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

[saltysam]

Guy With Secret Kung Fu

Average Meng Fei vehicle passes the time

Butcher Wing

Enjoyable take on the Magnificent Butcher tale, not sure about the cockney accents in the dub though .Jason Po Paio is the wong fei hung type character. Lots of action, some dumb comedy.

Fearless Fighters

Ha Ha this is pretty poor but in the right frame of mind you'll have a blast. Crazy over the top weapons, crazy characters ("the one man army" 😃) 100 foot leaps, flying over water..you get the gist. The Image region 1 dvd is a lovely widescreen anamorphic transfer.

[saltysam]

Death Duel Of Mantis

A Greying Lung Fei is a tong leader and expert in chicken fist kung fu. He trains up a young student hoping to use him as one of his enforcers but it starts going pear shaped when the student sees the light and learns mantis fist from an old market stall seller. Pretty decent but the Vengeance video is crap, full screen and falsely labelled as widescreen on the rear of the case.

[saltysam]

Challenge Of Death

Womaniser Wong Tao & cop Tan Tao Liang take on evil Chang Yi's spider fist in this Lee Tso Nam effort. Pretty good but not up there with HTCTV.

[saltysam]

Bloody Fists

One of my favourite bashers, this one reunites many of the Fist Of The Double K cast and chucks in badass Chen Sing & Chen Kuan Tai. Relentless bashing throughout with a great beach set finale. I converted the Amazon HD version to blu ray and it looks great, unrestored,lots of scratches on the print but gives it a grindhouse feel. I wonder if the original audio is knocking around as this source would make for a great custom.

[ShawAngela]

Superior youngster 1974

A superb non stop action movie.

The more I see him, the more I begin to " hate " Fong Yau, because of his so despicable and vicious characters in the movies I saw him in, like in this one and in some of Bruce Li's movies...

Cheung Lik is excellent, and I wondered if he was going to finally win over the villains until the last minute !! GREAT action, with some nunchakus sequences.

According to hkmdb, this movie would be a sequel to Kung fu's hero, and the beginning would be explained by that, since when he arrives in a village and asks for his brother, everybody turns him down as soon as they hear his brother's name...

Does anyone can confirm ?

 

And as usual, San Kuai plays a bad guy too in a very convincing manner !!

Edited February 11, 2020 by ShawAngela

[JackieRome]

I did a movie marathon with  Pedicab Driver, Millionaires Express and Eastern Condors. Sammo has always been a little genius. his stories and the psychology of his characters are even more in-depth than many of Jackie's films. the only thing about his style that I've never put up with (especially in films like Mr Nice Guy) was the fragmented rallenty that's not even a rallenty. apart from that, everything else is a masterpiece.

[Graeme Of Death]

Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin

Decent pre fame Jackie film. I hadn't seen it in about 20 years and remembered nothing about it. It's got some excellent fight scenes with Jackie totally ahead of the game but overall not a great film in my opinion. It has some nice exterior shots but still one of those ugly looking kung fu films with lots of dull greys and blues, although not quite New Fist of Fury ugly.

The wee lassie that constantly rubs her nose with her thumb is super annoying as well.

Watched the 88 Films blu ray. Some scenes the picture quality looks superb and others it looks absolute shite all blurry and out of focus.

[Killer Meteor]

Snake & Crane (a huge fave of mine) always has some crazy out-of-focus shots.

[DrNgor]

1 hour ago, Graeme Of Death said:

Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin

Decent pre fame Jackie film. I hadn't seen it in about 20 years and remembered nothing about it. It's got some excellent fight scenes with Jackie totally ahead of the game but overall not a great film in my opinion. It has some nice exterior shots but still one of those ugly looking kung fu films with lots of dull greys and blues, although not quite New Fist of Fury ugly.

The wee lassie that constantly rubs her nose with her thumb is super annoying as well.

Watched the 88 Films blu ray. Some scenes the picture quality looks superb and others it looks absolute shite all blurry and out of focus.

This is one of my favorite Jackie Chan films period and it's up there on my list of all-time favorite old school movies period.

[Graeme Of Death]

Think I'll give it another watch in a few weeks see if I appreciate it a bit more.

[venom10463]

Invincible Enforcer. I liked the positive aspect of the film, but I felt it was all over the place. I found the ending to be hilarious for a supposedly serious film. In real life, Tony Liu would have been shot the number of times he was putting his hands inside his shirt.

