In this short film, blues musician Lightnin’ Hopkins performs an improvised song inspired by a card game he played with filmmaker Les Blank and producer Skip Gerson during the production of "The Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins".
A group of Northern vigilantes, roaming the post Civil War south, attack and kill the fiancee of war veteran Brian, who is rescued by his friend, Daniel.
Centring on the legend of the four ancient Chinese heroines, the film was a novelty for audiences at the time, as the singing performance was in Cantonese and used huangmei operatic rhythms—a popular trend in the 1960s, yet it retained traditional flavours by using operatic luogu percussion in the battle scenes.
Three identical prints of a single 100 foot fixed-camera take are shown from beginning to end-roll light-flare, with a few feet of blackness preceding/bridging/following the rolls.
Forced behind British lines by engine problems, the Red Baron camouflages his plane, swaps uniforms with a dead soldier, and, posing as a Belgian, makes his way to a hospital.
There's nothing like a good, opulent, gaudy musical to lift the spirits, but when it's a 1960's Hong Kong musical orchestrated by a Japanese director and composer, it breaks through the ranks as a classic of campy kitsch.