Meng hu dou kuang long

'sorry, I had to make that comment. But it's unusual even for a HK movie to have so many actors with the same last name. By the way, the most popular sir name in HK is Chan or Chen, but I've never seen a movie that had this many Chans, so this is a rare coincidence.

I'm not sure if I'm commenting on the right movie, but this is the only movie I see with this title that's made in HK. The format is classic HK kung-fu movie, but the setting is relatively modern (1920s ?). The main hero is sought by the police by mistake, and gets embroiled with gangs. Then from that point on, it's almost non-stop martial arts action.

The print quality of this movie is not so good as is often the case from the movie of this era, but the plot is okay, and is entertaining if you like classic kung-fu movies.

Good movie to watch if you're into kung-fu movies.

Typical (indeed cliched) kung fu movie plot, but with inordinately huge amounts of brutal, and indeed beautiful, kung fu fighting. All fans of the genre must see this masterpiece of ultraviolence. Unfortunately, I haven't seen it for sale or rent anywhere since I bought it for a gift several years ago.

Yang Sze (Bolo Yeung) is nowhere to be found in "Kung Fu Massacre", so I'm not sure why he's credited...but the film does star Charles Heung ("Mysterious Footworks of Kung Fu", "The Goose Boxer") as a rather hotheaded, inexperienced hero. Heung's co-star is Jin Fu Wan, an older actor with the unchanging, somehow sinister expression of a wooden Indian in a cigar store. They're both after the richest man in town: Heung because his family was murdered by the wealthy man, Jin because the same unpleasant fellow stole his wife and framed him for a robbery. The female lead is the stunningly pretty Tina Chin Fei. "Kung Fu Massacre" is long on poorly-dubbed dialogue and short on fight scenes, and even when a fight does break out it's invariably a lackluster affair. It's as though the cast and crew just didn't have their hearts in this production. The villain uses a sanchaku (like a three-sectional staff, but the sticks are shorter) when he finds himself losing to Heung in the climactic duel, but that's about as interesting as the choreography gets. Having watched Chinese martial arts films pretty much nonstop since 1983, I must admit that there's a perverse, weary pleasure in seeing the same scenario played out over and over again, often against the same backdrop (the final reel of "Kung Fu Massacre" was filmed in the barren, rocky landscape with muddy lake that seasoned chop-socky fans will recognize from numerous Shaw Brothers productions, as well as independent films like "Fist of Unicorn", "The Chinese Godfather", "The Bloody Fight", and "Two Graves to Kung Fu") with a slightly different cast each time. It's a surreal experience, one that bears more than a passing resemblance to 'Shadow Play', that classic episode of "The Twilight Zone" in which Dennis Weaver dreams repeatedly that he has been sentenced to die in the electric chair. The little details change from night to night, but the dream remains fundamentally the same. These films represent a world unto themselves--a world of humid skies and recurring landscapes of rock and steep pine-covered hills, where it is the eternal duty of the characters to seek vengeance--and they exert a peculiar fascination. This strange magic is evident even in individual films bedeviled by mediocrity, like "Kung Fu Massacre".

The movie opens with demonstrations at the martial arts school. Next, in the dark, our hero Charles Heung returns to town and finds his uncle stabbed to death. He is falsely accused, flees, and takes refuge at the home of the guy who owns the casino. A suspicious gambler wins big and Charles follows him, suspecting he is the real killer. It gets complicated after that.

I first tried to watch this movie about four years ago but failed because the copy was poor to the point where I could not see anything of two fights in the darkness. I since came across a better quality copy. It is a digital file that plays on a HDTV as wide screen with English dialog. If you come across this movie make sure you get the wide screen version rather than the 4:3 video. It is notable that the action director was the great Yuen Wo-Ping and many others of the clan appear as stunt men.

1973 was Charles Heung Wah-Jeung's breakout year for martial arts movies. He starred in no less than 6 movies that year. I also reviewed "The Big Fellow" and "End of the Wicked Tigers" and "The Magnificent Boxer" and "Beba, the Mermaid" and rated them all just average. I consider his high point as a martial arts actor in "Goose Boxer". I reviewed and rated that movie as one of my favorites of 1978. Charles went on to be a big name producer of Win's Entertainment and China Star Entertainment Group. His personal life is linked to one of China's biggest organized crime groups, the Sun Yee On triad. Charles has often denied involvement with triads. There is plenty of information about this online so I will not repeat any of it. If you are interested I recommend starting with his biography on Wikipedia. Charles is also a philanthropist and involved in poverty relief, natural disaster assistance, and free cataract surgery for seniors.

I rate this movie a tad above average for the year and genre and recommend it for hard core fans of the genre.