[CT KID]

On 2/15/2020 at 6:23 AM, Killer Meteor said:

I suspect stars like Chong, Conan Lee and Meng Yuen-Man etc suffered from basically being cast as Jackie clones, so it was harder to stand out to audiences and big studios. That, and Conan's legendary bad-career management.

In Jade Claw he was definitely portrayed as a Jackie clone and to a lesser extent Super Power, but he seemed to be bringing more of a Bruce Lee vibe to Sun Dragon and Kung Fu Executioner. I think he had his own unique style and charisma though, and imo had much better kicking skills than Chan. Women seemed to really dig him as well as far as his looks.

[ShawAngela]

The invincible eight 1971

I can't believe that I have waited for 10 years to watch this excellent movie again !!

The sound quality isn't very good.

I already asked for this several times on this forum, but after watching the trailer, I'm now quite sure that this movie has been cut, because several fight scenes in the mountain were the eight were hidden are shown in the trailer, as well as one scene that I didn't see in the movie (and that I can't describe because I already forgot it !!), the fights in the mountain could explain the picture showing Angela Mao and Nora Miao side by side with their weapons and looking fiercely at their enemies that I had found in one of my French magazines and that has been shown several times here.

If 88 or Eureka or a German company could release an uncut version of this movie, I would buy it with my eyes closed, in any language, even in swahili (), just to be able to watch the full movie and see the holes in the plot finally filled !!

Edited February 20, 2020 by ShawAngela

[saltysam]

Two Dragons Fight Against Tiger

ok 70's basher. Aka Kung Fu Gold, a group of miners strike it rich by finding gold and intend to return home to marry the local girls, the army general has other ideas, he rapes and causes the hero's girl to commit suicide and he swears revenge.

[Chu Liu Hsiang]

DANCE OF THE DRUNK MANTIS - I enjoyed this movie immensely, and will surely rewatch soon. There is so much to love: Yen Shi Kwan as Sick Ghost, Drunken Fist vs Drunken Mantis, Simon Yuen getting his "money" back from Dean Shek, Linda Lin Ying, Corey Yuen and Hwang Jang Lee. I am aghast I did not find this gem earlier. Maybe I think differently tomorrow but right now I'd say I liked this better than the original DRUNKEN MASTER. Is anything known about Linda Lin Ying's background? 

[ShawAngela]

Carry on pickpocket 1982

I just watched this movie after 10 years and I enjoyed it a lot.

I had forgotten how funny and entertaining it was !

And Sammo is excellent in it !

[saltysam]

One Armed  Vs Nine Killers

Jimmy Wang Yu stars in an in name only cheap rehash of his signature role. Lo Lieh & Lung Fei appear but are underused. Watchable enough,unfortunately this 77 minute version i watched was definitely heavily cut.

[Secret Executioner]

10 minutes ago, saltysam said:

Lo Lieh & Lung Fei appear but are underused.

Lo Lieh often seemed underused in smaller, independent Fu films. As for Lung Fei, he probably made this during a break while filming a handful of other movies.

[Killer Meteor]

20 minutes ago, saltysam said:

One Armed  Vs Nine Killers

Jimmy Wang Yu stars in an in name only cheap rehash of his signature role. Lo Lieh & Lung Fei appear but are underused. Watchable enough,unfortunately this 77 minute version i watched was definitely heavily cut.

I watched a longer, possibly uncut version via Youtube yesterday. Hysterical fun, some of the dubbed dialogue is priceless.

 

[ShawAngela]

The owl vs Bumbo 1984

I guess that I'm in my period " rewatching " and in my Sammo's period...

So, I have revisited this movie this evening and, as for Carry on pickpocket, I enjoyed it a lot.

Lots of fun, of fights and a little bit of morale, which doesn't spoil the movie.

I'm not a great fan of Georges Lam, but I appreciated his work here. Of course, Sammo steals the show, and Stanley Fung shoud have had a bigger role.

A short cameo of real life former policeman Philip Chan, here. I wonder if he played any other roles than policemen in his career : he was also in several ATV series related to CID and I think that he also played policemen in several other movies...

 

As a fan of Musicals, I also enjoyed a a lot the tap dancing scene. Does anyone know if it was really Sammo who was playing this tap dance scene ?

