Wu (“Jimmy” Wang Yu), on his way to marry his childhood sweetheart that he hasn’t seen in many years, interrupts a bandit raid over a chest of gold. Although injured, he survives and meets his beloved at Jin Castle. However, the inhabitants start acting strangely. He hears talk of the mysterious “Red Lotus Clan”, but what’s worse, the family he is now married into seem to be the ones that carried out the bandit raid in which he was injured! Wu must decide who is right and who is wrong, as Red Lotus raids increase and the body count gets higher and higher.

There are a few nice twists and turns in the storyline of the TEMPLE OF THE RED LOTUS, and for once everything is nice and easy to follow. However, I found I really couldn’t “connect” with the film much, and I found most of the characters unengaging. There was one scene I thought was good: on the night that Wu and Jin Lianzhu (Chin Ping) get married, Wu is horrified when Lianzhu gets changed to do some sword training instead of spending the time in the marital bed! It was one of the few times the characters seemed human, somehow.

Wu is initially out to seek revenge for his parents’ murder, but that plotline is left hanging and is presumably picked up in the sequels, THE TWIN SWORDS and THE SWORD AND THE LUTE. Instead, the film focuses on the importance of family for far too long. Lo Leih makes an early appearance as Lianzhu’s brother Du, and there’s a significant amount of needle between him and Wu when Wu realises that he is the one responsible for the raid which injured him. The villains of the piece are another letdown – they’re just cardboard cutout villains who kill and rape their way across the land while waiting to be taken down by a hero or two.

The production values are quite high, and I loved the opening credits set against some great artwork (I assume this film is an adaptation of a traditional Chinese novel, or series of novels). The actual Wuxia on show is not terribly intricate, but more or less typical of the age. I found the action scenes lacked excitement though.

Quite disappointing.