Sadly Over-hyped

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Blistering performances.

It begins with Monk Wisdom teaching kung fu to students at Shaolin. The students are not any good and he is criticized for being too hard on them, after all kung fu is really for good health. Problem is, Shaolin is soon to be attacked by political opponents and good fighters will be needed for defense. He goes out in the world to find better students.The other plot is Sonny, the horse master, learning kung fu from two crippled masters. They got that way from the "horse challenge" at Shaolin.Sam Chung-Chuen and Thomas Hong Chiu-Ming play the two crippled masters. They originally starred in the 1979 movie "The Crippled Masters." I have tried more than once to watch that movie. The graphic abuse of the two cripples was horrible so I turned it off. In this movie they display their skills without being tormented first. This movie was made in 1984, the end of an era for these movies. The golden age of martial arts movies was from 1967 to 1984. It ended in a fizzle in 1984 because everything that could be done had been done to death. Yet the genre did not die, instead a new wave began due to the genius of men like Jackie Chan and the Yuen brothers who completely reinvented the genre. This movie is not an example of that but an example of the done to death part.

This unknown gem of a kung fu movie demonstrates the genre at its wackiest; a wild, unpredictable, effects-fuelled odyssey of action, action, violence, and even more action. The makers of this movie simply throw together two separate plots and join them together at the very end of the film. Sometimes the plots may not make much sense (or even any sense) and sometimes you just might sit back and wonder what the heck is going on, but who cares?! When a film offers this much crazy action and most of all just plain fun then you can't help but be entertained. The film begins by introducing us to wise monk Wisdom (nicknamed a "bald head" by his foes) who begins by training his Shaolin students in the way of the staff. Unfortunately they aren't very good so he ends up kicking their backsides. Realising that he must recruit allies to help the Shaolin Temple, he travels the countryside to try and recruit various groups.The bad guy is a long, white-haired bloke named Ching, who decides to thwart Wisdom's plan by getting to each temple beforehand and telling the masters that Wisdom has come to challenge the school instead of looking for help. Thus, an increasingly befuddled Wisdom finds himself often fighting whole schools of brightly-coloured opponents at a time with just his stick. The various fights are furious and full of simple-but-cool camera tricks and plenty of style. The fight choreography is top notch and although not realistic this film offers some totally high class and exciting martial arts action. The English dubbing in this film is top notch and played for laughs, and for a change it adds to the experience rather than detracts from it because the dialogue is just so funny. Look out for the Abbott, whose dialogue mainly consists of the line "Buddha bless you" repeated about a hundred times throughout the course of the film as a response to anything that happens.The second plot concerns the antics of young Lu, played by Taiwanese fight champion Sonny Yu. Yu lives with a drunken master and owns his own stable of horses. There's a pretty Chinese girl in love with him who adds a little glamour to the scenery. Now, as well as being a top martial artist, Yue also has the fortune to have the Crippled Masters as his uncles! For those who don't know, the aforementioned duo are a veritable disabled tag-team of kung fu fighting. One guy has atrophied legs, the other has no arms and just a little bone stump sticking out of his shoulder to hold things with. The two starred in a classic called (surprisingly enough) CRIPPLED MASTERS but not a lot else is known about them. Here, they just walk around and kick everybody's backside time and time again despite being disabled. They're cool and their unique contribution to the film just adds to the experience.A major thrust of the plot sees Yu infiltrating a secret stone temple and fighting off a number of bronze mechanical monstrosities in the style of 18 BRONZEMEN. The only difference being that there are twenty-four of these robots and this time they're horses instead of men! The sight of a kung-fu fighter battling metal horses complete with loud clanging sound effects is hilarious and again totally unique to this movie. That's why I love it so much. Other surprising elements include a man walking on the heads of his opponents, a guy having his ears and arm cut off with cymbals (!), and other guys dying totally over-the-top slow-motion deaths with blood spurting out of their mouths. The music is annoyingly memorable, the fighting top-notch, the sets and costumes colourful and the direction spot on. What more can be said? This is a classic that more people need to see. In the words of the Abbott, "Buddha bless you!".

The plot centers on Little Lu (Sonny Yu) who tends horses for the local Shaolin temple, and wants to learn skills that will help him defeat some corrupt officials who want to destroy it. He has a couple of friends (one with no arms, the other with no legs) who help him train using some bronze mechanical horses in a secret room in the temple.Overall, this movie was pretty good. The bad parts were the dubbing, and the overuse of an echoey sound effect in some of the fights. The plot is a little strange, there were some confusing scenes that really weren't explained too well. And then there are the ridiculous bronze horses. Other than that, it was good. The strength here was the well-choreographed fight scenes with various interesting weapons, and good editing. My version was full-screen pan and scan, but I could still see all of the action. Sometimes the fights in kung fu movies have obvious cutting points because the actors can only do a few moves at a time, but in this one I didn't really notice that. There was some minor gore, but not too much that one wouldn't expect from a movie of this type.