Webbed-Silk Cave (1967 Shaw Brothers Version)
A 1967 color fantasy film directed by He Menghua, serving as the third installment of the Shaw Brothers' Journey to the West tetralogy.
The Cave of the Silken Web (盤絲洞) is a 1967 color supernatural film produced by Shaw Brothers (Hong Kong) Ltd. and directed by He Menghua. With a runtime of approximately 82 minutes, the film was released in both Mandarin and Cantonese versions. It is the third installment in Shaw Brothers' Journey to the West tetralogy, following the 1966 films The Monkey Goes West and Princess Iron Fan, and preceding the 1968 film The Land of Many Perfumes. The plot is adapted from the seventy-second and seventy-third chapters of the original novel, specifically the section "The Seven Emotions of the Silken Cave Bewilder the Master." Tang Sanzang (played by Ho Fan) accidentally wanders into the Webbed-Silk Cave by the Fetus-Dispelling Spring and is captured by the Seven Spider Demons. The Red Spider (played by Yu Hung) leads the demons in binding Tang Sanzang with silk, intending to boil and eat him. Sun Wukong and Sha Wujing (played by Tian Shun) use their magic to capture the demons and join forces with the Pleiades Star Official to subdue the spiders' senior brother, the Hundred-Eye Demon Lord. Although it shares a name with a 1927 silent film by the Shanghai Movie Company, this production is a completely independent adaptation. As a representative work of He Menghua's supernatural cinema, The Cave of the Silken Web employs vivid colors, operatic movements, and a light comedic style to interpret the classic sequence of demons seducing the monk, serving as a quintessential example of Shaw Brothers' fantasy films of the 1960s.