Death Duel, a Shaw Bros. production by veteran actor-director Chu Yuan (aka Yuen Chor aka Choh Yuen), seems to be fairly unknown. No official HK video/VCD release exists; I've seen the German version, "Das Todesduell der Tigerkralle", which might well be missing some plot and dialogue subtleties. However, at least it's letterboxed and the dubbing isn't quite as awful as usual.

Though the film stays in one's mind, it is not because of the martial arts. Whereas moral ambiguities in other swordsplay movies (like in Rendezvous with Death with its less than adorable hero who at first looks like he might turn out to be a villain, later perhaps into a to-be-reformed youth, neither of which happens) more often than not merely look like inconsequential plotting, Death Duel has an almost noir-like mood which effectively contracts the film's stunningly handsome look, with all exteriors actually shot in stylized studio sets, like a Hammer film ca. 1959.

The screenplay is based on a novel by Ku Lung. Lung, also known as Cliff Lok, starred in a few films, and wrote quite a lot of sowrsman novels. The early Jackie Chan period movies, Butterfly & Sword (earlier filmed as Killer Clans by Chu Yuan in 1976), To Kill with Intrigue and The Deadly Sword, are also based on his works. (Thanks to Sharp Tongue for this info.) While the "Taipei Times" attributes "escapist fantasies of the knight-errant romances" to Lung, at least Death Duel, does not at all look like a cheapo excuse to connect some fight scenes and comedy relief (of which there is none, probably to most Western viewers' relief).

Wandering Ti Lung takes a job as a handyman in a brothel, but obviously has a swordsmaster past which will eventually catch up on him. However, things don't go at all smoothly from here, and ambitious swordsman David Chiang, often teamed with Lung, is not the only problem. Unexpected plot twists and ideas add to a dream-like feeling, and even the ending manages to include a neat little surprise.

Or was that fate?