Brian Camp

THE KING WITH MY FACE (1967) offers a well-produced Shaw Bros. variation on Alexandre Dumas' famous tale, "The Man in the Iron Mask." The king of the title is more interested in spending time with his sexy concubine than in greeting visiting royalty, including a noble from another country who's bringing his beautiful princess daughter for the king to marry. The king is a bad one, abetted by a wicked prime minister, and he orders a palace built for his concubine in six months, which means lots of farmers get taken out of the field for forced labor, arousing massive discontent. Long story short: when the king learns of a young hero who's a dead ringer for him, he uses him to take his place to go meet the visiting noble and the princess. The princess and the kind double fall in love. And when the king gets wind of this, he gets jealous and has the double locked up in an iron mask. The double's adoptive father, a retired general, and his sons have to find a way to get word to the princess and rescue the double from imprisonment. It gets exciting.

The Korean actor who plays the bad king and his good double is Shin Yung-kyoon and he's very good. Whenever the double is dressed up in the king's garb you can tell which one he is by his demeanor. There are some flawless process shots where the actor walks around himself in the same shot. Li Ching is lovely as the sweet princess who's shocked at the change in behavior of the king once she meets the real one. Lily Li plays her maid. I love watching these actresses doing the formal movements, gestures and facial expressions of women in court.

It's a very lavish production which offers a reasonable amount of suspense and an action climax. The ending is weak, based more on contrivance than character. But I enjoyed the film as I was watching it.

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