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

[Killer Meteor]

Rick Thomas' strange dubbing of Carter Wong (which sounds like Old Mother Riley at times!) is an aquired taste for sure.

[Chu Liu Hsiang]

THE DUMB OX. First time I saw Kam Kong as lead and I think he played the "dumb ox" really well. I also liked the story, 0815 or not. A happy ending would have been nice 😇

[saltysam]

Iron Monkey Strikes Back

Not a sequel, just a cash in retitling. Chen Kuan Tai is a detective trying to solve a murder.Judy Lee helps and hinders. Treacherous Chen Sing is the big bad but doesn't really cut loose until a decent showdown with Chen at the climax.Pretty average film in my view,despite the cast. UK DVD is partly wide but obviously from a VHS source.

[DragonClaws]

17 hours ago, saltysam said:

UK DVD is partly wide but obviously from a VHS source.

 

Slighty cut this DVD version, but not enough to really have a big impact on the film. A lot of the British budget or bootleg companies put out the same cut VHS prints. That said, Vengeance did manage to get out some previously cut titles out intact. Enter The Game of Death being one of them, which sufferend around 4-minutes of edit for the VHS release.

[Ah_Tao]

Heroes of the East

Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island

[saltysam]

Drunken Arts Crippled Fists

Nothing you haven't seen before-Sam The Seed trains pupil, he goes home, gets in to some difficulty, seeks out Sam the Seed again, fights the villianous student -the end. Most interesting part of this is Fist/Way's Wei Ou Ping actually busting some moves as the leader of a rival school.

 

The Assignment

A basher i confess to never having heard of until i stumbled upon it on youtube, two brothers save and look after a down and out, clean him up and he leaves swearing forever friends. Two years later he returns as a government official and an ungrateful, nasty swine to boot. Typical basher from the mid 70's, not bad.

Edited January 1, 2020 by saltysam

[Chu Liu Hsiang]

THE FIGHTING DRAGON - I thought the plot was weirdly serial, and some great talent wasted, but then read it's a compilation of a tv series, so that explains a lot. Yasuaki Kurata is always a joy to watch, I really have to get more of his movies. 

[saltysam]

Magnificent Chivalry

  Standard,melodramatic Wang Yu effort. Lung Fei pops in but Tien Yeh is the main baddie here, the climactic sword fight between the two in the mud is pretty good. A ropey Vengeance Video effort, wideish but poor picture and odd subtitling. These films would play out so much better in superior quality.

Edited January 4, 2020 by saltysam

[ShawAngela]

Karate the hand of death

Bandits, prostitutes and silver

The big boss

[saltysam]

Shaolin Iron Claws

I'm a Don Wong Tao fan but this is one of his lesser efforts.

Young Vagabond

Shaw brothers comedy with Gordon Liu and Ku Feng has too much silly comedy in the first half,but latter part of the movie turns seriously dark and is much better.

Bruce Lee The Man The Myth

My yearly rewatch of this classic film-many iconic scenes,some unintentionally funny ones (the english dub dialogue of the sgt major type in the roadworks scene 😁) german DVD is very good, the best around.

Hero

Early 70's Wang Yu basher with his regular supporting cast ,Lung Fei  ,Tien Yeh etc. Unfortunately one of his lesser efforts though livens up towards the end.

[DrNgor]

Lost Kung Fu Secrets (Taiwan, 1980: Joe Law) - Set during the infamous Taiping Rebellion, which pitted the Qing army against a Christian separatist cult, and ended up last 14 years with an estimated casualty count of up to 30 million people. The story begins after a Qing victory against the Christians--this is one of those movies where the Qing soldiers are the good guys. The husband of one of the higher-up's in the Taiping "church" is killed, and she swears revenge with one of the leaders. To that effect, they have a spy in the army: General Tieh (Taiwanese regular Tsai Hung, aka Choi Wang). He's gotten in good with the Supreme General (Wang Hsieh) and has invited him over to his base of operations to discuss future strategies. The Good General has a retainer who is suspicious of Tieh: Chia-Hsiang, played by David Chiang. Chia-Hsiang has convinced the Good General's wife and daughter, the Princess (Hsu Feng), on his side, but not the Good General. Once at Tieh's camp, the Taipings show up and wipe out the Good General's entourage and capture the Princess. Chia-Hsiang goes undercover to rescue her, and then begins a dangerous flight out of enemy territory.