Edited February 27, 2020 by ShawAngela

[ShawAngela]

I'm revisiting my Legendary Collection dvds from Fortune Star in order to see if I get rid of some of them or not...

Double feature fo this evening :

Cheeky Chap 1980

I still don't like Wei Pai's characters, at least for most of the movie, until he becomes reasonable after his mother and sister are threatened by Wai Wang.

I haven't watched it since 10 years, and I was absolutely convinced that it was Candy Wen who died at the end, but I was heavily mistaken.

I enjoyed all the fights, though, and Wei Pai is very good looking, it's just his character that I don't like, so...sorry, but I'll keep this dvd for me...

 

The Manchu boxer 1974

I won't sell this one for sure !

Liu Yung is the hero, but he has only three fights int he movie, but what fights !

Sammo and Wilson Tong play bad Japanese guys, and I discovered that the girl who is in love with Liu Yung is Ti Lung's wife !

None of the other two girls of the movie have their names listed, or if they are listed, there is no picture matching the names, so, does anyone know who they are ?

One of them is skilled in throwing knives and  fights Liu Yung at the end, and the other is the heroine's friend.

Someone on hkmdb says that the movie is slow and boring...Well, I don't agree. It's sure that there aren't as many fights as in any other martial arts movies, but the plot centers more on Liu Yung's character (I mean his way of thinking and acting after he was chased by his father in order to save him from death after he killed a general's son who had provoked him) and on his friend who fights and wants to upright justice and restore the Chinese people honor by winning the tournament.

I wached movies that were much more boring and slow than this one. Alos, the reviewer says that Liu Yung's character in the movie is called Chen, while it's easy to hear in the original language that he is called Ku !!

I don't know what is the meaning of the original title in Chinese, but it talks of seven something and, if I'm not mistaken, the last character says " Wang " ; does anyone have a clue on the real meaning of the Chinese title ? It seems to me that at a moment, the main villain talks about seven fighters who come for the tournament, maybe it's related to these seven guys ?

[saltysam]

Monks Go Crazy

I think is better known as War On The Shaolin Temple, cheap knock off features the usual cliches, a drunken master living in a cave, shaolin monks,revenge etc. Passable

[ShawAngela]

Mission kiss and kill 1979

I watched it as a bonus film in the Asia Line dvd of 18 jade arhats.

A very good one, with a lot of great performances by Li Yi Min and Blacky Ko, and an amazing " crab kung fu " performed by Lung Fei and the end. That's just too bad that it was in German language only...

18 jade arhats 1978

An very goo one too, with great fights from Shan Kuan Ling Fung and the hero, and Chang Yi playing once again a White Haired Villain, who uses the Lohan Palm kung fu. The plot isn't very clear at the beginning, until both heroes (Polly and the guy) finally explain to each other what they are after.

A good but really too short performance too from Lo Lieh, who, for once, plays a good guy.

[ShawAngela]

The crazy chase 1981

A crazy comedy lead by Liu Chia Yung.

The more I see him, the more I think that he looks like a twin for his brother Liu Chia Liang, they even have the same smile !!

And he has a tiny fight in which he imitates Bruce Lee with the shouts, the postures and even the music from Way of the Dragon and the last image from Fist of fury !!

 

[SamSeed]

I've just watched Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars for the first time. For whatever reason, it's sat in my collection for years and has never caught my eye as one to watch. Now, having sat through it, I wished I'd left it there. Not only the worst Sammo/Jackie/Yuen collab, truly one of the worst films I've ever sat through period (this is speaking about the film as a whole, the action, which I'll get to, is another matter entirely). A truly awful collection of characters (if they can even be called characters) who spend 75 minutes insulting, perving, groping and otherwise being unpleasant to women, all in the name of 'comedy'. I know Chinese comedy was very, very broad in the eighties but I've never seen anything quite so puerile and horrible to watch as this. The one gag with Sammo and the tunnel at the beach made me laugh but that's all. I don't think I'll ever revisit this one except to watch the fight scenes.

And what fight scenes they are. The warehouse fight is simply astonishing, Yuen Biao in particular pulling off moves that even though I know how good he is, still made my jaw drop. And the end fight is wonderful. Richard Norton really took some punishment here. Not as good as Wheels on Meals but it's definitely up there.