Jioksibi gwanmun

"Champ Against Champ" seemed to be a very serious movie at first, but it's got plenty of humor to boot. Dragon Lee plays a martial artist who happens to return from a journey who comes across a ruler who is killing anyone who wants to do him serious harm. All he wants to do is to have a simple life with his bride to be. His fighting skills are beyond compare against anyone until his father is slain and he is later downed with a poison dart that claims his right fighting leg. When the ruler is about to celebrate, he gets a very rude awakening from the Dragon. He may have taken away his fighting leg, but he didn't take away his spirit on the art of fighting. Learning the 18 kicks is amazing, and the villains didn't even stand a chance against him. Everyone who went against him met their demise one kick at a time. I liked the fight scene where the hoop fighter got embarrassed when he got pantsed. What a wimp, and he's chided by the words, "You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" told by the Dragon. Humor a plenty, and a lot of wonder, this movie is a lot of fun, and I even think Jackie Chan could be a part of this movie as well. 2 out of 5 stars!

Dragon Lee walks through a desolate landscape, minding his own business, and meets a man who has a problem with that so they fight. It is explained that a higher up has ordered Dragon Lee never to return yet he returns. We cut to a tea house and a thug leaves without paying. Cut again back to the higher up. This time he has a problem with a list of names. (Why do people keep making these lists?) Then he adds on about Dragon Lee as if he never said it a few minutes earlier. It's back to the tea house. The guy who ate them out of pork and did not pay is hungry again. There is more talk as we meet Dragon Lee's future bride and the idiot who wrote the list of names. Everything we already know about the story is repeated in this dialog – just in case we missed it.

Dragon Lee made many movies I cannot find including 1976 "Superfist", 1977 "The Magnificent Duo", 1977 "The Last Fist of Fury" (which I do not want), 1978 "The Dragon on Fire", and 1978 "Enter the Deadly Dragon". I have seen him in 1978 "The Magnificent" but it was a minor role. His first movie I reviewed was 1978 "Dragon Lee vs the 5 Brothers" and I rated it average for the year and genre. Dragon Lee was certainly a capable fighter but there were thousands of other capable fighters who never got on film.

The only thing that could have saved this movie would have been excellent fight sequences with Dragon Lee. Many of the fights were poorly choreographed, like the fight against all the women, so he had no chance there. The fairly well choreographed fights were against substandard stunt men or actors with fighting ability. There were also bits of humor tossed in and they just felt out of place and failed to be funny.

The mess that is left is one of those movies you watch to laugh at. I don't care for those movies so my rating is based on the standards of a real martial arts movie and that makes this one way below average. I will say the movie did have one moment - the fire breathing fighter was something memorable. Overall, I can only recommend it for die hard fans of the genre just to watch once so you can mark it off your list and never watch again.

North Korean Dragon Lee stars as a young fighter who runs afoul of some bad guys who beat him and poison him, requiring the amputation of one of his legs. After a long period recuperating, and some encouragement from his lady love, he forges a metal prosthetic leg and trains himself back into fighting condition. Then his mission of vengeance can commence.

When this film started and I saw the name Godfrey Ho as director, I expected the worst. Ho was the Hong Kong Ed Wood, responsible for a large number of mind-shattering exercises in bad editing, bad dubbing, and the randomly placed ninja. However, this film manages to be at least competent, and has a few fun touches. I liked one bit when our hero concentrates his kung-fu chi into the palms of his hands, causing them to smoke.

The best part of watching this, though, was the fact that the DVD used the old print that was made for the Sho Kosugi Ninja Theater line of VHS releases from the mid-80's. Kosugi, the most prominent star of ninja films during their 1980's heyday (he starred in Revenge of the Ninja, 9 Deaths of the Ninja, Rage of Honor, and many more), used his cult-status to release a bunch of older, lesser quality martial arts films featuring newly filmed wraparounds (sort of like a kung-fu Elvira) where he demonstrated the use of a different ninja weapon for each film. The Kosugi bits are awkward, stupid, and hilarious. I had completely forgotten about them in the intervening years, but I recall my local video store having most, if not all, of those tapes on the shelf back in the day.