Hardly a classic kung-fu movie; the film is bogged down with dialogue and plays out as more of a family drama than the Shaw Brothers fight flick that it supposedly is. Still, an excellent cast and some good production values count for a lot and director Liu Chia-Liang can always be relied on to deliver some strongly-choreographed scenes of action and battle. For the first half of the movie, we are mostly involved in the antics of top fighter Hung Hsi Kuan, as he marries the delectable Li-Li Li and has a kid in the process. A lot of the screen time is taken up with training in the tiger and crane styles and some of it involves a cool wooden dummy which shoots ball bearings from its head!
The villain of the piece is the late, lamented Lo Lieh, playing a bizarre monk-type character who appears to be a eunuch (!) and who can only be injured between 1pm and 3pm (don't ask me, I didn't write this). Lieh has some great fight sequences as repeated assassination attempts are made and generally fail – he's definitely one of the toughest characters I've seen in a martial arts flick and the fights involving Chen Kuan-Tai, Lieh, and Wong Yue are dynamic and excellently shot. Unfortunately, in the place of fighting, we get loads and loads of unamusing humour at the start of the film (generally involving the buffoonish John Cheung, from SNAKE IN THE MONKEY'S SHADOW) and a plot that crawls along at a snail's pace before finally delivering the goods at the end with a splendidly violent battle to the finish.
This is worth watching for the cast alone. Chen Kuan-Tai and Wong Yue are fine as the fighter and his son and both deliver some classic kung fu moves. Lieh is a splendid villain as always and Li-Li Li is lovely as the wife. Gordon Liu pops by for a cameo, Lam Ching-Ying has a walk-on before he was famous and Cheng Hong-Yip is another villainous creep. Not a classic genre effort, but there's some good fighting at the end, if you can sit through all the melodrama beforehand.
The villain of the piece is the late, lamented Lo Lieh, playing a bizarre monk-type character who appears to be a eunuch (!) and who can only be injured between 1pm and 3pm (don't ask me, I didn't write this). Lieh has some great fight sequences as repeated assassination attempts are made and generally fail – he's definitely one of the toughest characters I've seen in a martial arts flick and the fights involving Chen Kuan-Tai, Lieh, and Wong Yue are dynamic and excellently shot. Unfortunately, in the place of fighting, we get loads and loads of unamusing humour at the start of the film (generally involving the buffoonish John Cheung, from SNAKE IN THE MONKEY'S SHADOW) and a plot that crawls along at a snail's pace before finally delivering the goods at the end with a splendidly violent battle to the finish.
This is worth watching for the cast alone. Chen Kuan-Tai and Wong Yue are fine as the fighter and his son and both deliver some classic kung fu moves. Lieh is a splendid villain as always and Li-Li Li is lovely as the wife. Gordon Liu pops by for a cameo, Lam Ching-Ying has a walk-on before he was famous and Cheng Hong-Yip is another villainous creep. Not a classic genre effort, but there's some good fighting at the end, if you can sit through all the melodrama beforehand.