Jian hua yan yu jiang nan

For a 70's Hong Kong costume martial arts flick, this isn't too bad. I've always been attracted to martial arts movies with a strong female character and the veiled lady in this movie is such a woman. There's lots of fly-on-wires kung-fu action, and Jackie (or Jacky as he's billed in the credits) spends most of the movie getting kicked around by the baddies, including, initially, the veiled woman. She, of course, falls for him - even though she killed his entire family and he has a pregnant girlfriend.

I actually liked this movie, even though you really can't tell it's Jackie Chan until the end, it had some pretty good fight scenes, but still it could've been better.

This movie essentially begins with a beautiful handmaiden by the name of Qian-Qian (Ling Lung Yu) eagerly telling her rich nobleman lover "Lei Shao-Fung" (Jackie Chan) that she is pregnant with his child. But rather than being delighted with this news he rudely brushes her off and sends her on her way. Crushed over this unexpected rejection of her Qian-Qian leaves the household she had been working at and runs away. Meanwhile, Lei Shao-Fung has returned to his home and informs his father that an elite group of assassins has targeted the entire family and that they are all in serious trouble. No sooner does he tell them this then they suddenly appear out of nowhere and kill off everyone in the family except Lei Shao-Fung who they thought was dead. When he recovers he sees one of the female assassins named "Ding Can-Ren" (Feng Hsu) standing near him and catching her off-guard holds a sword to her throat. However, rather than killing her he decides to spare her life in exchange for information on why his family was targeted. Upon telling him she then escapes only to follow his every footstep from that point on. The story then shifts to Qing-Qing who meets a stranger by the name of "Jin-Chuan" (Le Lung Shen) who saves her from a small group of bandits and subsequently offers her his protection until she decides what she wants to do next. What she doesn't know is that Jin-Chuan was sent by Lei Shao-Fung to look after her and that she was only sent away because he was afraid that she might suffer the same fate as the rest of his family. Unfortunately, Jin-Chuan is not who he says he is and has his own plans for Qing-Qing. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was an intricate film which suffered from too many diverse subplots that didn't flow smoothly from one to the next. Throw in a lot of swordplay and acrobatics and the end result was a rather strange film which was difficult to follow at times. At least, it was for me.

An amazingly horrible film, kung fu corniness at it's best. Everything from the names of the characters: "Chin Chin" which is Japanese for "penis", which is awesome because there are tons of variations in the movie. "All you care about is your chin-chin!" (Actual piece of dialog) The set designs are beautiful and the cinematography catches some great shots sporadically in the film. The fight scenes themselves are just thick with super human hijinks and cheap camera tricks. Altogether, a hilarious piece of kung fu dung.

Not for the serious kung-fu fan, more for the casual-bad-movie-fanatic.

Yeehaw, The Lazy Southerner

Jackie Chan actually said in an interview that he felt sorry for anyone that had to see this movie. I'm going to have to agree with him, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself after I saw this slapped-together sham of a kung-fu movie.