Hu hao shuang xing

Even with fight choreography by Liu Chia-yung, "The Savage Killers" marked a steep plunge into mediocrity for former superstar Wang Yu. Having been the top banana in Hong Kong's first million-dollar grossing film ("The One-Armed Swordsman") for Shaw Brothers Studio and then putting its emerging rival Golden Harvest on the map, Wang was directing himself in independently-produced Taiwanese cheapies by the middle of the Me Decade. This film, a standard revenge melodrama in which practitioners of the tiger and crane styles join forces to defeat a common foe, is representative of the downward trend of its star's career: the fight scenes are competent but short and uninspired, and Wang looks like he'd rather be somewhere else. Liu Chia-yung does double duty in a supporting role, while Lung Fei's broad, mustache-twirling portrayal of the villain is the film's only real bright spot. (Future "Five Deadly Venoms" star Kuo Chui, aka Philip Kwok, has a very small bit part; blink and you'll miss him.) Four and a half stars.

You probably know that Kung Pow: Enter the Fist was a spoof of this movie. Since they wanted to make a parody of classic Kung Fu films, I think they made a good choice by choosing this film to spoof, because it has all those elements which Kung Fu movie needs. The fighting scenes, were impressive, though most of them lasted too short and some of them looked very fake, I think the best fighting scene was in the end. There also was some original training scenes. The main bad guy was very colorful, he had those to metal caps on his chest (just like in Kung Pow) and it looked pretty impressive when he used that weapon (chain with iron claws on it).

This film is best known as being the basis for Steve Oedekerk's 'Kung Pow' where it was redubbed and reedited as a comedy.

I thought 'Kung Pow' was one of the most ingenious comedies I'd ever seen. The DVD contains a track with all the original audio from both Steve Oedekerk and the original film. I forced my father whom speaks Mandarin to watch it and translate what they were really saying. He said, they were actually saying exactly what was redubbed except not in funny voices.

I doubted my father's statement and watched the original in its dubbed English format. It's a laugh riot!!! My father was right, most of the dialogue is the same!

Just as in 'Kung Pow' many of the scenes are truly WTF? Like when the villain enters the city and his thugs just start beating up random people for absolutely no reason. Or when the villain orders his thugs to repeatedly hit him the groin with a wooden pole just to prove he can take it.

The biggest changes are that the actually sequence of events in 'Kung Pow' is very different.

So maybe Steve Oedekerk wasn't such a comic genius after all as this movie was funny enough on its own.

After watching the schlocky 2002 parody "Kung Pow! Enter the Fist", I would able to see the real thing. "Tiger and Crane Fist" is a true gem. Here you got two martial arts schools: The tiger and crane that are separated by ideologies. One claims to be stronger than the other. This was caused by the masters who have taught there. They have seen the error of their ways. Now it's time to merge the skills, and put the ideologies behind. All because of a Japanese invasion, and a fighter who is helping the enemy. He uses "iron claws" to take out his opponents, and his body is nearly invincible. The tiger fighter (Jimmy Wang Yu) and the crane fighter are so busy at odds with each other, they need to focus on the main enemy, Lung Fei. This needs required practice, and patience to deal with a fighter with such skills. Even though Steve Oedekirk did the parody, he did well on matching his moves. I say that this is one classic everybody must see. The choreography was fantastic, and the fighting skills are beyond compare. This is the classic that has been parodied 26 years later, I still like them both! 4 out of 5 stars