Recently remade as LEGENDARY AMAZONS by Jackie (producer) and Frankie Chan (director). Their movie was so hopelessly bad, that it made me curious about the original, said to be one of the greatest epics in the history of Shaw movies (according to Cool Ass Cinema it's even called 'The Gone with the Wind of Chinese cinema of the day').
The Yang family has loyally served the Song dynasty for centuries, but then they get the news that all of their male warriors (but one) have been killed in the war against Western Xia. Due to the intruiging of corrupt officials, the Imperial Army cannot be used, so the women decide there's only one thing to do: in order to revenge their husbands, fathers and brothers, they'll have to become amazones and go to war.
Unlike the remake, which tried to be funny at every turn (and never was) the original is basically a serious action movie, with some comic relief (but this comic relief is rather silly too). But it's a much better movie than what the Chans created. Made with a fairly high budget (for the time) and without CGI (but with wires), The 14 Amazones looks quite spectacular. The cast offers a true plethora of familiar faces of the golden days of Shaw action movies, the women are beautiful and the story has a nice epic sweep. But it's not without flaws: they could have tightened it a bit (with a running-time of nearly two hours it's definitely overlong) and the combination of bloody battle scenes and often silly comic relief doesn't always pay off. Liters of are blood spilled in this movie, but like I said: it was made with a fairly hig budget.
