Tiger’s Claw (1974)

A hot-headed young man (Cliff Lok) breaks a once-legendary fighter named Tiger (Sek Tin) out of jail in order to challenge the old man and prove that he is the best.

Following the early ’70s trends in Hong Kong action films set by Jimmy Wang Yu’s Chinese Boxer, Tiger’s Claw is a solid boxer flick featuring raw kung fu action and decent performances from lesser martial arts stars Cliff Lok and Sek Kin, who is widely recognized for playing the infamous ‘Mr. Han’ in Enter the Dragon.

Cliff Lok is Chen Yi-hu, an ambitious fighter with only one thing on his mind – being the best of the best. With his wicked kung fu skills and his girlfriend providing support, he’s well on his way to earning this status until he hears of an infamous fighter named Tiger (Sek Kin) who is still considered to be the region’s best despite having been imprisoned for twenty years. Chen sets out to break Tiger out of prison in order to challenge him to a duel. He succeeds, but Tiger has lost the taste for violence and the man who put him in prison may end his life before Chen gets the chance to fight. Chen becomes the elder man’s protector leading up to a fixed duel, a revelation about both men’s past, and an inevitable rematch.

Tiger’s Claw was remade into a wuxia pien entitled The Mysterious Heroes (1977) in which Sek Kin basically played the same role and Cliff Lok, who had lost his star status, was bumped to a supporting role by Carter Wong.

This film is painfully simple. More so than usual, the plot is just a pretext for endless fisticuffs and often features sloppy circumstances that lead into the violence. There’s little dialogue and a lot of fighting. While this is usually a good thing, the violence eventually becomes tedious as a result of average choreography that becomes repetitive with unremarkable action performances from the leads. Cliff Lok was basically molded after Jimmy Wang Yu, who was not a great fighter himself but did possess plenty of charisma. Lok lacks the charisma and shares the same, limited kung fu abilities. It doesn’t help that he is cast in an extremely one-dimensional role. In contrast, Sek Kin has quite of bit of character and internal conflict. He easily overshadows Lok. He also seems to sell his modest kung fu moves better. He’s still not a great screen fighter, but performs much better than in Enter the Dragon.

The fights are pretty relentless throughout the film, which starts out with a series of random brawls as Cliff defeats the top fighters. The highpoint in the action is midway through when Cliff takes on Sek Kin’s rival as played by Yeung Wai. This is where the era’s hard kung fu style really comes out. Cliff gets down and dirty with Yeung and a mob of thugs while dishing out painful knee blows to the head and making limited use of Chin Na style grappling. All in all, it’s much more realistic than the Chinese Opera and acrobatic styles that became popular towards the end of the decade. Unfortunately, it’s just not as consistently well executed as in superior boxer films such as King Boxer (1972) or Prodigal Boxer (1972). The two major duels between Lok and Sek are intense, but too long. This, plus the story’s late plot revelations makes for a somewhat unsatisfying finale that will test the viewer’s patience.

Tiger’s Claw has nothing of great value to offer, just rough-edged kung fu action that peeks half way through the film. It’s only recommended to ‘completists’ interested in the boxer era (1970-1975) of classic kung fu.