"Dynamo" (1978) d/ Hwa I Hung

Yeah, set aside that Game of Death(1979) tracksuit in the one sheet  for a moment (besides, he wears two different JKD tracksuits in this one), as such Brucesploitative imagery might sour you on an otherwise entertaining Ho Tsung Tao(Bruce Li) movie; Ho being the most  recognizable of all the Lee imitators and the one with the largest body of work, having appeared in thirty-eight movies dating back to the Taiwanese production, Death Duel(1972). Despite being peppered with a supporting cast of the usual overmatched suspects (i.e. Ku Feng, Chiang Tao), this one gets by with passable fight choreography provided by Yuen Cheung-Yan, but eyes familiar to the more dynamic stunt work of Jacky Chan, Sammo Hung, or Liu Chia Liang might find these brawls as primitive as a pair of cave bearskin knickers. Still, the odd rapport between Ho and Ku is laugh-worthy enough, and let's not forget about those "Bruce Lee and I"(1976) inserts.

 
"The bottle ends before these Bruce Lee rip-offs ever will...", gurgles Teacher Chow (Ku Feng).
A movie producer named Miss Mary arrives in Hong Kong for Bruce Lee's funeral ("They wouldn't sink so low as to include actual Bruce Lee funeral footage here, would they?", he asked knowingly) and manages to catch cab driver Lee Ting Yee (Bruce Li) putting the hurt on some common street trash, offering him ten grand a month as salary to be the next big action star on the silver screen. She hires a heavy boozer named Chow (Ku Feng) as Lee's Sifu, and he informs his student, "Feel free to attack me any time, because I'll do the same." A strange request, to be sure, but Lee obliges, and suddenly attacks his elder at every juncture. Lee also often dreams of the real Bruce (or Danny Lee doing a pretty bad Bruce Lee imitation from another movie, if you've got eyes), and before long he finds himself in similar shoes to the late kung fu actor.

 
"Sometime when we touch, honesty too much."
The cabbie turned actor's sudden popularity draws the ire of rival movie producer named Mr. George who sends random gangs of toughs to every country that Lee is filming in, leading to a headache-inducing number of  attacks in what's supposed to be America (it isn't even), Hong Kong, Japan, and Korea, sating the viewer's need to see a bellhop fight, and even James Bond-style ski slope brawls, but Lee reigns triumphant over all comers, forcing George and his cronies to up the ante by kidnapping Lee's girlfriend and forcing him to throw a fight in an upcoming martial arts tournament if he ever wants to see her alive. Natually, Chow helps rescue her in the nick of time, and Lee wins his match in the end, but he gives up the glamorous movie lifestyle for good, having had enough of it, and returns to happier times as a cab driver.


"I'm not Bruce Lee either!", boasts Li Hsiu-Hsien, in a scene from a different movie altogether.
The plot of tonight's review mirrors lead actor Ho Tsung Tao's rise to fame, much like his later effort, The Chinese Stuntman/ Counter Attack (1981).You might notice Steve Sander, also an extra in Enter the Dragon(1973),  in one of the fight scenes, in his trademark funky stocking cap, can you dig it, baby? Director Hwa would go on to work with Billy Chong on Crystal Fist (1979), A Hard Way To Die(1979), and Kung Fu Zombie (1981). Perceptive readers might wonder how one of the better Bruce Li efforts only merits two wops on the scale, but I think that rating speaks volumes on how much worse most of his other stuff really was. Then again, compared to the next most prolific Lee imitators, Huang Kin Lung(Bruce Le) and Dragon Lee, whose collective unwatchable stink-bomb rate is prodigious as all fuck, average is pretty much as good as it gets in this subgenre.

 
"Sayyy, are those Swingster ski pants?"
 

"Crystal Fist" (1979) d/ Hwa I Hung

From the instant lead pugilist Billy Chong's title sequence form kicks into high gear over the opening credits, you should already know what a tempest whirlwind of martial action you're in for. Tonight's review, also known under it's alternate "Jade Claw" title, is Chong's starring debut; a Kung Fu Theater staple throughout the eighties on Philadelphia and New York stations like WPHL and WWOR, packed to the gills with quality kung foolery, beautiful training and form sequences, and breathtaking fight choreography from Simon Yuen's sons Brandy and Shun-Yi (who also doubled for Chong and elder Yuen during the trickier maneuvers), so much so, in fact, that it bears striking resemblance to Yuen's elder son's (Yuen Woo Ping, for those keeping track) groundbreaking genre work with Jackie Chan, leading to the inevitable 'Chan copycat' tag that would wrongfully follow the Indonesian action star for years to follow. Pay such damning comparisons no mind, especially in the case of tonight's focus: a classic in every sense of the word.

