Our film this evening was Chase Step By Step. There was no revenge motif or star-crossed romance here, just a simple cargo delivery film, in the vein of Black Dog or Convoy.

DVD sleeve blurb:

Judy is a female counterpart to Bruce Lee. Proving herself stronger and tougher than any male opponent, she fights her way through a prostitution ring and frees herself from slavery.

OK, I admit, I have no idea where they got that plot line from, because none of that is in this film, except for the fact that the one female fighter is tougher than a lot of the guys.

When a province is stricken with drought, the governor turns to an old friend, the teacher at a kung-fu circus, for help in seeing that the gold he is sending reaches its intended recipients. The teachers sends his two best students (a guy and a gal) as the protection.

Since apparently there is only one path between both towns and the thieves’ guild is very well networked, they are beset multiple times along the way by bandits galore, most of whom they dispatch without too much trouble. There is some light sexual tension between the duo, as the girl shows flashes of anger & jealousy as the guy receives attention from the ladies as they travel.

As this duo is heading ever onward through thick and thin, the governor has let the local law enforcement in the town know that the gold is en route. The well-meaning police chief decides to form an escort team to meet them and help them get the gold to the town. So he turns to the local kung-fu teacher, who agrees to help along with a few of his students.

The escorts finally arrive with the gold and turn it over. After they leave the gold and go to visit local family, the teacher quickly orders the gold seized and the cop killed. How rude! And the inevitable final battle draws nearer…

Overall, this was an interesting flick. There’s one particularly interesting stretch with a wheelbarrow on a tightrope — they are circus performers, after all. There’s even a brief appearance by a Korean fighter, who I believe was using hapkido. It was hard to tell as I kept being distracted by the goofy hat he wore.

Pain Rating: 2 Fingers of Death

Up tomorrow: Deadly Duo

Another Carter Wong effort. This one — Killer of Snakes, Fox of Shaolin — was rather less painful to watch than Kung Fu Arts. Killer predates the other film by a couple of years.

DVD sleeve blurb:

When a fung fu film title includes animals, it usually refers to animal kung fu styles used in the film. In the case of Killer of Snakes, Fox of Shaolin the animals are actually characters in the film.

They’re not actually character per se. The main characters are two families of shape-shifting kung fu experts, with the snake people on one side and the foxes on the other, a weird Hatfield & McCoy feud. One of the Snake folks wants to marry a Fox daughter, but both she and her father are very against it. A fight ensues, into which stumbles mere mortal bumpkin Carter Wong. He gets injured by the snake guy, who gets chased off by a storm brought on by the God of Heaven (aka the Lord Buddha). The Fox girl nurses Carter back to health and he leaves, apparently completely oblivious to the fact that she has fallen for him. So, logically, she and her father come up with a plan of deception & illusion to make him fall in love with her as well.

In the meantime, there is a lot of infighting in the Snake family. The main villain Snake still really wants to marry the Fox and has decided to take on everyone to get his way, including those who guards the Gates of Heaven. His sister keep strying to talk him out of it and foils a couple of his fights with Carter, who by this point, actually has fallen for the Fox girl.

Quite a few more fights ensue over the course of the film, which end up with the final fight between Snake and Carter at the Gates with the Abbot watching (he’s the equivalent of St. Peter, I suppose… sort of Buddha’s maitre d’).

This wasn’t a horrible film, overall. Carter was slightly less skilled in this role and there was little chemistry between himself and his leading lady. Thankfully, there were no monkeys or roller-skating ninjas in this film either.

Pain rating: 3 Fingers of Death

Up on Monday: Chase Step by Step

Our film tonight was Bruce Lee: The Invincible. It probably should be called The Invisible because, shock of shocks, Bruce Lee is nowhere to be found in this movie. That’s probably a good thing, too.

The blurb:

Bruce Li and Michael Chan go head to head in this feature inspired by the martial arts legend. When a mercenary abuses the technique of Wonderful Escarpment, the Dragon has to set things right.

