Tag: Hong Kong

Bruce and Shaolin Kung-Fu A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Bruce and Shaolin Kung-Fu (1977) – A Movie A Day 2021 #57

My $1 Bruce and Shaolin Kung-Fu DVD

I’m back with another $1 kung fu DVD, and back with another Bruceploitation movie. If you’re wondering what Bruceploitation is, I wrote a little bit about it in my journal entry for Bruce vs. Bill, so go check that out. If you did read that entry, then you’ll already be little familiar with the star of today’s movie of the day, Bruce Le. Trying to track down the exact date of release for today’s movie, Bruce and Shaolin Kung-Fu, is a little tricky, because I’ve seen multiple dates listed across various sites, and there are at least two movies starring Bruce Le with this exact same title in various markets. It’s another instance of people naming kung fu movies whatever they wanted to in order to try to grab people’s attention.

If I’m looking at the correct information on the Hong King Movie Database, then the Google translation for the original Chinese title is Dharma Iron Finger Skill, but various English titles include Ching Wu & Shaolin Kung Fu, Fist of Fury Part 2, and the title on the DVD I have, Bruce and Shaolin Kung Fu. To complicate matters, there’s another movie that is sometimes billed as a sequel to this with multiple similar titles, but some places have its year listed as being released prior to this movie. That’s not completely uncommon. The U.S. releases of Jackie Chan’s Operation Condor I and II were titled backwards from the original release order of the Armour of God movies which they were originally titled. But anyway, back to today’s movie.

Bruce and Shaolin Kung Fu stars Bruce Le as Lee Ching Lung. So once again, the title is referencing the actor and not any character in the movie. Lee is a powerful martial artist and one of his master’s top students. One day, the Japanese military invades China and starts shutting down all of the martial arts schools and killing anyone who resists. Lee’s brother is killed, so Lee attempts to get revenge. Lee fights one of the Japanese military leaders and succeeds in defeating him, and the humiliation of defeat combined with his father’s disappointment causes the Japanese fighter to commit ritual suicide. The man’s father, the general of the Japanese troops, gathers a group of the best Japanese fighters to hunt and defeat Lee, so Lee escapes to South Korea where he begins to train with a friend of his master’s. Lee is quickly found though, and that leads to an increasingly dangerous series of battles. 

The story here is very similar to Young Hero which I wrote about yesterday, but I enjoyed today’s movie a little more. Part of that is because I like the main character Lee a whole lot more than I liked the main character of Young Hero. Also, the hero’s female counterpart in Bruce and Shaolin Kung Fu doesn’t meet as much of a downer ending as the female lead did in yesterday’s movie. At least, I don’t think she did. The ending of Bruce and Shaolin Kung Fu is bizarrely depressing, and it makes me think that the fates of certain characters might not be very good despite seeing them alive in their final on-screen moments.

The fights in Bruce and Shaolin Kung Fu are fun mostly from a character perspective. As I’m writing this I can’t recall any specific scenes with neat set pieces of really amazing moves, but overall I enjoyed all the action. Bruce Le seemed to blatantly display lot more of Bruce Lee’s mannerisms in this movie than he did in Bruce vs. Bill, so that was fun. Also, one of the bad guys is Bolo Yeung, and I love that guy. Bolo Yeung is a huge body-builder looking guy, and he tends to play despicable bad guys. If you’ve seen Bloodsport, he’s the main bad guy, Chong Li. He doesn’t have a ton of screen time in Bruce and Shaolin Kung Fu, but the time he has is memorable. 

Other than that, this is a pretty average kung fu movie. Fun for a late-watch, but nothing spectacular. It does make me want to check out more Bruce Le movies though. 

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Young Hero (1981) A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Young Hero (1981) – A Movie A Day 2021 #55

Young Hero poster

After a brief break, I have rejoined my kung fu marathon. Today’s movie is another of the $1 DVDs I bought over the weekend, and it is titled Young Hero. The movie was distributed by the same company that put out the previous two kung fu movies I’ve written about so I don’t think there’s really a need to discuss the gloriously bad quality of the dubbed VHS they used as their source material. Nor do I really need to say anything about the DVD’s front cover containing images from some movie other than what is actually on the disc. With all of that left unsaid I can get right to the movie itself, and the movie itself is fun for what it is. 

