An Italian sword and sandal action adventure film directed by Ferdinando Baldi and Terence Young.
After years of war between Rome and Alba, triplet brothers from each place arrange to fight and have the outcome of their conflict determine the end of the war.
Yet another inferior sword and sandal flick that seemed to drag on forever. These things follow a formula just like generic kung fu flicks and are indeed very similar. Wretched audio and video? Check. Light on plot and characters difficult to differentiate? Check. If I were reviewing how well it fit the mold of this genre, it would get a "best" rating. I'm not.
A movie should be something special and different in some way. It should have characters that feel like old friends by 10 minutes in and a plot that seems to determine the fate of this world (if not other worlds as well). Creative camera angles with good quality video that is easy to see and convincingly tasteful special effects should be a feast for my eyes. Audible, clearly spoken dialogue and an epic musical score of a soundtrack should push it into the realms of ear-candy. A good film should have consistent style and flavor; it should be identifiable as that film at any part in it's duration. In the first 5 minutes, my interest needs to be lured into the world of the film. By half an hour, I need to be engrossed in the story. At about an hour to 1:30, I should not want it to end. At the end, I must desire to watch it again at some point. That is what makes a good movie.
THIS was NOT a good movie. It contained 1/16th of what I described in the paragraph above. The dialogue was clearly spoken and audible. I'm going to rate it bad because it was a cookie cutter piece of crap.
A Chinese kung fu film directed by Godfrey Ho.
Standard Godfrey Ho story: cops looking for criminal ninjas.
What a worthless film! At least it was only an hour and 7 minutes long. Crappy plot, crappy characters, lame-ass action scenes. you get the idea. Don't watch it. I'm rating it bad.
A Chinese kung-fu directed by Joseph Kuo.
A bouncer at a Chinese whorehouse finds out that he is actually Japanese royalty and must learn kung fu in order to defeat a grandmaster ninja in gold pajamas. Along the way, he gets training from older men and rapes women.
This is the grandaddy of all lo-fi kung fuvies. The quality of the actual video was extremely low. The audio sounded horrible and the video was so bad that it actually performed color-shifts due to poor lighting. The characters were identifiable and the plot coherent. When most fuvies can't boast coherence over an hour, this one sustained it for 3 films of about an hour and a half each. Not only that, but in a film with a ninja title, THERE WERE ACTUALLY NINJAS!!!!! There was some occult ritual in the film involving someone being turned into a grandmaster by using snake blood (reptilian freemasons anyone?) and the main character makes the pyramid hand signal in the opening sequence (picture). The fight and action scenes featured state of the art special effects like "splicing the film reels" and "change playback speed" which I thought was really cool. The epic training scene in the first film alone is worth watching as the student is boiled, frozen, oiled and otherwise abused while the master smokes what looks like an opium pipe.
I'm rating this adequate because it is the epitome of all lo-fi kung fu flicks.
A Chinese kung fu comedy written and directed by Kan Ping Yu.
A vagrant child kung fu master arrives in a village and befriends a pair of other orphan street children. An adult martial artist is also in this town and somehow they all end up fighting the "evil" leader of the village.
More of the same dung-pu. The audio is what made this one especially unbearable. Most of it was one child voice actor screaming through a distortion pedal. Add the single-track musical score and the same 2 or 3 adult voice actors from literally every other English-dubbed kung fuvie ever made for extra ear pain. The plot was relatively well-presented, although there was a gap commonly referred to as "why are they fighting?". The characters were identifiable by appearance, although not by the sound of their voice (see above). They used speed adjustment as a special effect in the fight scenes to give the kids better fu skills, which I thought was kind of cool. This is best demonstrated in the bean curd fight. There was a full-frontal male nudity scene in this when the orphans are bathing in a river. Why did we need to see a little kid's microscopic penis? Oh well, must be an equal rights thing to even out for the naked women in other films. I'm rating it bad.
A Chinese kung fu directed by Kuang Hui A.K.A. Kim Young.
A sick princess is cured by a monkey and forced to marry him. The cruel emperor sends her and her new husband away on a boat to die or be forgotten. The man who sent the monkey to cure the princess finds her and they return to dethrone the emperor.