Note that this is Bruce Li, not Bruce Lee or Bruce Le. This guys looks a bit like Bruce Lee, and was even offered a job playing Bruce’s stand-in after Lee’s untimely death when Game of Death was being completed. Li turned it down as he did not feel worthy of such a part. Now, that’s classy. And given the fact that Game of Death was such a stinkburger without Bruce Lee’s further input, my respect for Bruce Li only goes up. In addition, keep in mind that “Bruce Li” was merely a screen name forced on him by producers. Chung Tao Ho (his real name) always felt that although he wanted to emulate Lee, he could never be him. He dropped the name after his film career ended twenty years ago, and is now running a gym in his native Taiwan.

It’s hard to tell exactly what the plot is for this film. It started out with a guy attacking a teacher by mistake. It turns out they trained under the same master or something like that. The man exiles himself to Malaysia in shame to train to be better. He is attacked by a gang of thugs while having sex, but he makes short work of them in a nice quick fight in the forest.

There’s a “B” story in here where a girl brings her boyfriend home to meet her folks on an island (presumably, also Malaysia). They are accosted on the beach by a trio of hoodlums, but the boyfriend knows his kung fu, too. By the way, you can tell it’s Malaysia by the fact that all the thugs and hoodlums are wearing cut-offs. :-p

The boss of this gang falls for the girl, whose shopkeeper father looks a lot like Canadian actor Colin Mochrie. So, naturally, he sends his thugs to rough up the parents and kidnap the girl via an actual burlap sack! (I’m amazed she could fit in there… it was rather small) There’s a brief full-frontal view of her granny panties as the boss tries to take advantage of her, but failing that, he beats her in typical villain fashion.

The boyfriend (who is, apparently, also her cousin) attempts futilely to rescue her, but after they get out of the boss’s house, they catch up with them and he gets the snot beaten out of him and disappears.

Meanwhile, the teacher (from the beginning of the film) and Bruce Li show up to find the boyfriend/cousin and end up taking on the gang. There’s a bust-up of a crooked casino, more beatings on the Colin Mochrie look-alike and plenty of fighting all around. All in all, not too bad, but it still hurts that they put Bruce Lee’s name on it to sell the film. It could probably have carried fine on its own back in the day.

Pain rating: 2 Fingers of Death

Up tomorrow… Killer of Snakes, Fox of Shaolin

This film is a far better one than Kung Fu Arts. For one thing, there was a coherent plot going on. And fights galore in this high-kicking, fast-paced film.

DVD blurb:

Tan Tao Liang (Dorian Tan) shows off his whole repetoire of fancy legwork and Kung Fu moves when he confronts the bootmaster with a flurry of high-flying kicks. Much action ensues when Police Chief Liang kills off eight bandits who have stolen a treasure map.

An interesting note is that Tan is actually Korean-born and an expert & Korean national champion in tae kwan do. He earned the nickname “Flash Legs” for his fancy kicking techniques.

As the film opens, a gang of 8 bandits steals a treasure map. They divide it into 8 equal pieces and separate, vowing to reunite in 3 years and dig up the treasure. Before that can happen, though, a man with apparently no name (Tan) shows up and collects the pieces by killing them off one by one, however reluctantly. As the bandits’ numbers dwindle, those who have hung around each other start turning on one another. It the meantime, our “Man With No Name” meets a girl, who happens to be the daughter of one of the bandits. This of course leads to yet another inevitable final battle over the last pieces of the map and the treasure itself.

I found myself rather enjoying this movie a bit more than the last one. Having an understandable plot (and no monkeys) really helps. The fights were well done and the story kept moving at a good pace.

Pain rating : 1 Finger of Death

(Pain ratings are just that — how painful these movies are to watch. 1 is the least painful, 5 if the worst)

Up tomorrow… Bruce Lee: The Invincible

I was right when I said this would go down hard.

First, here’s the blurb on the DVD sleeve for Kung Fu Arts:

The movie starts off with two rollerskating ninjas where one carries the cargo of a monkey with superpowers. The two ninjas are rivals, who belong to the Horse and Tiger Clans, who battle for the control of the monkey who, if he eats the secret banana will become the ruler of the universe.

