The Guy with the Secret Kung Fu

THE GUY WITH SECRET KUNG FU (1981) stars Meng Fei and Li Chung Chien as two anti-Qing rebels and kung fu fighters who frequently rescue damsels in distress, including one memorable boat fight at the very beginning of the film. Thugs try to board a boat carrying a pretty lady, raising a commotion which attracts the attention of the two heroes, fishing nearby, who leap onto the lady's boat and fight off all the thugs. The heroes are later captured but are then recruited to go after the Dragon Gang. This slim plot gives them lots of excuses to fight. There are some good villains, including Wang Hsieh as a corrupt official and Sally Chen Sa Li as the icily beautiful female head of the Dragon gang. A taoist monk uses his spells to turn a massive fighter (Cheng Fu Heng) into an unstoppable zombie warrior. Finally, the coffin maker's daughter (Nancy Yen) helps out the two heroes by teaching them Dragon Fist and coming up with the herbal mixture that will free the giant guy from his zombie trance. It all culminates in a series of major battles with the two chief villains.

The real surprise here is Li Chung Chien as Meng Fei's partner. He'd earlier appeared with Meng in THE INVINCIBLE KUNG FU TRIO, a lesser kung fu film (also reviewed on this site) from the same director, Joe Law. Li is a good-looking young actor who more than holds his own while fighting alongside Meng and one wonders why he didn't do more films like this.

The role of the coffin maker's daughter would have been a natural for a fighting female star like Angela Mao or Lung Chun Erh or any number of fighting femmes working in Taiwan at the time. Instead, she is played by a non-fighting star, Nancy Yen, who cowers and flees when confronted by the female head of the Dragon Gang. So the opportunity for a good female fighting sequence was squandered.

Still, it's not a bad kung fu film at all, with good location work and strong performances by the three fighting stars, Meng Fei, Li Chung Chien and Wang Hsieh, whose "toad style" is matched by the two heroes' "dragon fist" in the exciting final battle.

The more I watch these 70's martial arts movies the harder work I seem to find them. This one is pretty similar to many others in the genre and it seems pretty certain that unless you have a predilection for extended kung fu fight scenes you might struggle with this one. In fairness, this entry does at the very least try to be a little different in that our two heroes get to battle a wizard and his zombies. That at least made it a bit more distinctive.

While this one is obviously and action movie, it has one foot firmly in the comedy genre too. As such it has a light approach and many of the fights are clearly played for laughs, such as when the brothers defeat a giant zombie by pummelling him into the earth using an enormous pair of hammers. Like in a lot of these movies, the fight scenes often overstay their welcome somewhat but I have to say that the final encounter with the wizard was pretty funny and well-orchestrated, including some shots of a toad edited into the action for good measure. Another trait of these old south-east Asian movies was that its soundtrack sounded like it must've been stolen from a more famous western film. I have no idea which film that was but it sounded very familiar to me so I'm pretty such it's from something I have seen before! All–in-all, I didn't think this was a very good movie but it at least had some memorable moments.

Before reading this review, it is important to note that I am reviewing the English language dubbed version of this movie. The dubbing was very poor (as was usually the case in martial arts films of the 70s and 80s) and the soundtrack was god-awful. Additionally, the print was very scratchy and the DVD was a "cheapie" DVD sold for a buck at Walmart. So try to understand that there were many, many knocks against the film that might not be present in the original film. Thanks to thoughtless distributors, this DVD is a mess.

The worst aspect of the film must be the soundtrack. It was totally inappropriate. Sure, there were the usual way over the top sound effects for fight sequences and I am NOT talking about this--after all, this is true of the genre. Instead I am talking about the music which I assumed someone LATER pasted on the film when they dubbed it. I just can't imagine the film makers in Hong Kong using a 70s electronic sci-fi soundtrack in the original film!!! For a film set in the Chin Dynasty (the first Chinese dynasty--about 250BC), the music was just stupid.

As far as the voices, they are the typical horrid ones found in most horribly dubbed martial arts films. I recognized several of the voices from other films and none of them were particularly good or sounded the least bit like a Chinese person should sound.

The martial arts sequences were very high speed but really looked nothing like real fighting. It was more like extremely choreographed dancing--with no spontaneity and looking pretty fake.

Now for the plot. Well, it was pretty lame and involved magicians and demons and the like. My favorite silly part was a supposed demon that was actually a tall fat guy who did no martial arts. He just stood there and the actors pretended to kick and hit him again and again to no effect. These sequences bore less similarity to martial arts and looked more like Steve McQueen and his teenage friends fighting The Blob! The overall effect is silly and poor. Sadly, as bad as this film was, I have seen quite a few that are worse, and this film isn't quite silly enough to be fun to laugh at with friends. I would really like to see what this film ORIGINALLY looked like--it had to be a lot better!

Terrible acting, bad sound effects, plot pits (they have far passed the level of simple plot holes), bad dubbing (they don't even dub everything), obviously out-of-place scenery, repeated clips to increase length, punches that obviously don't hit. Man, this movie has got it all.

From the moment bamboo connected with brick to make a metal clang, I knew this movie was going to be brilliant. It even has a borderline-zombie character.

The film will randomly stop at places and hold frames, and skip around without warning. If you are looking to have a good movie to watch and laugh at with friends, this is the motherload. Sit back, relax, and enjoy.