Real Kung Fu of Shaolin (1986)

Yes, it’s Real Kung Fu of Shaolin. This is the only film where you’ll find the real deal. That nonsense about “Eight Diagram Pole Fighting” or “Wing Chun” that appears in those Lau Kar-leung movies is a sham. Jet Li’s Shaolin Temple? It was shot in Manila at a cheese factory. Thanks to extensive research at local cinemas, days of casting friends and relatives, and painstaking dramatic recreations shot over the course of hours, we can finally see REAL Shaolin kung fu the way it was meant to be seen… with the crystal clarity of thick fog… at night.

Only in Real Kung of Shaolin will you find examples of genuine Shaolin techniques once thought lost. Witness the destructive power of the “Bionic Arm.” (Okay, they only talk about the Bionic Arm, but I’m sure it’s very destructive). Savor the delights of “Imagine My Two Fingers Are a Big Sword.” Watch in awe of the 30-Second Paralysis Touch, performed without using a sword! For the greatest thrill of all, this movie offers the “Ranged Telepathy” technique, allowing master and student to communicate over long distances, long before the advent of satellite-powered tin cups and string! My personal favorite is “Spits on Vagrant” to make pesky monks pounding on massive clappers go away. There is the super deadly “Head Tap,” which the hero uses repeatedly to great effect to finish off his own dying mother. Maybe that was an accident. I don’t know, but it was real. Finally, the greatest Shaolin kung fu technique of all is unleashed in the movie’s breathtaking finale, “Cutting off Circulation to the Brain with a Scrap of Cloth.”

If you haven’t guessed by now, what I’m getting at is that Real Kung Fu of Shaolin is a very bad F-grade kung fu movie that has pretty much nothing to do with Shaolin kung fu apart from containing a few guys who look sort of like monks. The kung fu action is third-rate and amateurish. The lead is some generic guy with minimal skill and no character. The villains are even less skilled parodies of themselves and the production values are equal to a grade school play. The only minuscule pluses to this bomb is that they shoot around a few interesting historical buildings and there is an attractive leading lady who outperforms all the men with her flowery and powerless acrobatic attacks.

For the sake of film identification, the plot is as follows. A mother takes her son to Shaolin after her husband is killed by a local crook. Fifteen years later he fights his way out to reunite with her. After their neighbor is killed by the bad guys, they move in with a relative who runs a restaurant. Hero meets first cousin and falls inn love (she is a hotty). Bad guys force the restaurant owner out of his business. Hero dresses up as an old man for no reason to win a kung fu contest sponsored by the bad guys. Bad guys retaliate by attacking his mother and first cousin. Hero and first cousin fight the bad guys here, there and everywhere. The end.

This is one of those movies that really shouldn’t be in any kind of circulation years after its release. It shouldn’t even have been released at all. I’ll admit to getting a few laughs out of it as a result of the excessively bad English dialogue and the overall stupidity of the production. The not-so-beefy Korean martial arts master with the tuff of hair on his chest is a real winner. But it’s still time wasted. This would be one of those movies that might be fun to apply your own dub track to. It could be like karaoke kung fu night. Of course, you may have hard time besting the original dialogue, which contains gems like, “That’s the danger of playing with danger. Goodbye.”