In Young Hero, a group of Japanese fighters are beating up all the local kung fu masters and wrecking their schools. The Japanese fighters think Chinese kung fu is weak, and in the first part of the movie, none of the Chinese fighters have been able to prove otherwise. Master Fok and his family/students take a beating like everyone else, but they’re also determined to train harder so they can get revenge. Master Fok has multiple sons, most of whom are diligent in their training. One of his sons, the “young hero” of the movie, is a troublemaker. He tends to make poor decisions that reflect badly on himself and his family, and he’s really kind of a jerk. Master Fok forbids the troublemaking son from continuing his kung fu practices since he always gets into fights with random people, but as the trouble between Fok and the Japanese fighters worsens, the young hero must grow up and stand up for his family (and really, for Chinese kung fu as a whole). 

Young Hero DVD, not featuring the young hero on the cover.

As with most of these movies, the plot is an excuse to string together multiple fight scenes. It felt like there was an awful lot of fighting in this movie with very little downtime in-between. I’m not complaining though. The fights were mostly quite fun. There were some neat sequences especially towards the end of the movie that I enjoyed a lot. There’s a training sequence with the young hero and a young woman who has been adopted into the Fok family that takes place on a raft, and that’s pretty cool. There were also a good amount of two-on-one fights towards the end of the movie that were some of the best. A lot of the fights early tended to be of groups of people fighting all over that place, and they were fine, but the action was more unique and structured when it was down to just a few people. 

If I have a problem with Young Hero, it’s the young hero himself. He’s a real butt-hole for the first two-thirds of the movie, and even when he started to do the right thing, I still didn’t like him very much. My favorite character was the young woman, but even though it felt like she was being built up for an important role, in the end she was just used for motivation for the young hero and Master Fok. I thought her ending was undeserved, and it bummed me out.

Other than that though, if just for the near-constant action, I enjoyed Young Hero fine. Out of the kung fu movies I’ve watched this week, this one is my least favorite, but I’m sure I’ll watch again sometime.

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Bruce vs. Bill A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Bruce vs. Bill (1981) – A Movie A Day 2021 #53

The DVD I have featuring cover art of a scene not in the movie.

Continuing my multi-day kung fu movie marathon, today’s movie is Bruce vs. Bill. This is another of the movies I found for $1 at my local used DVD store, and like Kung Fu of 8 Drunkards, it’s a cheaply produced, dubbed, full frame, bad VHS rip onto a bare-bones DVD. This version of Bruce vs. Bill even has a fair amount of distortion on the top of the screen for about three-quarters of the movie from the VHS that was used as the source material. Just the way I like it. The cover art on the front of the DVD box and screen grab on the back aren’t even from Bruce vs. Bill, and I’m pretty sure the people pictured aren’t in the film either. But, there’s a guy wearing a yellow and black tracksuit like the one Bruce Lee wore in Game of Death on the front cover, and that’s 100% why they used the image. Though it’s late in the cycle, Bruce vs. Bill is still considered a Bruceploitation movie.

 If you’re unfamiliar with Bruceploitation, the word itself is a portmanteau of “Bruce” (as in Bruce Lee) and “exploitation.” It’s a sub-genre of martial arts movies that emerged in East and Southeast Asia after the death of Bruce Lee in 1973. Bruce Lee was (and still is) an icon, and his impact on the worlds of martial arts, film, and martial arts films cannot be understated. After his tragic death, many filmmakers began to capitalize on Bruce Lee’s worldwide popularity by making movies using actors who looked more or less like Bruce Lee (Lee-alikes), many of whom adopted some variation of Bruce Lee in part or in whole as their stage name. There are a wide variety of Bruceploitation movies out there, some blatant rip-offs of Lee’s movies, some adapting parts of his life whether real or completely fictional, and even movies that have nothing to do with Bruce Lee other than having a guy that looks vaguely like him in one of the starring roles. Bruce vs Bill falls into that last category. 

