What was the last classic martial-arts film you watched?

[Killer Meteor]

On 1/8/2023 at 9:52 AM, saltysam said:

This is also known as Wang Yu-The Destroyer, despite the presence of Lung Fei and Yu's usual band of brothers it's a pretty mediocre effort as Jimmy doesn't fight much till towards the end, when he cuts loose.The print i watched wasn't great, looked like fake widescreen to me.

I liked it, but the dubbing is atrocious!

[DragonClaws]

 

Last night late night Kung Fu double bill - Monkey Kung Fu (1980) starring Chang Yi & Chen Mu-Chuan, well worth a look for fans of Taiwanese set Kung Fu comedy's inspired by Jackie Chans hits Drunken Master & Snake in The Eagles Shadow. We even get a cameo from Chan Sing, which was an added bonus. Watched this along with the old BBFC theatrical cut version of Story of The Dragon (1976). Cut only slightly less than the later U.K VHS release, under the title Bruce Lee Secret. Popular with Bruceploitation fans, with Carter Wong playing a Wong Jack-Man inspired character?. Got an UNCUT copy of this, which is much superior but the pictures qualities much weaker.

[shukocarl1441996347]

Seaman Number 7 (1972?) Jimmy (in camp early 70's fashion) kicks around the Golden Harvest stunt guys while holidaying in Japan. Nonsense plot, unintentional hilarity and James Tien in fake tan and a blonde wig!

[Coliseum1972]

On 1/2/2023 at 11:14 AM, TibetanWhiteCrane said:

That's Winners and Sinners.

oh , my bad......havent seen these as much as Bruce Lee's

[Chu Liu Hsiang]

Chia Ling evening with REVENGEFUL SWORDSWOMAN, NO ONE CAN TOUCH HER (AGAINST DRUNKEN CAT'S PAWS), THE ESCAPE (1972). Of the three I liked NO ONE CAN TOUCH HER the most. Never seen a woman performing drunken style before. REVENGEFUL SWORDSWOMAN very good too, ok if predictable plot, and all the cult characters she meets! I don't understand why the make-up artist made her look rather awful for most part of the movie.

[ShawAngela]

2 hours ago, Chu Liu Hsiang said:

Chia Ling evening with REVENGEFUL SWORDSWOMAN, NO ONE CAN TOUCH HER (AGAINST DRUNKEN CAT'S PAWS), THE ESCAPE (1972). Of the three I liked NO ONE CAN TOUCH HER the most. Never seen a woman performing drunken style before. REVENGEFUL SWORDSWOMAN very good too, ok if predictable plot, and all the cult characters she meets! I don't understand why the make-up artist made her look rather awful for most part of the movie.

Revengeful swordswoman is the movie I liked the less in this bluray. First, you are right, this haircut doesn't fit Chia Ling at all, and second, the movie was just a succession of fights with less than a plot in it for me.

Yes, I too wondered in a post above if Chia Ling was the only female actor to have performed the drunken style !

[WangYu]

The Street Fighter 1974

I saw this dubbed in English and couldn’t understand half of the dialogue so I was confused for the most part. I did enjoy various cool camera angles and the brutality of the fights. Chiba looked like a mental case though.

I can imagine this will greatly improve while watched in Japanese

[sym8]

On 1/16/2023 at 1:32 PM, WangYu said:

The Street Fighter 1974

I saw this dubbed in English and couldn’t understand half of the dialogue so I was confused for the most part. I did enjoy various cool camera angles and the brutality of the fights. Chiba looked like a mental case though.

I can imagine this will greatly improve while watched in Japanese

I always felt the original English dub was better than the original Japanese language,and Chiba’s dub fitted so well.

[lilmanjs]

Just got through watching Shaolin Wooden Men and boy was that a treat. Didn't remember much about it, but it looks fantastic on the Shout! Factory set and I liked the reasoning at the start of the end fight for him being mute all that time. A few odd pacing issues bring this down for me such as oddly placed, sped through training sequences. Still, looking forward to the others in the set!

[WangYu]

6 hours ago, sym8 said:

I always felt the original English dub was better than the original Japanese language,and Chiba’s dub fitted so well.