It was stupid, annoying, insipid and pointless. The audio was absolutely horrible, with certain phrases like "uncle monkey, uncle monkey" being repeated endlessly and consecutively. The camera-work during the fight scenes blew donkey nards and I couldn't see what styles the fighters were using. For being named "Kung Fu Arts", one would think that there would be talk of different styles, but no. No drunken boxing, no animal styles, no tai chi. HOWEVER, the plot was coherent and the characters identifiable. These are grand achievements for a film of this genre and are not taken lightly. Note the female equivalent of epic sideburns and the boy's Tarzan costume in the picture. I'm accepting the flaws inherent in the genre and rating this o.k. because I could understand the story and knew who the main characters were.
A Chinese kung fu written and directed by Ling Shang A.K.A. Shang Lang.
A martial arts expert who is also a jeweler goes searching for his missing brother in Thailand.
What a horrible piece of shit! The production was bad, acting was worse and even the fight scenes were bad. No redeeming qualities at all. I rate it shit.
A Chinese kung fu directed by Chick Lim Yu.
A peaceful city is conquered by an invading army and only the princess escapes. 19 years later she fights the leaders of the city to return the city to it's peaceful state.
Yet even more of the same shit. This one was pretty though. The characters were identifiable and the costumes were actually pretty cool. Plot still murky, camera-work terrible and sound atrocious. I'm rating it o.k. because it's better than the load of stupid ninja crap I've been watching.
A Chinese kung fu directed by Ma Wu.
A group of thieves steal a map to a buried treasure and split the pieces of the map between them. They plan to meet in 3 years to get the treasure together, but end up fighting amongst themselves over the pieces.
Same shit, different title. This was a little better than the ninja ones, but not very much. The plot was slightly more coherent and some characters more identifiable. Not the slightest mention of Shaolin or deadly kicking in any way (standard disregard for title). The traditional Chinese setting was much appreciated. Based on the competition, I'll be nice and rate it o.k.
A Chinese kung fu crime film starring Chan Sheng.
When a man gets out of a jail term that he was wrongfully sentenced to, his brother has found the men who framed him for the crime.
Murky plot, static characters, horrid camera-work, etc. Same shit, different title. This one had a pseudo-western soundtrack piece that played in the beginning and during a flashback scene. Guess what? No ninjas! Poor.
A Chinese kung fu crime film directed by Yueng Kuen, starring Bruce Li.
A gang of criminals is making counterfeit money. A local martial arts expert and a female interpol agent track them down to stop their criminal activities.
These lo-fi kung fuvies should be shorter. If they were about half an hour, they might actually be good. However, this was a full length feature film and hence, sucked. The only redeeming quality was female nudity (picture). I'm rating this poor.
A kung fu written and directed by Wah Man.
The demi-god daughter of a fox clan martial arts master is fought over by a suitor from the snake clan and a mortal traveler.
There was wire, magic and slow-motion fight scenes with echo on the sound effects. If you know my tastes in kung fuvies, all these things are good. The film was shot pretty well with good camera angles and high visibility (if you know what I mean?). There were also some majestic shots of mountainsides with traditional Chinese music. The snake clan characters actually used the snake animal style of Shaolin kung fu, which I thought was pretty cool. All this comes together to make a very pretty fuvie, although the plot left much to be desired. This plot that I refer to was murky with long names and developed only in the few seconds between each fight scene. There was no training scene (one of my favorite elements of classic kung fu flicks) and no barroom brawl. Oh well, you can't expect miracles from a low-budget '70s fuvie. I rate it adequate.
A kung-fu directed by William Chang.
A father and his son are flying a kite on a beach when another man appears to fight the father. Defeated, the father takes his own life and the son follows the other man on conditions of training and revenge.
This is a stereotypical fuvie: light on plot and heavy on choreographed fight scenes. Taking place in a traditional Chinese setting as well, it sets the basic standard for kung-fuvies. There were minimal (if any) training scenes and the fights looked Mighty Morphin Power Rangers style fake. The camera-work was nothing special and they didn't use enough wire or flying. When I say "sets the standard", I really mean it. This is a very middle of the road, mediocre kung-fu film that gets a very standard, O.K. rating.
