Chu Yuan’s masterpiece reimagines the martial arts school as a brothel, transposing the martial arts master to the brothel's madam and the martial arts disciple to a prostitute who must be forcibly trained in the art of servicing men sexually. The film displays the remarkable gender subversion and perversion often found in the martial arts genre and in Shaw Bros. films alike: the madam is a lesbian who abducts virgins to work in her brothel, and she both exploits and is genuinely in love with her protégée, who is faking subservience while secretly seeking bloody revenge against all who have wronged her. The ambience is baroque atmospherics spiced with a whiff of terror. The frame is that of a murder mystery, with the requisite police investigation. The slain and dismembered are almost all men. “Perversity” meets swordplay, and the result is “pulp poetry.” (Tony Rayns)