Maybe but I missed subtitles. I am used to subtitles. It was hard to understand the pronunciation for me. When I have to concentrate on the dialogue too much I tend to switch off after a while missing vital plot points

[WangYu]

The Octagon 1980

Slow film with an uninteresting or should I say dead boring plot. It is basically waiting for the end where Norris takes on various ninja’s in pretty good fashion but the ultimate big boss fight scene was pretty unimpressive due to cutting away to lesser interesting fights of side characters. Richard Norton is in it and underused.

I also hated the minimal sound effects, give me big bash sounds in MA films please.

Of all his beardless films “an eye for an eye” and “silent rage” are the better ones.  But lets be fair his most entertaining films started when he grew his beard lol

Edited January 18, 2023 by WangYu

[shukocarl1441996347]

The Avenger 1973, Pretty much a complete copy of The Champion (aka Shanghai Lil) except the coal mine is replaced by a timber yard. Yasuaki Kurata is a good guy for once and Tien Yeh is the main villain whose hairstyle looks like a dead animal on his head. There is soooo much fighting in this basher that I found myself thinking MAKE IT STOP, MAKE IT STOP! Now, I love bashers but my head felt like it was gonna explode, I was so glad when it was over.

[ShawAngela]

2 hours ago, shukocarl1441996347 said:

The Avenger 1973, Pretty much a complete copy of The Champion (aka Shanghai Lil) except the coal mine is replaced by a timber yard. Yasuaki Kurata is a good guy for once and Tien Yeh is the main villain whose hairstyle looks like a dead animal on his head. There is soooo much fighting in this basher that I found myself thinking MAKE IT STOP, MAKE IT STOP! Now, I love bashers but my head felt like it was gonna explode, I was so glad when it was over.

Is there an aka for this movie ? I only find Chia Ling's (1972) and Tien Ni's (1969) movies under this name.

[TibetanWhiteCrane]

10 minutes ago, ShawAngela said:

Is there an aka for this movie ? I only find Chia Ling's (1972) and Tien Ni's (1969) movies under this name.

https://hkmdb.com/db/movies/view.mhtml?id=10645&display_set=eng

 

[shukocarl1441996347]

The Street Fighter's Last Revenge (197?) Always looked upon as being the weakest of the trilogy because of the reduced level of gore. It actually has an interesting set up and the addition of the yummy Reiko Ike keeps your attention throughout. It still has some goofy elements like 'Mr. Black' in a Mariachi (sp?) outfit and Tsurugi's 'Dracula' disguise. If you haven't seen this, make sure you watch the original Japanese edit as it's far more coherent, with better dialogue.

[ironfistedmonk]

Apparently I've got the Joy Sales DVD of Man From Hong Kong and it's not in my to watch pile so I must have seen it but just can't remember!  I'll have to try and find it and give it another look.

Been watching a lot of the 88 Films Lo Wei era Jackie Chan movies recently, nice to see them in all their widescreen glory.  I still don't like To Kill with Intrigue or Killer Meteors, but Dragon Fist was a lot better than I remembered and some of the fights were really good without the usual JC trademark comedy or use of props, I love what JC did with his KF comedies but his more straight roles were largely disappointing with Dragon Fist being an exception

[ironfistedmonk]

7 Grandmasters - holy shit I'd forgotten how good this movie was, the fight between Jack Long and Corey Yuen has to be up there as one of the best ever made, probably Kuo's best movie

[Super Ninja]

On 2/3/2023 at 6:50 PM, ironfistedmonk said:

7 Grandmasters - holy shit I'd forgotten how good this movie was, the fight between Jack Long and Corey Yuen has to be up there as one of the best ever made, probably Kuo's best movie

I gotta agree with you here. 

[shukocarl1441996347]

Sister Street Fighter (1974) The start of the spin-off series with bad-ass babe Etsuko Shiomi throwing her kicks and punches at a drug gang that has a Enter the Dragon style underground plant. In fact the head bad guy even has a Han/Wolverine bladed hand to try and slice up our heroine. Chiba-san puts in a few fighting scenes to help out and there's the usual retinue of weird fighters from different styles. The Japanese original print showcases some gore  including a disembowelment and a Sai in some guy's head. The fights are entertaining and plentiful but the plot's a bit thin.