Bruce vs. Bill stars Bruce Le (not his real name, of course) as Chang, and Bill Louie (which I believe might be his real name) as Wang Chiao. Wang Chiao is a dishwasher at a restaurant, and he is highly skilled in martial arts. One night he stumbles across a man getting attacked by multiple thugs, so, being a good guy, he intervenes. The old man gets killed, but before he breathes his last breathe, the old man hands Wang Chiao a set of keys and asks him to deliver them to a man named Sung Kung. See, the keys open a safe containing one million dollars raised to help the citizens of the country, and the old man was going to pass the keys off to Sung Kung (who I think is in the government) the very next morning. Being a good guy (again), Wang Chiao promises to honor the dying man’s final request, but there are dangerous men who want the money for themselves. That makes Wang Chiao a target.

During one of many scenes featuring Wang Chiao fighting off groups of thugs trying to get the keys, Chang mistakes Wang Chiao for the aggressor. Just like in pretty much every superhero crossover story ever, misunderstanding leads to our two heroes battling over and over until they finally realize they’re actually on the same side. Sort of. Wang Chiao wants to do the right thing and get the money to the people it belongs to, but Chang doesn’t want any part of it. It’s too late though. Now Chang is also a target, and he and Wang Chiao must work together if they want to survive. 

Bruce vs Bill poster

I think it’s funny that the movie is titled Bruce vs. Bill even though neither actor is named Bruce or Bill in the movie itself, not even in the English translation. I Google translated the original Chinese title, and it came out as Fight for Hegemony which makes a lot more sense. But Bruceploitation is all about getting people to pay up to see the movie, and Bruce vs. Bill with a Bruce-Lee-alike on the cover probably worked well on English-speaking audiences. I mean, it worked on me. For $1 and about an hour and a half it worked. 

I thought the movie was pretty good. The two leads are charismatic, and the fight scenes are a lot of fun. The main villain is an ambiguous “foreigner” (as they refer to him in the movie), and he has a wonderfully terrible fake moustache. Like, it’s real bad. I love it. 

All the double and triple-crossing throughout the movie was fun as well. With one million dollars up for grabs to whomever can get their hands on the keys, it seems like almost every character could potentially double-cross anyone at any moment. Many of them do, but some of them don’t. I enjoyed trying to guess who would and wouldn’t turn, and who would live long enough to enjoy the fruits of all their punching, kicking, and some stabbing. 

I also quite enjoyed the villain’s henchman using small axes as their weapons at times. I’m sure the axes were inspired by the real like Axe Gang from Shanghai, but here it reminded me more of movies like the great Kung Fu Hustle. Bruce vs. Bill wasn’t the first movie to have an axe gang in it, and it certainly wasn’t the last, but I always enjoy a good fight scene with an axe gang versus one or two weaponless fighters. 

Overall I give the title of the movie and the artwork for the DVD I bought a good fist shake with a head shake that says “you got me this time,” and for the movie I give it a solid recommendation for fans of cheap and generic kung fu movies. Bruce vs. Bill isn’t a great movie and it breaks no new ground, but I enjoyed it for the whole hour and a half I watched. Oh yeah, the Bruce Lee guy, Chang, also has a pet bird that will occasionally narrate what’s happening with a word or two. So if you were on the fence about checking out the movie, that surely pushed you one way or the other.

I couldn’t find a trailer, but this is the full movie streaming (apparently) legally on YouTube. I’m pretty sure this is the exact same version of the movie I just watched. It even has the same distortion at the top of the screen.

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Kung Fu of 8 Drunkards A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Kung Fu of 8 Drunkards (1980) – A Movie A Day 2021 #52

A copy of the DVD I now own for $1.

After being forced to stay indoors for the better part of a week because of terrible weather, I got out over the weekend and visited one of my favorite places: a used DVD store. I browsed for a while as usual, but I ended up mostly just raiding the $1 table. Apparently someone off-loaded a bunch of cheap kung fu DVDs recently, and some of them ended up on the dollar table. So, of course, I grabbed them, and the first one I chose to watch is titled Kung Fu of 8 Drunkards. The title immediately brought to mind Jackie Chan’s Drunken Master from 1978, and even though Kung Fu of 8 Drunkards isn’t as polished as Jackie Chan’s film, I quite enjoyed it.

Kung Fu of 8 Drunkards follows a young man named Chang Fung who works with his cousin and uncle at a noodle shop. Chang Fung goes away for a month to learn drunken kung fu from a master, Wu Sing, but when Chang Fung returns home, he discovers that his teacher has many dangerous enemies. When Chang Fung uses his newly-learned skills in public, his style is recognized, and he becomes a target for the many people who want to kill Wu Sing. Chang Fung’s life and family are in danger, and he has to fight his way through a series of deadly encounters before he can find peace.

