Shaolin Against Wu Tang – 10 Film Collection

I highly recommend any Kung Fu fans to go out and pick up this DVD set. I got mine on Half.com for $8.

Out of the 10 movies, I’ve seen 4 of them and they are undeniable classics:

Shaolin vs Lama

Shaolin Against Lama

Shaolin vs Wu Tang

The Undaunted Wu Tang

Okay, so The Undaunted Wu Tang (or The Undaunted Wu Dang) isn’t a calssic though it is excellent. But keep in mind, Shaolin Vs. Lama is up there on the greatest martial arts movie ever made. Even better, it has one of the best qualities (if not the best) of any version I’ve seen. Shaolin AGAINST Lama also has good quality, Shaolin Against Wu Tang is a bit dark but not bad. The Undaunted Wu Tang doesn’t have the greatest quality but certainly watchable.

I haven’t watched the rest but I’ll keep ya’ll updated. Maybe I’ll toss in a review of Shaolin vs Lama as well.

Ninja Thunderbolt review

First some quick background on the movie, Godfrey Ho took an older movie and spliced additional footage of his own featuring z-actor Richard Harrison. The original movie involved a cop and (an unnecessarily violent) insurance agent investigating a robbery involving mafia types. The new movie has the same premise only with ninjas! Secret ninjas to be precise.

The big question is how do you rate a movie like this? By any scientific look at the movie you’d have to give it a 1 star. There’s a scattershot plot with no continuity between scenes with ninja madness sprinkled in just for kicks. But that’s what makes this movie so great. It’s the quintessential “so bad it’s good” movie. I don’t want to give away any detail of this movie. If any one decides to rent this movie based on this review, it would be best to go in with a clean, clueless state of the absurdity to come. All I’ll say is Harrison is the head of “Serious Crimes Division” and apparently a serious crime in this movie is selling weed on the corner.

The fighting, for the most part is horrible, though the penultimate one shines through. The cop and insurance agent battle the mob boss in a prolonged and frantic battle. The final fight involves ninjas and is hilariously awful. 

I’d recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys absurdly bad movies. Word of warning though, there’s a couple incredibly raunchy (and appropriately random) sex scenes. 

DVD Notes: English dubbed with Full Screen

More to come…

I’ve been lazy, sorry folks. I’ll try to get in more reviews. Maybe one of my all-time favorites next: The Avenging Eagle.

Invincible Hero aka The Mean Streets of Kung Fu

This movie is listed as “Invincible Hero” on the Kung Fu Theatre Collection DVD set but the actual name is “The Mean Streets of Kung Fu.” It’s a solid movie with a good plot with some overly used conventions in the genre. A new gang movies into town and sets up the established Kung Fu school and it’s prized student with a couple of murders and a somewhat traditional revenge story follows. The story moves along nicely with organically set-up fight scenes with good (not great) choreography.

The acting is decent for the genre and the fight scenes are usually lengthy–sometimes overly so given the lack of innovative choreography. Bruce Lee wannabe Barry Chan stars and his pretty good kicking action but nothing remarkable. The strength of the movie is that it never slows down and maintains a nice pace to accompany the numerous fight scenes. Bottom line: solid movie for kung fu addicts only.

 

Grade: C

Kung Fu Theater Collection – Vol. 1

I’d recommend everyone pick up this DVD set. You can get it for about $3 on half.com and you can’t beat 10 movies for that price. 

I ordered last week and it got here on Saturday so I’ve only been able to get through two movies and skim the rest. The 10 movies are on 5 double sided discs. I watched both movies on disc one and I whole-heartedly recommend this set based on those two movies alone. The rest can be absolute garbage and I’d still urge readers to pick it up. 

I’ll review the two movies (Invincible Hero aka Mean Streets of Kung Fu & Ninja Thunderbolt) soon.

First post

I was gonna write up a review of the Kung Fu Theater Collection dvd set as my first post but got caught up in tweeking the appearence of my page. Still not happy but how it looks but it gets the job done.

Thanks to anyone who check out my blog, I’ll try to keep it up to date and review old movies and keep an eye out on new ones. I had to go with “theatre” in the address instead of “theater” cuz it was already taken. The cat the has that address has posted once last year and that’s it. Sucks but oh well, hopefully he’ll start posting, can’t get enough old school kung fu love.