 
Farcical physical slapstick humor? Check.
Young Wen is orphaned when Master Yen(Chu Tiet Wo) erase his father(Hau Chau Sing) from the equation with his deadly Double Phoenix Eye fist and help from his two henchmen, Deaf and Blind(Brandy Yuen, Addy Sung). Now a young man (Billy Chong) looking to learn martial arts to exact revenge, he poses as an instructor to gain entry to a local kung fu school, and is taken on as a kitchen hand to the Cook (Simon Yuen), when he's not being used as a punching bag by Fatty and Skinny (Lung Ga Chun, David Woo),  the assistant teachers. Feeling sorry for Wen after much pranking (of the prosthetic smashed big toes variety and then some) transpires, the Cook begins to teach him the Eagle Claw technique through a painful-looking montage of training exercise and sheer physical endurance, and it isn't long before Wen is an adept enough fighter to protect his nation's honor against a cocky Russian ( Alexander Grand), but the tail end of his humbling lesson is witnessed by Yen, who instantly recognizes the Eagle Claw technique of his rival, and attacks Wen on his way home.

 
Impossibly difficult training sequences that border on the sadistic, really? Check.
Yen and his thugs viciously beat the young pupil, burning his hand in a fire and smashing the jade his father had given to him, but he manages to escape with his life. When the cook sees Wen's broken jade, he realizes who he really is, and vows to teach him the shadow eagle's claw style to defeat Yen's Phoenix Eye and avenge his father's death.Cue: dramatic forms sequence, and Wen's ready to dole it back out in droves.After he puts a jerk off nobleman who lets his German Shepard eat off a restaurant table in his place and beating the stuffing out of Fatty and Skinny, he squares off against Blind and Deaf and double handicaps both of them.When he finds Yen, he's laughing maniacally, having just set the young man's digs on fire. Man, this guy is hardcore. With the building burning to the ground behind them, the men majestically fight to the death, both with weapons and finally, barehanded, where Wen unleashes the secret shadow eagle's claw upon his foe, and in an acrobatic slo-mo, crushes Yen's throat, leading to a Shaw-esque final freeze.


Avenging a father's volent, untimely death at the hands of a power-mad warlord? Check.
Chong would follow up this hit for Eternal Films with another Hung film,  A Hard Way To Die(1979), and 1980's Super Power. The two would work together again the following year in the legendary Kung Fu Zombie(1981). The Ocean Shores clamshell VHS under the Crystal Fist title boasts of the only uncut print I've seen of the movie, with the profanity and fight violence excised from the television edit intact, though I can't say I've given any of the cheap bare bones dvds I've seen of it much attention. If any classic golden era kung fu movie needs a special edition widescreen restoration, this one gets my vote. As one my all-time favorites of the genre, I'd write about it all day if you let me. If you're into this sort of thing, you can't go wrong. Highly recommended. Four wops.


"Attack the heart, and then the lungs... Tired?? TOO BAD!!!"

"Kung Fu Zombie"(1981)d/Hwa I Hung

Kung fu horror-comedies were pretty popular at the box office back in the glorious eighties, with titles like Mr. Vampire and Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind making lucrative bank in their theatrical runs.Eternal Films took their own shot at it with Hwa I Hung's Wu long tian shi zhao ji gui(say that five times fast with a mouth fulla beans, I dare ya), known internationally as Kung Fu Zombie, a briskly-paced supernatural mix of Asian blood-spitting magic, vengeful ghosts, supercharged Buddhist vampires, plenty of the martial stuff in-between, and a goodly portion of "Holy FUCK!" throughout.Normally, I'm not real big on mixing my genres.When I want horror, I watch horror.If I'm feeling like martial arts, then I throw one in.The one obvious exception to that rule would be this movie.Played mostly for laughs of a moronic nature and anchored firmly with a micro-budget, Zombie ended up being something of a hit in Hong Kong, earning HK$ 2,237,587, due to the highly enjoyable straightjacket insanity transpiring within.

