exploitation is a semi-sequel to Shaw Brothers's Flying Guillotine series. This time, the focus is Rong Qui-yan (Chen Ping), a kung fu student turned dutiful wife whose life falls apart when her husband is murdered by a squad of government operatives led by the duplicitous Jin Gang-Feng (Lo Lieh). Qui-yan is forced to go into hiding as she plots her revenge and finds allies in fellow fugitive Ma Seng (Tsui Siu Keung) and ex-lover Wang-jun (Yueh Hua). Meanwhile, Jin Gang-Feng sends out an array of killers to track them down. Complicating things further is the fact that Qui-yan is pregnant and struggling to keep her unborn child safe while fighting her way to safety.

This dragon lady of the Ching Dynasty was the power behind the throne for 50 years, and hew vast tapestry of palace intrigues is vividly brought to the screen in this memorable epic.