#interestingly enough there are two clips of this film i saw in yang +/- yin that were absent from the youtube version of the film i watched

[romanceyourdemons]

slaughter in xi’an (1990) is one hell of a film. it is chang cheh’s venture into the heroic bloodshed genre, and i find myself agreeing with stanley kwan’s reading of the film presented in yang +/- yin (1996) as a quintessential example of homoeroticism and the interplay of male-male intimacy and violence in chinese martial arts film. the story of two good men from opposite sides of the law becoming devoted sworn friends, before the death of the rogue at the hands of the forces of corruption and organized crime sends the law enforcer on a brutal and self-destructive quest for revenge, is a common one in both wuxia and heroic bloodshed film. indeed, this is the plot of the killer (1989), directed by chang cheh’s protege and heroic bloodshed pioneer john woo—a film that contemporary journalists directly asked john woo if it was intended to be a gay love story. i really have to say that slaughter in xi’an (1990) matches or exceeds woo’s film in homoerotic subtext. not only is there more male-male physical intimacy, but the violence is also more directly coded as sexuality: eschewing the relatively loose phallic symbolism of guns, this film has an antagonist kill one character by lowering him anus-first onto a two-foot-long metal spike and another by sticking a metal hook into his mouth and tearing out his throat from the inside. interestingly enough, when interviewed for yang +/- yin (1996), chang cheh insisted that no queer subtext was intended, and he was merely adhering to genre standards that any chinese audience member would recognize as completely non-sexual. the work that this film does with genre is interesting—i would position it, a heroic bloodshed film that, thematically, character-wise, and in fight choreography clearly wants to be a wuxia film, as a companion piece to john woo’s early film last hurrah for chivalry (1979), a wuxia film that clearly wants to be heroic bloodshed. i should and likely later will do a more point-by-point comparison of the two looking at their use of genre, but for now noting the comparison as a point where the two genres intersect, diverge, and otherwise make their points of difference and overlap known is interesting enough. in terms of genre work, slaughter in xi’an (1990) presents an interesting case study of the deeply entangled relationship between male-male devotion, violence, and sexuality in the wuxia and heroic bloodshed genres