Well, it was accurate… to the extent that there is a monkey in the film.

The film stars Carter Wong, who is best known in the US for playing “Thunder” the inflatable weather demon in Big Trouble in Little China, which I still think is one of the funniest and best action films ever. He plays Qing Chi, a warrior who has a thing on the side with the king’s daughter, apparently. He gets betrayed by one of his superiors and sends himself into exile until his kung fu is strong enough to beat said superior.

As a result of the first fight, the princess (his beloved) is wounded. When the king’s physician cannot do anything for her, a royal decree goes out promising the hand of the princess in marriage to whomever cures her. When the aforementioned monkey (listed in the credits as “Sada the French Monkey Star”) shows up, the king is honor-bound to wed the monkey to the princess. To avoid further shame, he sets the princess and her monkey-husband adrift at sea in a boat, where they eventually wash up on an island and decide to live out their days in peace. The princess eventually gives birth to a son, which she and the monkey raise. Don’t freak — Qing is actually the father. But even I wondered for a bit.

Meanwhile, back in the kingdom, Pai (the evil one, remember) kills the king and takes over after the king had named him Commander-in-Chief of the army at the queen’s behest. Apparently, the queen had sided with Pai because she had the hots for him. She tries to seduce him again after he ascends to the throne, but he kills her, too. Qing discovers the truth and travels to the island to find the princess, whom everyone believes is dead by now. That’s where he meets his son and loved one. It turns out the mokey was his. I still wonder where the “secret banana” comes into play.

In any case, Qing decides to return to China to kill Pai in his sleep and is promptly caught in the attempt. I can’t believe he thought Pai, who did the same thing to the previous king, would fall for that. Pai throws him in prison and sends soldiers to the island to collect the princess, but they conveniently overlook the son, who then rallies the island’s critters (oddly enough, all monkeys) to help him rescue his mother. Oh, and his father, too, I suppose. I’ll let you guess the ending to this one, but it can’t be a total mystery.

In the 4 paragraphs it took to describe this, about ten years passes… in the movie, I mean. It felt much, much longer when watching it. I found it interesting that Pai had a real fetish for stabbing people when they least expect it. It happened on no less than three occasions and they were all people close to him. Why wouldn’t folks figure this out? Plus another disappointing aspect was that there were, in fact, no ninjas — on roller skates or otherwise — and no mention of any “secret banana” which, as the blurb above stated, would make the eater of the banana ruler of the universe. I wish I had that banana…

All in all, a very painful movie to sit through. Props to Carter Wong for the effort, though… he acted the hell out of his role, in addition to choreographing all the fights. It was just badly shot & scripted (hopefully, it lost a lot in the translation.)

Pain rating: 4 Fingers of Death

Up tomorrow… Shaolin Deadly Kicks

Damn my lazy hide for not writing to this blog more. Maybe I felt like I didn’t have anything to say. But that’s going to change. I’ve decided on a little project to get into the habit of writing in this every day: movie reviews.

Now I know there are a thousand sites out there for movie reviews. But this will be a bit different. Last week, I was in my local Fry’s Electronics and I saw the Martial Arts 50 Movie Mega-Pack, one of several such genre collections offered by Treeline Films. How can I resist such an incredible amassing of what promises to be really cheap & cheesy kung-fu flicks. So I snapped it up.

I’ve decided to watch one of these movies every day (thanks to my trusty, crusty, DVD-playin’ IBM laptop). I will then, of course, put up a review here. What benefit will this bring, you may ask? Well… possibly none. Although it will get me writing every day (as every good blogger should), and it just may show that you really get what you pay for. I paid $20 for these 50 films. You do the math.

In advance, I will say that of all the martial arts films I’ve ever seen, there are only 2 on the list of 50 that I’ve actually seen before, but I’ll still talk about them. I’ll post the first review tomorrow night, after viewing the film Kung Fu Arts. All I know in advance is that it apparently involves roller-skating ninjas and a super-powered mokey chasing a sacred cosmic banana…

Man, this is gonna go down hard.