[shukocarl1441996347]

Gold Snatchers (1973) Chen Hsing & Lung Fei are stepbrothers fighting over a cache of gold meant for an orphanage. Lung is (obviously) the evil one who's into drug smuggling and has every stunt guy in Taiwan on his payroll. That's it 5% plot and 95% bashing...just how I like it. Kurata-San turns up towards the end. I got a feeling there was some undercranking going on in this but it's quite watchable at a compact 79 mins.

[ShawAngela]

24 minutes ago, shukocarl1441996347 said:

Gold Snatchers (1973) Chen Hsing & Lung Fei are stepbrothers fighting over a cache of gold meant for an orphanage. Lung is (obviously) the evil one who's into drug smuggling and has every stunt guy in Taiwan on his payroll. That's it 5% plot and 95% bashing...just how I like it. Kurata-San turns up towards the end. I got a feeling there was some undercranking going on in this but it's quite watchable at a compact 79 mins.

A little bit similar to the plot of Karate King, with also Lung Fei as the bad brother, and also similar to a movie with again Lung Fei and Chang Yi, I forgot the title. It's the one where they finally fight in the snow, with Lung Fei wearing very warm clothes and Chang Yi only wearing thin trousers !

[shukocarl1441996347]

Chow-Ken (1972) this one was a chore to get through. I suppose I needed a knowledge of Chinese History (and I'm as "thick as two planks") as I found it too hard to follow and it was really weird seeing my man Jimmy fighting all and sundry in a grey Japanese kimono(?) ...was he a Chinese studying Judo in Japan? Even the main heroine was dressed as Japanese a few times...oh well that's another one to cross off the list.

[WangYu]

1 hour ago, shukocarl1441996347 said:

Chow-Ken (1972) this one was a chore to get through. I suppose I needed a knowledge of Chinese History (and I'm as "thick as two planks") as I found it too hard to follow and it was really weird seeing my man Jimmy fighting all and sundry in a grey Japanese kimono(?) ...was he a Chinese studying Judo in Japan? Even the main heroine was dressed as Japanese a few times...oh well that's another one to cross off the list.

Oh but the fight scenes were really fun imo. Did you see a good quality copy? I saw it once on youtube in a very washed out blurry manner. I don’t remember the plot myself.

[ShawAngela]

If I remember well, it tells the story of Qiu Jin, a Chinese heroine who went to Japan for a reason that I forgot and who struggled against the Japanese when she returned to China, and was leading a rebellion.

Liza Wang also played Qiu Jin in the TVB series Qiu Jin, a woman to remember.

[ShawAngela]

1 hour ago, WangYu said:

Oh but the fight scenes were really fun imo. Did you see a good quality copy? I saw it once on youtube in a very washed out blurry manner. I don’t remember the plot myself.

It seems to me that there is a Hoker dvd, and that it's also in a Hoker boxset devoted to Wang Yu. I don't remember if it's in volume 1 or volume 2.

This movie is also known as Dragon Fist. 

Hoker release, non subtitles :

https://www.yesasia.com/global/dragon-fist-dvd-taiwan-version/1014429040-0-0-0-en/info.html

Wang Yu's boxset, no subtitles either :

https://www.yesasia.com/global/wang-yu-classic-series-2-dvd-taiwan-version/1024721664-0-0-0-en/info.html

I think that the Mandarin Hoker copies must be better than the english language bootlegs. I watched it too long ago to be able to remember how good was the quality print, but it's a great movie, and Guo Xiao Zhuang is a great female fighter.

3 hours ago, shukocarl1441996347 said:

Jimmy fighting all and sundry in a grey Japanese kimono(?) ...was he a Chinese studying Judo in Japan? Even the main heroine was dressed as Japanese a few times...oh well that's another one to cross off the list.

If I remember well too, Wang Yu was actually a Chinese spy in the Japanese army, and was an ally to Qiu Jin.