This movie deals with the old Chinese versus Japanese issue and I have no idea how I’m going to write something original about it. The movie does contain a lot of fighting and there are a few bloody scenes if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

Incidentally, the movie came out in 1972, which is real close to the release of Bruce Lee’s FIST OF FURY. Of course, they deal with the same timeless issue.

The basic story revolves around a traveling Japanese fighter, Chan Cheng and two of his accomplices. They travel through China and seek out all good martial artists and challenge them to the death. Their first target in the movie is a Chinese master who reluctantly agrees to fight. While he may be a master himself, the Japanese fighter is better and he beats the Chinese fighter.

During his last days he asks Chi Ling, his daughter, to seek out her uncle and stay with him and then he dies. The girl does get to her uncle but soon afterwards he too is challenged, but escapes with his life. From here on we see the uncle and some students training to get good enough to beat the challengers.

Midway through the film I had already lost interest/ I’ve seen this all before. The fight choreography wasn’t as good as later films and at times looked very artificial. They also implemented a bit of wiring in most of the jumps. But it is an old school kung fu flick and I can’t take that away from it.

Later in the movie Chi Ling finds the fighter that her father threw out of the kung fu school years ago and he agrees to help take revenge for his master’s death. Now that Chi Siu has joined forces he combines techniques with Chen Wa and devises a martial art form that can beat the Japanese. They also practice a secret technique for use against Chan Cheng’s Judo throws. This ingenious technique is basically falling on your feet when he throws you… really.

At the end everyone walks into a Japanese dojo and you see an all-out fight, which ends with Chi Siu and Chen Wa taking on the Japanese fighter.

The scenery looked good most of the time, especially in the letterbox format provided by Crash Cinema. Most of the fights take place inside a courtyard or so, but the countryside scenes look quite good too. And the director shot lots of scenes from a distance, which turned out well in my opinion. The overall image did at times seem a bit too “clean,” but maybe that’s just me. The steel railings and so forth in some scenes did look a bit out of place too. And there was not as much editing as I’m use too and it let the fights move on more naturally. I have no idea what budget they had, but the production values and acting ability are above average.

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