Heroes Of The Underground is a 1973 Shaw Brothers war movie starring Ling Yun, set in the First Sino-Japanese War.
Ling Yun plays Ding Yi-shan (丁一山, whose name is the film's Chinese translation), a rebel leader and icon of resistance during the war between China and Japan in the 1940s. When the Japanese under leadership of Colonel Nakajima enforces control on a rural town in the city outskirts, Ding's efforts to thwart the Japanese ends up making him a wanted man. But thanks to the Japanese being in the blank of how he looks like, Ding plots a mission of retaliation.
Compare The Deadly Knives, another film set in the Sino-Japanese war released a year earlier, also starring Ling Yun.
Tropes included in this film:
- Big Badass Battle Sequence: The climatic finale in the valley when the La Résistance forces, inspired by Ding, battles the Japanese army.
- Die Laughing: The film ends with Ding Yi-shan laughing to the skies as he deliberately detonates the dynamites in a booby-trapped cavern, killing himself and Nakajima at the same time. It's as big a Dying Moment of Awesome as it can get.
- Extreme Close-Up: Used extensively during the office standoff scenes, on Ding's eyes. The audience can easily see the veins in his eyeballs.
- Good Hair, Evil Hair: The Big Bad, Nakajima, dons a Hitler-esque 'stache. In case the audience doesn't know a Japanese colonel in a Sino-Japanese era movie is supposed to be a bad guy.
- Icon of Rebellion: By the end of the film, Ding has become an icon for revolution in the Anti-Japanese movement.
- Kid Sidekick: Xiao Fu-Zi, the young urchin who helps Ding Yi-shan spy on the Japanese forces.
- La Résistance: The local resistance forces who opposed the Japanese, with Ding being their hero and icon.
- Morality Pet: Ding Yi-shan having a Tagalong Kid partner, Xiao Shun-zi, that he frequently bonds with, is an indicator that this war hero is still a human. When the boy dies horribly, Ding's Heroic RRoD is as realistic as expected.
- Sacrificial Lion: Xiao Fu-Zi, the kid sidekick to Ding, ends up being fated to be tortured and executed by the Japanese for being a spy, while Ding is Forced to Watch to prevent his cover from being blown.
- Sean Connery Is About to Shoot You: Commander Wang Ling is about to shoot the audience in the poster and DVD cover.
- Would Hurt a Child: Unsurprisingly, the Japanese interrogators have no qualms putting Xiao Shun-zi through Cold-Blooded Torture, with disturbingly realistic gore in the aftermath.
