The Singing Thief

An oddity directed by Cheh Chang. If you've traveled beyond Chang's wide array of martial arts films, you shouldn't be too surprised that he also directed a few musicals early on in his career. They were quite the rage in Hong Kong during the 50s/60s, so the Shaw Bros simply couldn't ignore the genre.

A crafty thief decides it's time for a career change, and becomes a suave singer. An ideal setup for combining cheesy songs with a more crime-inspired story, though the two never really mesh together. In the end the thief's past catches up with him and changing jobs will prove a lot harder than expected.

Having seen a couple of these early Hong Kong musicals, it's quite clear I'm not a fan. Luckily the songs are mostly contained to the first half of the film, which makes the second part a little easier to stomach. Cheh never reaches the heights of his martial arts films though. He took a rather bold risk with The Singing Thief, but it just didn't pay off.