The Angry Guest

THE ANGRY GUEST (1972) is a direct sequel to DUEL OF FISTS (1971) which had two long-separated brothers, Ti Lung and David Chiang, reuniting in Bangkok and running afoul of the local mob after Ti Lung, a boxer, beats the local favorite in the ring. In this film, the action shifts from Bangkok to Hong Kong to Japan and then back to HK as the brothers contend with a Japanese mob led by crime boss Yamaguchi, who is played by the film's director, Chang Cheh, in a rare screen appearance.

There are some good fight scenes enlivened by the presence of Yasuaki Kurata, a Japanese actor and martial artist who subsequently made a long career out of playing Japanese opponents in Hong Kong kung fu films. (He fights Gordon Liu in 1979's SHAOLIN CHALLENGES NINJA and Jet Li in 1994's FIST OF LEGEND.) The final fight scene here takes place in a construction site in HK as Katsu (Kurata) defeats all of Ti Lung's students and then fights David and Ti together. In addition, muscleman Yang Sze (aka Bolo Yeung) appears as a Japanese thug who attacks Ti's kung fu school at one point.

Despite location shooting in Japan, this film is, thankfully, not as much of a travelogue as the Bangkok-filmed DUEL OF FISTS, nor are the contemporary fashions quite as ridiculous as the ones worn by David Chiang in the earlier film. There's a jazz-inflected original score that's quite a relief from the canned music/ripped-off soundtracks heard in so many 1970s kung fu films.