This is sort of a mini-epic on a typical low Taiwanese budget. The costumes aren't bad that there's a lot of action, some of which features larger war engines like catapults, ballistas, cannons and styrofoam boulders and logs. It gives the action a pseudo-epic feel, like what you'd get from a 1960s sword n' sandal (or peplum) movie. However, the story doesn't delve into the causes of the Taiping rebellion, or describe any of the beliefs associated with this particular Christian cult. In fact, it suggests that it was all a ruse, given that the we see said widow sleeping with the Big Taiping Kahuna outside of a lawful and legitimate marriage, which doesn't sound very Christian to me. So it has some epic trappings, but the inside is just typical low-budget Taiwanese action.

Said action is provided by Chan Muk-Chuen, best known for Iron Monkey (1977) and Crippled Masters. It's free of wires, which is the best thing I can say about it. The fighting, however, is very slow. David Chiang, despite his charisma, was a limited screen fighter and Chan Muk-Chuen's mannered choreography does no favors for Chiang. Hsu Feng gets to fight a lot, despite playing a Princess (can a daughter's general be a princess? Perhaps her mother was the 13th daughter of someone in the royal family?), and probably steals the show. There are a lot of weapons on display: sabers, poles, spears, tonfa, hook swords, two-fisted daggers, axes, double short cudgels and some more exotic weapons: flower baskets swung like flails, retractable-spiked gauntlets and a few other things. The variety in weaponry, for some, may be enough to make up for the lackluster choreography on display. Looking at the Youtube comments, there are a lot of old school fans who generally like this film, so there.

[ShawAngela]

4 hours ago, DrNgor said:

Lost Kung Fu Secrets (Taiwan, 1980: Joe Law) - Set during the infamous Taiping Rebellion, which pitted the Qing army against a Christian separatist cult, and ended up last 14 years with an estimated casualty count of up to 30 million people. The story begins after a Qing victory against the Christians--this is one of those movies where the Qing soldiers are the good guys. The husband of one of the higher-up's in the Taiping "church" is killed, and she swears revenge with one of the leaders. To that effect, they have a spy in the army: General Tieh (Taiwanese regular Tsai Hung, aka Choi Wang). He's gotten in good with the Supreme General (Wang Hsieh) and has invited him over to his base of operations to discuss future strategies. The Good General has a retainer who is suspicious of Tieh: Chia-Hsiang, played by David Chiang. Chia-Hsiang has convinced the Good General's wife and daughter, the Princess (Hsu Feng), on his side, but not the Good General. Once at Tieh's camp, the Taipings show up and wipe out the Good General's entourage and capture the Princess. Chia-Hsiang goes undercover to rescue her, and then begins a dangerous flight out of enemy territory.

This is sort of a mini-epic on a typical low Taiwanese budget. The costumes aren't bad that there's a lot of action, some of which features larger war engines like catapults, ballistas, cannons and styrofoam boulders and logs. It gives the action a pseudo-epic feel, like what you'd get from a 1960s sword n' sandal (or peplum) movie. However, the story doesn't delve into the causes of the Taiping rebellion, or describe any of the beliefs associated with this particular Christian cult. In fact, it suggests that it was all a ruse, given that the we see said widow sleeping with the Big Taiping Kahuna outside of a lawful and legitimate marriage, which doesn't sound very Christian to me. So it has some epic trappings, but the inside is just typical low-budget Taiwanese action.

Said action is provided by Chan Muk-Chuen, best known for Iron Monkey (1977) and Crippled Masters. It's free of wires, which is the best thing I can say about it. The fighting, however, is very slow. David Chiang, despite his charisma, was a limited screen fighter and Chan Muk-Chuen's mannered choreography does no favors for Chiang. Hsu Feng gets to fight a lot, despite playing a Princess (can a daughter's general be a princess? Perhaps her mother was the 13th daughter of someone in the royal family?), and probably steals the show. There are a lot of weapons on display: sabers, poles, spears, tonfa, hook swords, two-fisted daggers, axes, double short cudgels and some more exotic weapons: flower baskets swung like flails, retractable-spiked gauntlets and a few other things. The variety in weaponry, for some, may be enough to make up for the lackluster choreography on display. Looking at the Youtube comments, there are a lot of old school fans who generally like this film, so there.

I haven't watched this movie as yet, but when I tested the disc, it seemed to me that Hu Chin also played and fought in this. IS it her who plays the widow ?

[saltysam]

Showdown

An odd early 70's basher starring Jimmy Wang Yu, he takes an injured girl to an inn for help and there he gets heavily involved, marrying the daughter within about two days 🙂 the youtube print was wide, acceptable quality but cut by about 10 minutes i think.

