Mang quan gui shou

Novice fighter, Bruce Li is suckered by two bogus Kung fu teachers until he is montaged into a next-level, lightning-swift power-fighter of awesome magnitude by affable Kung Fu vagabond (Yuen Siu-tien). Alongside sleek, powerhouse pugilist Dragon Lee, the no less mighty martial artist Bruce Li remains one of my most beloved Bruce Lee copyists!!! I sincerely feel these actors energetically mimic Bruce's iconic style out of a profound love and reverence for the great man. Others express a dimmer view of Brucesploitation, but they probably prattle on turgidly about mobile phone apps, wormy artisan cheese and overpriced 4K Blu-rays, so, phook 'em! Bruce Li rocks hard, dude, as does his lively street-tough Kung Fu action/comedy extravaganza, Blind Fist of Bruce Li! Douse the grey cells in one's preferred intoxicant, greasily stuff one's cakehole with yummy plastic cheese and marvel at all enjoyably scrappy chop-comedy-socky shenanigans herein! While these films occasionally have all the aesthetic refinement of an over-fermented herring, the pedantic, frequently surrealistic dubbing are, for me, all part of the micro-genre's goofily pugnacious charm. I must admit to having been wholly absorbed by the righteously revenge-fuelled, fists-of-frenzy climax.

"In Kung Fu, you have to be fast, or you'll die!!!" I think a young Yngwie Malmsteen took this maxim a little too much to heart!"

Bruce Li stars as a man who learns kung fu from 2 incompetent teachers. They teach him a bunch of fake animal styles and he finally figures out that they are fakes. With goons taking over the town Li has to find a good teacher to learn kung fu quick. Enter Simon Yuen.

The first hour has some decent comedy, but the action is not good at all. Bruce Tong has a nice cameo at the start, but then there are a bunch of weak fights. But then out of nowhere Bruce Li has an awesome fight with Kong Do and 2 other guys. Then Tiger Yang shows up. Yang's first fight is good, but the final fight is a disappointment. The rest of these words I am typing so that the reivew is long enough to be posted. Come one now. Work with me here. Am I there yet?

When Jackie Chan became a Hong Kong superstar in the late '70s, Bruce Lee imitators like Ho Tsung-tao (Bruce Li) and Huang Kin-lung (Bruce Le) found themselves obliged to change with the times. Wearing a yellow tracksuit and clumsily flailing a nunchaku no longer impressed audiences; now they demanded more complex, ambitious fight choreography, resulting in the emergence of a few decent films from the Bruceploitation camp. One of them was "Blind Fist of Bruce", in which Ho plays a browbeaten bank manager who learns kung fu from a blind beggar (Simon Yuen, Jackie Chan's tipsy sifu in "Drunken Master") to fend off a gang of criminals led by Tiger Yang and Chiang Tao. There's nothing earth-shatteringly good here, but the lengthy final fight is worth sticking around for, and the film as a whole is a considerable improvement on Ho's earlier work. He could have joined the ranks of mid-level stars like Don Wong Tao and Tan Tao-liang had he not already been fatally typecast as a Bruce Lee clone.

One's impression while watching this film is fairly mixed: there were many parts that made it funnier than the typical Kung Fu film (intentionally so) which kept me interested in the film. Furthermore, the acting is not as bad as typical of its' genre, and I found some of the characters especially expressive and entertaining.

However, the fault of the film is that it falls victim to many of the errors of its' genre: the quality being grainy and questionable, the simplicity of the plot and having shocking simplicity in the archetypes of good & evil, and furthermore, being overall rather corny.

But if you can stand for a typical Kung Fu B movie, this is not so bad; I found it entertaining and its' martial arts were not very shabby, either. And furthermore, the film did not fall victim to any ridiculous subplot or love-story, nor was it ruined by an overwhelming personality clogging up the story, which can easily kill other films. For what they have, a decent film. If you see it for what it is, it is not hard to watch and enjoy it. Decent for anybody who has an attachment to the genre.

'Blind Fist of Bruce' is a good, watchable martial arts film. Ho Tsung Tao portrays a once wealthy bank manager who's robbed of everything he ever had by a gang of martial arts extortionists. He seeks the help of an elderly and blind martial arts master (Charasmatically played by Yuen Siu Tien). The twist is that the leader of the extortionists, Tiger, was once a pupil of the martial arts master. Years before, Tiger blinded his kung fu teacher after he exiled him from the school. This film contains a few mediocre scenes, but the good fight scenes and decent acting make up for it. Director Kam Bo could have put a liitle more detail into the film (Maybe he could have used fake tears on Soo Ching when she mourns Miss Hong's death). Still, this movie is pretty good and it's a lot better than most of Ho Tsung Tao's early work as Bruce Li in the early 70's.