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

[Jim H]

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.

[Zapranoth]

Everybody was kung fu fight-iiiiing...
Those cats were fast as light-niiiiiing...
In fact it was a little bit fright-niiiiing....

But they fought with ex-pert ti-miiing...

Whoa ho ho hoa!

(Fatal Flying Guillotines, anyone?)