Ling Nan zhi hu (1973) User Reviews

Common and below average

[ckormos1 · 4/10 · 10 July 2019]

It opens with our hero (Yeung Wai as Canton Boy) saves the prostitute from forcible public nudity. He becomes the darling of all the hookers. Next our hero works in street food. The protection guys come by and he won't pay so they fight. He also adopts a male child without bothering about the legalities.

After just two short fights it is evident Yeung Wai is a martial arts beginner. He is always tense. There is never a moment of ease in between moves. He delivers blocks and punches with stiffness instead of smoothness. The stunt men also seem to keep as far away from him as possible. There is nothing special about any of the fights.

Story-wise this is the martial arts hero helps everyone who needs help and no good deed goes unpunished. You can easily imagine the whole movie so no need for me to go on.

My copy is a digital file that plays on a HDTV as a square video typical of the old VHS tape format. It is dubbed into English. The voiceover actors tended to exaggerate but I was able to tolerate it.

From your list of "martial arts movie of the golden age from 1967 to 1984" you will find this one under "very common", and "just below average". I cannot recommend it to fans of the genre. I watched it once and will never watch it again.

Extremely low budget martial arts mayhem

[Leofwine_draca · 6/10 · 25 August 2016]

A very, very typical human drama which, being made in Hong Kong, relies on kung fu for the action sequences. Although the "on the street" look to the movie - bear in mind that there are no production values here, it just looks like someone took a camera into their backyard and started filming - is undeniably cheap, it also gives a certain hard-edged realism as opposed to all those period Shaw Brothers martial arts movies of the '70s. The one-and-only British release on the long-gone "Martial Arts Collection" label has one of the most nonsensical - not to mention untrue - blurbs I've read, as well as a picture of some bloke who never even appears in the film. Despite the dodgy print and lack of budget, I did find this to be mildly entertaining.

The plot concerns "Canton Boy" (we never learn his real name), a lower-class noodle seller who opens the film by beating a bunch of rapist bad-guys who threaten to assault a prostitute. Later, Canton Boy falls in love with one such prostitute and protects her from local goons running a protection racket by kicking all of their asses. And so the film progresses, with the thugs retaliating, Canton Boy beating them up yet again, until a kung fu master is brought in and the whole thing becomes serious when a man is killed. Then there's the all-action crowd-pleasing finale which throws in an element of tragedy with a downbeat conclusion. There's even an unexpected brief supernatural twist in the tale!

Okay, so there's not a lot going for it. The dubbing is appalling as usual, with a mixture of British regional accents turning the whole thing into an unintentional comedy. There's an annoyingly cute kid who blubbers his way through the film in a desperate attempt to win the viewer's sympathy. The acting from an unknown cast is pretty bad, the action sequences poorly staged with lots of obvious "thrown" kicks and punches. But, hey, at least it attempts to mix characterisation in with the action. You've gotta love Cheung Lung (hilariously nicknamed "Bruce" on the box, for no other reason than to mark him as a Bruce Lee wannabe) as the every man hero who kicks and bashes his way through dozens of men whilst continuing to sell those darn noodles! The dumb bad guys decide to retaliate in one amusing scene by putting dead cockroaches into Lung's noodles in an attempt to discredit him, but they fail and again find themselves on the receiving end of the sole of Lung's shoe in one messy action sequence which cries out for some choreography. The violence and bloodshed is kept to a minimum, apart from the finale, and this film's idea of special effects are to pause the film when Lung uses a "killer" move on a bad guy, and to play around with various other simple and laughable camera tricks like quick cutting between two people in emotional moments.

However, my award for "most enjoyable plot element" goes to the guy playing the evil kung fu master. He's a big bald bloke who can wrap metal bars around his head for little or no reason and walks around menacingly. In a sheer moment of over-the-top bliss, the master leans forward on a metal pole going from his neck to the ground whilst a stone block is rested on the back of his neck and a man smashes it in half with a sledge hammer! I don't know why this happened, but it sure was funny.