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Come Drink With Me
[Blu-ray 4K]
Blu-ray ALL - United Kingdom - 88 Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (5th August 2025). |
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The Film
 While escorting a bandit to prison, governor's son Zhang Buqing (The Fate of Lee Khan's Wong Chung) is captured and held for ransom by Jade-faced Tiger (The Invincible Sword's Chen Hung-lieh) to negotiate the release of the gang's leader Smiling Tiger (The Magnificent Trio's Lee Wan-Chung) . The governor instead sends his deadly daughter Golden Swallow (Lilting's Cheng Pei-Pei) to the local inn to negotiate, and she gives the gang an ultimatum to surrender in the same time period they have guaranteed for her brother's survival. Although Golden Swallow is a skilled fighter, she is impetuous and finds unexpected protection and assistance from a singing beggar known as "Drunken Cat" who is actually Fan Dabei (Princess Iron Fan's Yueh Hua) who has been fighting the more formidable and corrupt Jiaotung (Disciples of the 36th Chamber's Yang Chi-Ching) over the successorship of their dissolved order. After Fan Dabei helps her out of an ambush when she tracks the gang down to a local monastery and then subsequently helps arrange for her brother's release, Golden Swallow is conflicted over making sure her brother gets back home safely and returning the favor when Fan Dabei finally faces off against his arch nemesis. Although his six feature film A Touch of Zen was a Cannes sensation and put actor/art director/editor-turned-director King Hu's name on the international map after the commercial failure of the now-acclaimed Dragon Inn, his fourth feature as a director and third for his contract with Shaw Brothers Come Drink with Me was an equally pivotal work not only for the director but for the wuxia (martial heroes) genre, setting narrative and visual trends as well as being instrumental in the resurgence of swordswomen characters who had fallen out of favor in Chinese cinema around the 1930s. While the notion is comical that we and the villains are not supposed to realize that Golden Swallow is a woman until she literally lets her hair down, and the fight scene choreography is more concerned with composition than quick cuts, the film's balance of humor and violence is as refreshing as its brazenness to stage a fight inside a Buddhist temple in which both hero and villain chide each other for such behavior in a holy site while thoroughly demolishing it. The climax also surprises by throwing in an entire army of swordswomen up against the gang in a large scale outdoor battle while the final showdown dips into the fantastic with the mystical powers of Drunken Cat and his enemy. Cheng Pei-Pei also appeared in the sequel Golden Swallow by the more prolific Cheng Cheh. 
Video
Despite being a huge success in Asian territories and even getting a stateside release by Frank Lee International (Akira Kurosawa's Red Beard), Come Drink With Me was hard to see legitimately until Miramax got their hands on the film for their Dragon Dynasty DVD. The film reached Blu-ray in Japan and Germany first but neither were English-friendly, the former was cropped to 2.20:1 and the latter was 1080i50. 88 Films' first whack at the tag=rewinddvdc0d6-21">Blu-ray format in 2020 boasted vivid colors and was a minor bump up in sharpness from the Dragon Dynasty edition. Arrow's stateside 2022 Blu-ray looked similar but boasted a higher bitrate – not being one of King Hu's epic-length films, 88 Films opted for a BD25 since the only extras were a commentary and trailer. 88 Films' 2160p24 HEVC 2.35:1 widescreen Dolby Vision 4K UltraHD and 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen Blu-ray discs come from a new 4K restoration is brighter overall but also boasts a better sense depth in the frame with the darkest background blacks no longer muddy and more distinct from the darker blues and grays. Apart from the optically-printed titles where the letter looks a bit soft and ever-so-slightly pinkish red compared to the boosted saturation of the older transfers, the reds of décor and arterial spray pop while the resolution allows for a better appreciation of textures in the costume design particularly with the woven wood in Drunken Cat's costume. The blurriness of a couple close-ups and even a wider shot or two where the characters step off their marks is a side effect of the Shawscope processs which used older Dyaliscope and Cinemascope lenses and a lack of reflex preview of the image's depth-of-field estimated by tape measure which robs a few scenes of some of their impact (particularly given how paralyzing Cheng Pei-Pei's gaze is supposed to be when she fixes it on characters). Random little details draw attention like never before including the scratches on some of the leather pieces of the imperial armor and the wrinkles and creases of some of the costumes giving a more lived-in feel than one expects of a Shaw prestige production (although this may simply be marks of the film's relatively low budget than part of King Hu's attention to detail). While the Blu-ray copy in the set is supposed to be Region B-locked, it is actually all region. 
Audio
The original Mandarin mono has been preserved in LPCM 2.0 as has an English dub track – both free of the effects alterations of the 5.1 upmixes prepared for DVD – with everyone post-dubbed, sparse sound design apart from the foley-heavy fights, and the percussive scoring. While everything else does sound "dubbed", Drunken Cat's musical performance in the middle of the film along with those of the child beggars actually does feel like it is being performed by them rather than simply lip-synched as some other numbers do in other Hong Kong films. Optional English subtitles are free of any noticeable errors, although we have not compared them at length to the previous 88 Films edition. 