The movie isn’t necessarily a comedy, but it is a fairly silly and funny movie. I think the nature of drunken kung fu makes it nearly impossible to make a movie featuring it without being at least partially a comedy. Kung Fu of 8 Drunkards may not be especially noteworthy when compared to countless other kung fu movies that came out around the same time, but it’s a lot of fun. The story meanders from scene to scene with the plot lurching in different direction just to get to the next action sequence or comedy bit, but that’s one of the reasons I love these kinds of movies. The characters and fights are fun, and that’s all I really need.

I started watching lots of cheap kung fu movies in my teens, and I definitely have a certain aesthetic I enjoy which is based on some of those movies I saw during that time. This was back in the days of VHS, and tons of kung fu movies were available on poorly produced tapes. That’s what I love. Poorly dubbed, full frame, grainy pictures and all. If I can get the movie on VHS now, that’s even better, but the handful of movies I picked up the other day are clearly just dumped onto a DVD from a bad VHS copy. You can even see a few tracking problems when the movie is starting up. I love it.

Of course I’ll watch kung fu movies in full widescreen with nice picture clarity and subtitles, and I prefer that for a lot of the better kung fu movies out there, but for late-night movie to relax to, cheesy and poorly distributed kung fu movies are a go-to choice for me. I have four more movies I picked up, so don’t be surprised if you see them pop up in some future write-ups sooner rather than later.

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Centipede Horror A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Centipede Horror (1982) – A Movie A Day 2021 #42

Centipede Horror DVD

Today’s movie is one I discovered a while back while part of a movie group on Facebook based on a shared love of gross and trashy movies. One day someone posted an image of a DVD cover for a movie titled Centipede Horror, and the name combined with a crude drawing of centipedes crawling out of someone’s mouth and all over their face had me doing some Google and eBay searches until I found it. It was easy to track down, and since I bought it I’ve watched it a few times. Why? Because I enjoy gross and trashy movies. 

Centipede Horror is a Hong Kong horror movie from 1982 featuring lots and lots of centipedes. The movie starts with close-ups of centipedes skittering around while a voice-over tells us how gross and dangerous they are. The danger is, of course, overblown, but it’s a good and creepy way to start the film. The story follows a man named Kai-Lum Pak as he tries to track down the cause and reasons behind his sister’s death. His sister died after coming down with a mysterious illness after a trip to the ambiguously referred-to location of “Southeast Asia,” and after she died centipedes started crawling out of her body. The focus of the movie is on the mystery behind her death, so I won’t spoil the story any more than that if you by some chance want to watch Centipede Horror, but I will say magic is involved. Lots of great and gross magic. 

Centipede Horror uses loads of live centipedes in a few particularly skin-crawling scenes, so if you’re squeamish about that sort of thing, you’ll maybe want to skip this movie. I have to commend the actors for their dedication. They allow themselves to be covered with live centipedes, and at least one actor has to put some in her mouth (which is the scene the crude DVD cover drawing is based on). There’s also a scene where a shaman performs a kind of exorcism on a young woman which forces her to vomit up blood and live scorpions. The scorpions are revealed in a cutaway, so they weren’t actually in her mouth thankfully. But yeah, I’m sure by now you’re getting the idea about what the main draw of the movie is. Bug stuff. Or, I guess, arthropod stuff, but that doesn’t sound as fun. 

Beyond the bugs, another big draw is the magic. Kai’s investigation meanders a bit, but many different magical guys get involved to try to harm or protect Kai and those around him. At certain points this leads to dueling shamans who are trying to out-magic each other from afar. It’s kind of silly, and it’s great. 

There is a lot of downtime while we’re following Kai, so the movie does drag in places. The backstory is interesting enough and involves a grudge that goes back generations, but when there aren’t any bugs or magic on the screen, I just kind of want to get to the next scene. The final third of the movie is paced well though, so overall it’s well put-together.

I think I’ll skip the recommendations on this one, because if you’ve read this far then you already know if you’re ever going to watch it or not (and fair warning, the trailer below shows a bunch of what I talked about above). Me? I’m sure I’ll watch it again at some point. 

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