General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Deadful Melody (六指琴魔)

A 1994 fantasy wuxia (Chinese martial-arts/chivalry fiction genre) picture from Hong Kong, The Deadful Melody (六指琴魔) had Ng Min Kan (吴勉勤) as both its director and producer, with a cast led by Brigitte Lin, Yuen Biao, and Carina Lau; it is an adaptation of the wuxia novel of the same title by writer Ni Kuang (倪匡)¹. It was a mainland-China and Hong Kong co-production between Shanghai Film Studio and Hong Kong's Wong Pai Production Company, filmed in Shanghai². The film is also known in English as Deadly Melody and Six-Fingered Strings Demon²^•³.

Key fact	Detail
Original title	六指琴魔; English titles include Deadful Melody, Deadly Melody, and Six-Fingered Strings Demon¹^•²
Source	Adapted from Ni Kuang's wuxia novel of the same name¹
Director and writers	Directed by Ng Min Kan; screenplay by Li Jiongkai (李炯楷) and Li Mincai (李敏才)²
Cast	Brigitte Lin as Huang Xuemei, Yuen Biao as Lü Lun, Carina Lau as Tam Yuet-Wah (谭月华), with Wu Ma, Elvis Tsui, Lam Wai, and Chen Long²^•³
Hong Kong release	8 January 1994 (Baidu, 1905.com, and MovieCool); Google Play lists a premiere of 18 January 1994²^•⁴^•¹
Hong Kong box office	HK$4.55 million, a commercial failure⁵
Key crew	Music by James Wong (黄沾) and Mark Lui (雷颂德); art direction and costume design by William Chang (张叔平); action direction by Mang Hai (孟海)²

Spoilers

Plot

The story is set in the Ming dynasty. Huang Xuemei (黄雪梅), played by Brigitte Lin, sees her parents killed by six allied martial-arts sects because they protected the "Heavenly Demon Lyre" (天魔琴), and her younger brother disappears²^•⁶. She retreats to the mountains for sixteen years to master the "Tianlong Ba Yin" (天龙八音) technique, then returns to the martial world determined to kill her enemies⁶.

Her method is to make the lyre itself the bait. Disguised as a man, she commissions an escort agency to transport the Heavenly Demon Lyre, knowing that the six sects will come out to seize it on the road and that she can take her revenge as they do². Lü Lun (吕麟), the adopted son of the agency's chief Lü Tengkong, accepts the escort job to protect the agency's reputation as the "number one escort under heaven", unaware that he is being used². TV Guide's synopsis describes the same setup: a mysterious woman places the magic lyre, which has devastating power in the right hands, with a young security man, using him as a stalking goat to catch the masters who pursue it³.

The revenge plot turns on a family recognition. Huang Xuemei discovers that Lü Lun is the younger brother she lost sixteen years earlier, and the siblings, both now in danger, join forces to retake the lyre².

Production

The film was scripted by Li Jiongkai and Li Mincai from Ni Kuang's story, photographed by Chung Chi-man (钟志文), and scored by James Wong and Mark Lui². William Chang handled both art direction and costume design, and Mang Hai and Li Jing-chu served as action directors². The supporting cast includes Wu Ma as the Fire Ancestor (烈火老祖), Elvis Tsui as Dongfang Bai, Lam Wai as Ghost Saint, and Chung Fat as Han Xun².

Reported running times differ by source: the Hong Kong Movie Database lists 88 minutes⁷, 1905.com and Baidu list 93 minutes⁴^•², and Google Play and LiTV list 92 minutes¹^•⁶.

The Ni Kuang novel and the 1965 film

The title had reached the screen once before. According to the Hong Kong Film Archive's catalog of Hong Kong films, a two-part Cantonese production, The Six-fingered Lord of the Lute, Part One and Part Two (六指琴魔上集/下集), premiered on 24 March 1965, produced by Sin Ho Kong Film Company and directed by Chan Lip-ban, with the source credited to Ni Kuang's novel serialized in the New Evening Post⁸. A Hong Kong newspaper retrospective places the 1965 films among the Cantonese wuxia output of Sin Ho Kong and describes Chan Lip-ban as the most important director of 1960s Cantonese wuxia cinema⁹.

Reception and context in 1994

The film earned about HK$4.55 million in Hong Kong, ranking seventh among the year's wuxia flops in one retrospective count⁵. A 1994 year-in-review essay gives a similar figure of 4.5 million and notes that the film fared worse than Lin's New Dragon Gate Inn-era contemporaries; the same essay credits Lin's ethereal screen presence, carried over from her role as Invincible East, and the action choreography as the film's strengths¹⁰.

1994 was Brigitte Lin's final year as an actress before her retirement, and she starred in five wuxia films that year, all of which failed commercially⁵. The same retrospective judges the film itself more kindly than its receipts: by the standards of its time its special effects were striking, its plot intricate, and its characters distinct, and the commercial failure was foreseeable because both Yuen Biao and Lin, like the Hong Kong wuxia genre itself, were on a downward commercial curve⁵. 1905.com's retrospective notes that the film, led by Lin, stirred a wave of swordswoman fashion at the time and that her cool, elegant image in the role remains well remembered⁴.

The film carries the IMDb identifier tt0107428 and has been available on streaming platforms including Tencent Video and LiTV²^•⁶.

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Science fiction and fantasy films (individual works) › Science fiction and fantasy films of the 1990s › Released 1990 to 1995

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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