Pang(Billy Chong) just wants his due.Got that? His...due.
Lu Dai(Jeng Kei Ying) is a petty criminal with a debt of vengeance to repay to a wise-assed young martial expert named Pang(Billy Chong), who meddled in his affairs and got him locked up for it.Aiding Dai in his quarrel are a merry band of blundering jagoffs that includes a Taoist priest(Chan Lau) who dabbles in the black arts.Their scheme is nothing if not fucking ridiculous: Lure Pang to the cemetery for a duel, then use magic to reanimate some cadavers to push him into an open grave with a coffin lined with daggers in it.Of course, it fails miserably, with Dai ending up poked full of holes and dead in the box...and struck by lightning of the hand-scratched film variety.His ghost, hysterical at the sight of his own mutilated corpse, demands that the fumbling priest find him a new body forthwith.During the body-shopping process, Dai uses his ectoplasmic invisibility to frame the priest in a busy restaurant, using ghost hands to feel up a prostitute, who turns and slaps six shades of spinning shit outta the innocent priest, who tumbles into an incoming Chinese heiffer's fat booze-umms, which he bounces off of repeatedly for optimum comic effect before she falls on top of him the way fat people often do in kung fu comedies.The priest's body-switching ceremonies don't go so well either, when he tries to insert Dai's spirit into a body at the morgue, it turns out the guy just happened to be a martial expert(Kwan Yung Moon) sleeping in a coffin for the fuck of it, until his big vengeance duel with the same young hothead Dai is after.Pang's father(Chiang Tao)trains him to endure fights that last two hours or more to be ready for Lung, who Pang cockily sends back to the morgue with precious little fanfare.The priest tries to insert Dai into the fighter's body a second time, but only succeeds in turning the murderous bastard into a full-fledged vampire!

Lu Dai(Jeng Kei Ying), put your old body away.It stinks.
To further complicate matters, Pang's father eats heart-seizing death while getting loaded and playing with the reward money for Lung's body, providing Dai with his final opportunity for a new body(you only get three chances,apparently)and revenge against Pang.The priest only manages to make half-good on his promise, causing Dai, now in Pang's dad's body, to hunt all his brothers-in-crime, who safeguard against him in a number of ways: one gets arrested(ghosts can't cross the law), one becomes a piss-poor excuse for a monk(he's kicked out after frying up a puppy!), and the priest, well, he just wears a leaf hat(!), that makes him invisible to Dai, and ridiculous to everybody else.Meanwhile Lung is rewriting vampire folklore, attacking people during the day, and kicking the heads off of peasants and leaning over the geysering neck stumps like a kid at a high school water fountain, to hungrily gulp down the red stuff(!!).Of course, this all leads up to the final confrontation between Pang and Lung, with the remaining members of Dai's gang trying to pull his spirit out of Pang's father's body in the process.During their supernatual rowdydow, Lung's fists and foot suddenly catch fire as his head starts to smoulder(!!!), with the vampire using them to strike at Pang.Somewhere out of left field, a monk appears and drapes Buddhist prayer beads around Pang's neck, slapping protective holy yellow post-its all over his torso, before pushing him back out into the battle zone.Huh?!!!The vampire's flaming extremities burn away most of Pang's protection, but in the nick of time, the young hero remembers to wrap the prayer beads around the vampire's neck, jump effortlessly into the branch of a tree some twenty-five feet up, strangling the blood drinker while breaking off a piece of branch stump and ramming it repeatedly into the top of the vampire's head, killing him.Whaaaa??!!??Insert four exclamation points here.

"I'm having dramatic slo-mo chest pains!Where's my Chinese Life Alert?"
Despite some sped up action and chase scenes(for Benny Hill-style comedy hijinks,methinks),Billy Chong is high-kickingly amazing as always, especially when squared off with Kwan Yung Moon, an equally impressive fighter.I should also mention at this point that Cheng Hong Yip played the character of "Hamster"(that's right).You should be able to snag a copy of this one for next to nothing at your local video clearance outlet or FYE, if you can't locate one on Amazon.A restored, remastered special edition is just crying to be released some day soon.It deserves no less.On the scale, the highest possible rating for nearly immeasurable laughs and martial arts entertainment.The right way to mix kung fu, horror, and comedy.

Let's see Van Helsing jump effortlessly 25 feet up a tree, strangling a vampire with buddhist prayer beads, before ramming a tree branch into the top of his head repeatedly.