The movie starts with James Tin Chuen as the bad guy. He is looking for a man and kills another man in the opening scene. Cut to the martial arts school where our hero, Chin Lung, is the bumbling servant. He spills the hot tea and gets punished by the master. The master is also a cuckhold to his wife. Violet Pan is sympathetic to Chin Lung. He wants to learn martial arts and has saved money to get out of his awful situation and get a real master. That does not work out as planned. He does get a master, the man James Tin Chuen is looking to kill.
I've watched thousands of these movies and never heard of this one. After watching it I looked up the actor Chin Lung and plan to watch every one of his movies. I also looked up the action directors for this movie, expecting to see someone from the Yuen clan but saw no name I recognized.
This movie is one of the best martial arts movies of 1979 and that is saying a lot because there were a lot of martial arts movies made in 1979 and a lot of them were good. The story line is simple, it's all about the martial arts. The plot is exactly as it should be, things just keep getting worse for the hero. The hero is one dimensional but that one dimension is likable and sympathetic so that is all you need, nothing extra to bog down the pace.
The rest is the action and the action in this movie is comparable to the Venoms. This movie has fights and acrobatics at the same level as any of the Venoms movies. If you know what I am talking about then you know that means as good as it gets.
I highly recommend this movie and rate it as 8 out of ten, mandatory viewing for fans of martial arts movies from the golden age 1967- 1984.