Extras
Extras start off with an audio commentary by Frank Djeng, New York Asian Film Festival who notes that while wuxia had been popular before the first World War and then banned before making a resurgence in the forties onward in film – including a long-running Wong Fei Hung series – and serialized fiction, Come Drink With Me was the film that turned Shaw Brothers in a new direction away from musicals and launched the entire wuxia cycle of Hong Kong cinema in the late sixties through the seventies. He also covers the film's Peking Opera influences along with those of the samurai film – courtesy of Japanese cinematographer Tadashi Nishimoto (Infra-Man) and the fact that Shaw sent some of their directors to Japan to study samurai films – and the western including the "anticipation of violence" in the buildup to Sergio Leone's westerns, noting that Hu was less interested in the mechanics of martial arts than the visual "impression" of it, combining the choreography of martial arts with the striking poses of Peking Opera (also noting Cheng Pei-Pei's background in ballet). Djeng also discusses the circumstances that lead to the film – including the heavy censoring of his previous film The Sons of Good Earth – Sir Run Run Shaw's dislike of what he was seeing and how future Golden Harvest executive Raymond Chow's convincing him to test the film in Korea revealed that it would be a huge success, but also how Shaw's interference in the production including the appended ending meant that by the time of the film's Hong Kong release, Hu had already left Shaw Brothers and formed his own company in Taiwan, the less-satisfactory sequel Golden Swallow from Chang Cheh who sidelined Cheng Pei-Pei's character in favor of chivalric "bromance" and Shaw's attempts to delay release of Hu's Taiwanese hits Dragon Inn and A Touch of Zen. Ported from the earlier 88 Films edition is the audio commentary by film historian Samm Deighan who also discusses how influential the film was as well as the ways in which it inverted several tropes of subsequent genre works, as well as Hu's approach to fight scenes as performance in the manner of the Peking Opera, and how the Shaw Brothers studio in attempting to find its place in the market with several genres allowed for a degree of creative freedom and experimentation even as the directors were sometimes constrained by genre (noting Shaw's turn from martial arts in the sixties and seventies towards increasingly gory horror films in the 1980s). New to this release is an interview with stuntman Mars Cheung (5:52) who discusses his early pre-Jackie Chan stunt team Peking Opera training in one of the schools Shaw Brothers would come to in search of child actors and some of his early roles including Come Drink with Me as one of the child beggars.  Ported from the Arrow edition is Queen of Swordswomen (51:55), a 2003 interview with actress Cheng Pei-Pei, filmed by Frédéric Ambroisine in which she reveals that she had studied dancing in Shanghai but as told she was too tall, so she went to Hong Kong where she enrolled in Shaw's training school, learned martial arts and speaking Mandarin for film, performing on stage with Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung, and signed a contract with Shaw for seven years. She recalls Hu's touches on the film as an art director immersing the cast in the world of the film, how they did not initially have choreographers for the fight scenes until there was an injury, Hu asking her to come with him to Taiwan to be in Dragon Inn but Shaw would not allow it, instead allowing her to go to Japan for nine months to study dance, and Cheng Cheh trying to convince her that Golden Swallow was not an actual continuation of Hu's film. Also from Arrow and shot by Ambroisine is an interview with actor Yueh Hua (30:15) from 2007 – in which he reveals he also came from Shanghai and enrolled in Shaw's Southern Drama Group, his early roles, and his first lead in Monkey Goes West, and briefly touches upon the year-long shoot for Come Drink with Me noting that Hu had him drinking real alcohol to embody his beggar character – and an interview with actor Chen Hung-Lieh (43:33) from 2003 in which he recalls running into Yueh Hua on the street when both were asked if they wanted to be actors and taken to the Southern Drama Group anticipating a scam. He got his role in the film directly after graduating and describes Hu's wuxia as innovative in its historical accuracy, and that his tailored look for Jade-faced Tiger became iconic in his casting in later films. He also notes that they had no training for the fight scenes, and that he depended on his own athleticism while putting more effort into the acting. The disc also includes a trio of interviews ported from the Dragon Dynasty edition starting with "The King and I - Acclaimed Director Tsui Hark Remembers King Hu" (13:55) who recalls the impact on him as a youth seeing Come Drink With Me and comparing Hu to Chang Cheh stylistically and in staging, as well as getting to work with Hu on Swordsman. "Come Speak With Me" (16:40) is an interview with actress Cheng Pei-Pei that covers some of the same ground but she also reveals that the reason she enrolled at the Shaw training school was because it was the only school where they spoke Mandarin as her Cantonese was not that good at the time where she was noticed by King Hu, his input into everything from the staging to set design, costumes, and hair styling, as well as bringing her into the editing room to show her what he was trying to achieve as well as beating a drum on the set for the actors to keep rhythm in their movements. She also discusses using real weapons and accidentally cutting Chen Hung-Lieh. "Return of the Drunken Master" (17:11) is an interview with actor Yueh Hua who recalls his training, not being a drinker so Hu had him consume real alcohol and also showed him how to move like a drunkard, as well as using real weapons and getting burnt along his arm by the CO2 jet his character sprayed from his palm as part of his mystical powers. The disc closes with a stills gallery (2:44). 
Packaging
Not included for review were the slipcover designed by Rob Bruno or the double-sided foldout poster.
Overall
Although it was one of Shaw Brothers' biggest hits and the film that launched the company's new wave of wuxia along with their competitors, Come Drink With Me was also the film that lead to director King Hu severing his ties with Shaw Brothers and going independent.
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