Hong Xia

A band of outlaws raids a village and kidnaps a maiden, causing the death of the young woman's grandmother. The captive maiden is rescued by a mysterious Taoist hermit and re-emerges three years later as a full-fledged warrior, flying to the sky to revenge her grandmother's death. While generously sprinkled with anachronisms and prurient incongruities (imagine a bandit's harem of beauties in bikinis), the film remains a robust telling of a young woman's transformation from abject victim to resolute warrior. ~~ It is the only surviving episode of a 13-part serial and apparently the earliest complete martial-arts film.