Wrapping up my Shaw brothers marathon.
The Five Venoms
An apparently seminal classic of the genre, though I thought it was kind of lame. The story set-up is kind of interesting -- a dying kung fu master sends his last pupil to track down his five former proteges, each trained in a different animal (centipede, snake, scorpion, lizard, toad) style of fighting, because some have turned bad -- but the fights themselves are not especially good, and end up looking awkward because the actors have to adopt these ridiculous looking stances to pretend they're striking like a snake or like a scorpion, or whatever. I laughed at the opening sequence, when the teacher is describing how different each style is, yet they all seem to boil down to speed and agility. "Centipede is known for its speed and agility...snake is very quick, but also very agile...lizard specializes in speed, but also emphasizes agility."
2.5/5
Crippled Avengers
A step up from the previous Venoms movie. Certainly more ridiculous -- each of the main characters is maimed in some way (blinded, legs chopped off, rendered deaf and mute, brain damaged) by an evil warlord, and train themselves to use those disabilities to their advantage in fighting -- but the fights come off better for it. I also enjoyed seeing the venoms fight together as a unit than against each other as in the previous; made for more interesting choreography. You've gotta laugh at how uninterested these movies are in their own plot. Final lines:
, immediately proceed to walk off stage, THE END.
3/5
Heroes of the East
The first half of this movie is a domestic married life romcom type thing, where a Chinese man and a Japanese woman marry but also constantly snipe at each other for their own martial arts styles. The second half of this movie is said Chinese man and a team of Japanese fighters (each specializing in their own style or weapon) fighting each other to defend their country's honor. The two halves don't go together very neatly at all. But the fights are quite good, and I liked the variety of them. I also liked the fact that, unlike a lot of China vs. Japan kung fu movies, this one doesn't demonize the Japanese or lean hard into Chinese nationalism; both sides come out of looking respectful of each other, in spite of the obvious statement that Chinese kung fu > any and all Japanese fighting styles. :lol
3.5/5
The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter
Lau Kar-leung might be the king of kung fu fight choreography, and I think this ranks with Drunken Master II as some of his best work on that front. The pole fights in this movie are absolutely insane; they're fast, intense, elaborate and totally relentless. The opening sequence, the sister's fight in the hotel and the final battle are all standouts. Just really incredible stunt work. The overall production feels a lot more refined than the average Shaw bros movie (maybe because it came so much later than most of their films?) and the aesthetic reminds of me of Kurosawa's Kagemusha at times. And the story is actually pretty interesting, though a bit confusing since the political dynamics are never really clearly laid out (and Hulu's subs for this movie are unusually garbage). But what holds back the movie for me in a big way is how intensely unlikable the two brother lead characters are. As low as the bar is for acting in these movies, this one takes the cake with extreme and constant bouts of overacting. Virtually every one of Gordon Liu's lines is SCREAMED, and it gets really grating really quickly. The closest comparison I can think of is the princess in The Hidden Fortress. It's a shame, because if those two characters were not as annoyingly manic as they are, I think this would have rivaled with 36th Chamber of Shaolin for me. As is, I'll rank it just a notch below that one.
3.5/5
