Fearless Tiger

.......But oh so much fun! Yes indeed, step right up folks for here we have a real stinker; Witness in disbelief a lead actor (who happens to be none other than Joseph Merhi's brother!) who can barely speak the English language(!), some pretty lousy fight sequences throughout (especially surprising considering that the legendary kicking maestro Jean Frennette is on board here!), Bolo Yeung dancing...badly(!), and some of the very worst acting performances this side of an average children's nativity play! Yes indeed, this is a truly amateurish mess if ever I've seen one; But you know what? Such gross incompetence in every area only serves to make this all the more endearing; Truly, this took some staggering ineptitude to make by all those concerned. Yay, I hereby do award this travesty my highest recommendation for fellow bad movie lovers.

The film is without doubt a totally bad martial arts film wannabe. It fails miserably in its attempt. The "star", Jalil Merhi would probably be stoned to death in his native middle east if they ever show this junk there.

The plot is simple, Merhi's brother dies of drugs and he wants revenge. He tells his wealthy businessman father and his fiancee that he can't take over the family business or go through with the wedding because he wants to train in the far east. Talk about ridiculous, the bride to be is 6 foot 2 inch, Supermodel Monika Schnarre. She stands at least a solid foot and a half taller than Merhi. His father is played by Jaime Farr, Corporal Klinger from M*A*S*H. I guess those residual checks are no longer coming in. The acting is without doubt totally lousy. Collectively amateurish beyond belief, even from Jaime Farr who's antics as Max Klinger keeps me tuning in to reruns of M*A*S*H. But the worst is Merhi, his acting makes Jean Claude Van Dahm look like Sir Lawrence Olivier by comparison. The direction, the lighting, the cinematography are all laughably bad. It is as if the director was incapable of taking his camera off a tripod. Any kung fu film and blaxploitation film afficionado who sees this will probably wanna pluck their eyes out.

I hadn't heard of Jalal Merhi before I saw this. Now I find myself collecting his movies - and for laughs!

Everything is so wrong in this movie. The acting is crude all around and the dialogue is extremely childish and silly in most parts - the director/writer Ron Hulme apparently had no skills in either of his roles.

Jalal is the star of the movie, a short kung-fu guy who sounds just like Apu from The Simpsons. His silly accent really distracts the viewer from everything else - like his model girlfriend who's a feet taller than him and the no doubt the worst actress I've ever seen on film.

The film is unintentionally funny through out and it's not boring at all - especially if watched between friends who really dig bad movies. I've seen many martial arts movies and this one really stands out because of the laughs it generates.

Fearless Tiger was a complete surprise to me - a previously unheralded bad movie with scenes so jaw-droppingly bad it had me rewinding several scenes just to immediately enjoy them all over again. There's almost no let up here to the amount of joy Jalal Merhi fires at the audience.

A bad guy who looks like someone inflated Robert Plant and then burst him with a fork is taking a new drug called Nirvana to the streets of America (via Hong Kong). Jalal's brother gets hooked and overdoses on the stuff, causing Jalal to go to Hong Kong and get trained up to kick everyone's head in. Sounds simple? It is. But:

Jalal's girlfriend in the film is much, much taller than him, and cannot act to boot. Therefore, every time she appeared on the screen I was in fits of laughter. Just watched her roll her eyes in a "Oh, that Jalal" way. She's bad, but nothing can prepare you for the police chief. His initial scene, where he struts about like a chicken and sputters out his lines, is so bad I swear you'll be rewinding it over and over again. Brilliant!

Add to this the crazy action scenes (I nearly burst a gut at the gang battle near the start, where a bad guy is too busy gloating at his enemies to notice the car he then plows into with his motorbike), the toilet set round the neck move, or the death of one of the villains, who has both his feet poking out the sunroof of a car at the time. You've also got the fight in the back of a garbage truck, a bad guy with the tightest white guy afro ever, and the training scenes with Bolo, which has Bolo, Jalal, and some chick apparently involved in some sort of crazy dance off (or so it appears to the viewer anyway).

Instant classic! See it now!

I laughed quite a bit at this film, but once the novelty wore off I was just in shock. Why? Mainly because the script is so bad that it's funny. The lead star Jalal was a boring actor and everyone else was just as bad. If you're thinking of getting this film because Bolo is in it, I wouldn't, cause he's dubbed and he's only in it for about 4 minutes with a crap part. The best thing about this film is that there are some good martial arts, but the plot feels like it was made up as they went along, and the editing is just ridiculous sometimes. However, if you like bad B-movie martial arts films, then this isn't so bad at all.