Random old school kung fu I've liked...

Been getting back into Chinese movies recently... Bought the kung fu 50 pack you see floating around, watched some other stuff I hadn't gotten around to. Here's a few I think are quite worth seeing..

Blood of the Dragon: Jimmy Wang Yu is the lead. Film is decently put together, the story is easy to follow. Wang Yu has an interesting weapon also - a spear. Don't see that too often. Used well in the fight scenes. Ironically though, the secondary lead, who has a sword with a dagger hidden inside of it, actually gets a better choreographed final battle. Well, the big thing to mention here is exactly that. The conclusion to this film really sells it. Must have a body count in the 50-60 range (considering the speed of old school fighting, this is very high), and the battle lasts a good fifteen minutes. Also, this is the oldest film I have seen which uses a sword whip (like Ivy from Soul Calibur, or the villain in Brotherhood of the Wolf). Pretty cool stuff.

Champ Against Champ: Unexceptedly good. Dragon Lee flick, making it even more suprising. Lead character gets his leg poisoned in a fight, and he loses it below the knee. Obviously, he must get revenge and he ends up making an iron leg - the gimimick of the film. But this actually comes across pretty niftily. When he kicks people really hard, sometimes they'll fly off into a tree, or slide along the ground like 50 feet. He also uses it as a shield, and people will punch it and be in obvious pain. The choreography is also quite good, considering the obvious budget constraints.

As the final clincher - this is directed by Godfrey Ho! Possibly, he is the worst kung fu director ever. Don't know how he got this one out of him.

One-Armed Swordsman/Return of the One-Armed Swordsman: Very enjoyable, extremely old school (67 and 69) kung fu films. The first film actually has a good story, which is told very well. Underneath the occasional corniness and bits of bad acting, this is genuinely a good, polished film - with a romance that actually works. Amazing, really. The first film also has some decent, pretty graphically violent fight scenes. But for fighting, the second film is where it is at - the sequel must have 10 times the violence. Definetly the most bloody 60s film I have seen. The action is also much better choreographed this time around, and the nifty gimmick weapons (a poison gas shooting sword, deadly discs, a changing swords, kamas on chains, etc) add to it. This time around, the swordsman is p**sed and just obliterates his enemies. Great stuff.