REVIEW: Thundering Mantis, The (1980)

Leung is one of the true screen legends of kung fu cinema with many excellent performances in some of the best kung fu movies ever made including LEGEND OF A FIGHTER and WARRIORS TWO. THE THUNDERING MANTIS provides one of his most memorable roles, that of a mentally unstable fighter pushed to ultra-violent extremes by his enemies. In a way, it could be likened to Jackie Chan’s transformation in DRUNKEN MASTER II from an overconfident, drunken hero to an unstoppable fighting machine. In both films, the hero becomes so worked up that he becomes immune to pain and fatigue. They become forces of nature, pushing their bodies beyond human limits. The big difference is in the much darker tone that director Teddy Yip’s film takes at the very end. Leung’s character snaps, not from inebriation or a desire to overcome his enemies but from despair. Up till this point, he’s been an eccentric but generally amiable character. But from here on he gives into his hatred and appears possessed by an evil demon and acts accordingly.

The key player in the film and its dramatic success is Wong Yat-lung as the “Kid.” The character apparently doesn’t have a real name, at least not in the original English dub. Child roles in kung fu movies are rare and child fighter roles even more so. Wong, who appears to have had a background in Chinese opera, steps up with an excellent performance every bit as charismatic as Leung. Both characters train in Mantis Fist under Chin and at one point Wong steals the show with a fun Drunken Mantis routine. It’s remarkable given that he doesn’t look any older than 12 and had only been in a couple of movies before this, one of them being the classic SNUFF BOTTLE CONNECTION. Wong and Leung make a great onscreen team in one of the few examples in the movie of a semi-original genre element.

Robert Tai’s choreography, coupled with Leung’s performance is above average in spite of a few drawbacks. Eddy Ko is not a strong screen fighter and never was. He was always better in swordplay roles and only gets by here with a passable, yet forgettable display of what appears to be forms based on Eagle Claw kung fu. None of his gang members have any distinguishing skills or personalities which leaves the entire movie resting on the heroic leads. None of the fights particularly stand out apart from the finale, nor is Leung’s training all that interesting or involving.

Looking more closely, Tai’s use of acrobatic doubles, particularly during the end fight, is too easy to spot. Another drawback in the fight work is the occasional dependence on trick editing to sell moves that would not logically follow one another unless you were a fighting video game character. In the best example, Tai repeatedly cuts between Ko leaping with a claw attack in one shot and Leung reacting to each blow in another. It’s the sort of cheap editing gimmick that Taiwanese kung fu and wuxia movies used a decade earlier because their leads lacked the real abilities of someone like Leung Ka-yan. This sort of nonsense works in a film like SHAOLIN VS. LAMA where everything is cranked to 11 but not so much in a movie modeled after a Jackie Chan feature.

Production values are decent and include lots of appropriate locations, sets and extras to recreate a generic, semi-rural village in mainland China in what would probably be the Republican era. Like many independent kung fu movies, the soundtrack on the English dub is mostly made up of unlicensed selections from other movies including Italian Westerns and the James Bond series.

THE THUNDERING MANTIS is available on DVD from budget distributor Xenon Entertainment. This unlicensed version is sourced from a scratchy, full screen VHS tape.