[ShawAngela]

 

1 hour ago, saltysam said:

Showdown

An odd early 70's basher starring Jimmy Wang Yu, he takes an injured girl to an inn for help and there he gets heavily involved, marrying the daughter within about two days 🙂 the youtube print was wide, acceptable quality but cut by about 10 minutes i think.

If it's the one in which he marries Chang Ching Ching, with Chan Wai Lau playing the grand-mother, did you notice how it looks a lot like Shaolin mantis regarding the part where the couple tries to go away from the family, with the family members trying to stop them ?

[DrNgor]

22 hours ago, ShawAngela said:

I haven't watched this movie as yet, but when I tested the disc, it seemed to me that Hu Chin also played and fought in this. IS it her who plays the widow ?

Yeah, that would be her. She tussles briefly with David Chiang at one point. Interestingly enough, her character's fate is left open.

[DrNgor]

Love and Sword (Taiwan, 1979: Yu Kan Ping) - aka The Samurai

Edited February 9, 2022 by DrNgor

[saltysam]

Lion's Heart

Jimmy Wang Yu is a drug trafficker but still the hero-make sense 😁 if you can accept that this isn't too bad a basher. Youtube Widescreen print with german audio and english subs is about the only version i can find.

The Brave & The Evil

Very decent Jimmy Wang Yu actioner, with a particularly great last 20 minutes

[saltysam]

Professional Killer

Rather boring Jimmy Wang Yu taiwanese swordplay, here he's an assassin of sorts but really a good guy. My opinion of the movie wasn't helped by the appalling quality FLKCINEMA version watched.

[Chu Liu Hsiang]

THE HOLY ROBE OF THE SHAOLIN TEMPEL - I enjoyed this movie, the story is  known but well executed and lots of nice action, plus landscape. 2 or 3 scenes could have been shorter.

[ShawAngela]

I just watched FIST OF THE DOUBLE K.

What a superb movie, with A LOT of very good fights !

I got the German release form FilmArt, with German, English and Mandarin language, running for 1h26mn and a few seconds, and a said Italian shorter version, that plays in German and not in Italian, and runs for only 1h19mn and a few seconds.

Henry Yu Yung is excellent, and at some times, I thought that he looked like Ti Lung : take a look at the following screenshots . Arghh !! I didn't shoot the third one well, and it was the one in which it was the most visible !!

 

[saltysam]

18 hours ago, ShawAngela said:

I just watched FIST OF THE DOUBLE K.

What a superb movie, with A LOT of very good fights !

I got the German release form FilmArt, with German, English and Mandarin language, running for 1h26mn and a few seconds, and a said Italian shorter version, that plays in German and not in Italian, and runs for only 1h19mn and a few seconds.

Henry Yu Yung is excellent, and at some times, I thought that he looked like Ti Lung : take a look at the following screenshots . Arghh !! I didn't shoot the third one well, and it was the one in which it was the most visible !!

 

This film is probably my favourite basher, loved it ever since i had the Super 8 condensed version as a young lad. It's got a great cast, brilliant music,superb atmosphere and a fantastivc climax. Love this film.

[ShawAngela]

Oh, les, I forgot to mention the music ! It's the first thing that pleased me when the credits began !

But there were still some inserted themes from The Avengers series (if I'm not mistaken) and from one of the Corleone movie themes (I don't know the English title, here it's called Le Parrain)...☺️

[JohnnieFreeze]

2 Fists Against The Law...working my way through many classics.

[Killer Meteor]

Have a Good Funeral, My Friend... Sartana Will Pay  (1970)

OK, this is a spaghetti western...but it DOES have George Wang (later of The Hot, The Cool & The Vicious and To Kill With Intrigue) as a fat casino owner who ends up in a kung fu fight with our hero. Interesting to see Chinese martial arts in a Western (in both senses of the word) before the big craze, and it's a damn good western too!

 

7/10

[Killer Meteor]

Shanghai 13 (1984)

Upon leaving Shaws, Chang Cheh directed this indie all-star, featuring nearly of his leading men protoges from Jimmy Wang Yu all the way up to Ricky Cheng - plus upcoming major star Andy Lau, whose only film with Chang this was.

Sadly, this is more of a series of vingnettes then a real movie - nobody gets a real chance to be in the limelight and it becomes monotonus seeing a bunch of people fight when our only investment we have in them is that we might like them as actors - and to comment on everyone looking older, fatter or balder. Fights are impressive as ever, but then what else is new?

5/10