Mang quan gui shou

There was a Quiz at the end of the DVD I got of this film. It was rather funny to find a 70s movie on a DVD with an interactive quiz on it. If you got a question about the movie right, the next screen had a still of one of the characters from the movie smiling. If you got it wrong, they showed a bad guy wagging his finger at you, or something. That alone was worth the three bucks I laid out at the yard sale for this somewhat watchable venture into Artsploitation. The Female Ninja in this movie was one of the other nice features, she seems skilled at acrobatics, without actually having any stage presence or confidence with the arts.

Probably the biggest asset to the film is Bruce Li and Siu Tien Yuen who plays The Blind Master. I really enjoy his comedic additions to the films. A number of pretty Chinese girls in this movie, a cut above the normal. A number of familiar faces in the cast that one will recognize from other movies of the era.

Typical elements: Unusual training methods, high flying leaps and bounds, some weapons work. Magic type fighting with blinding powders. The final death of the villian is an amazingly choreographed fight scene involving a long scarf and the blind man as well as the hero weaving around the baddie. Hey, I said it was amazing, not good!

And it is always interesting to hear the quantities of money being discussed. "You owe us $10,000!" Sort of like hearing "1 Million Dollars" in an Austin Powers' movie.

I saw BLIND FIST OF BRUCE in Brentwood's fantastic 10-pack format, and it has set the standard for my viewing of these films. While not a terrible chop-socky movie, there isn't really much in BLIND FIST to set it apart from the rest.

BLIND FIST OF BRUCE stars Bruce Li (no, NOT Bruce Lee unfortunately) in what is labeled a "tribute to the formula that made Bruce Lee a star!" Li plays a banker whose town is set upon by a ruthless gang. Sound familiar? It should, as indeed this formula has been used for well over a hundred kung-fu movies. At times, BLIND FIST reminded me of Jackie Chan's MASTER WITH CRACKED FINGERS, but the two are incomparable in terms of action. While Li plays his part competently enough, his two "teachers" (who soon enough become gang members themselves) have that sort of chop-socky comic relief that doesn't hold well with American audiences.

There are enough characters to keep BLIND FIST interesting, including a blind man who has mastered the martial arts, a geisha and her kung-fu maid, and Li's aforementioned cat-fu and dog-fu mentors (they teach him such moves as "peeing dog" and "licking yourself"). Also, the film has enough of those beat-em-up moments for the audience to hate the bad guys and to side with Li and his blind teacher. Unfortunately, there is simply nothing too special about BLIND FIST OF BRUCE.

While not bad, I would recommend this movie only to die-hards like myself, rather than as an entry-level feature. Instead, watch MASTER WITH CRACKED FINGERS or, even better, FIVE DEADLY VENOMS. :)

When Jackie Chan became a Hong Kong superstar in the late '70s, Bruce Lee imitators like Ho Tsung-tao (Bruce Li) and Huang Kin-lung (Bruce Le) found themselves obliged to change with the times. Wearing a yellow tracksuit and clumsily flailing a nunchaku no longer impressed audiences; now they demanded more complex, ambitious fight choreography, resulting in the emergence of a few decent films from the Bruceploitation camp. One of them was "Blind Fist of Bruce", in which Ho plays a browbeaten bank manager who learns kung fu from a blind beggar (Simon Yuen, Jackie Chan's tipsy sifu in "Drunken Master") to fend off a gang of criminals led by Tiger Yang and Chiang Tao. There's nothing earth-shatteringly good here, but the lengthy final fight is worth sticking around for, and the film as a whole is a considerable improvement on Ho's earlier work. He could have joined the ranks of mid-level stars like Don Wong Tao and Tan Tao-liang had he not already been fatally typecast as a Bruce Lee clone.

Bruce Li stars as a man who learns kung fu from 2 incompetent teachers. They teach him a bunch of fake animal styles and he finally figures out that they are fakes. With goons taking over the town Li has to find a good teacher to learn kung fu quick. Enter Simon Yuen.

The first hour has some decent comedy, but the action is not good at all. Bruce Tong has a nice cameo at the start, but then there are a bunch of weak fights. But then out of nowhere Bruce Li has an awesome fight with Kong Do and 2 other guys. Then Tiger Yang shows up. Yang's first fight is good, but the final fight is a disappointment. The rest of these words I am typing so that the reivew is long enough to be posted. Come one now. Work with me here. Am I there yet?