Xue lian huan

Compared to his more brutal and straightforward movies, this one only occasionally hits the heights. Wang Yu's spearwork, which is pretty central to the plot, is no more than barely adequate. His kicking and punching is up to his usual standard, but the hesitancy in the spear fights is a bit too obvious in my eyes, after exposure to Gordon Lui and Carter Wong's spear and staff work. It's not really helped by the out of sync dubbing which murders the sound effects.

A dodgy Wang Yu movie is still a few notches above the rest of the cheapo chop sockys of the era, and it's watchable enough in that context. The plot is as creaky as an ancient waterwheel, featuring lashings of cackling treachery, some evil scheming (and utterly predictable) bad guys, a wicked wily temptress, a blind heroine, and a showdown in the snow. But not much else of note. And all edited with a blunt axe, by the look of it. The much lauded rings of death would not be out of place in a Godzilla movie, so don't get your hopes too high.

Despite all that, I watched it through to the bitter end and thoroughly enjoyed the low budget camp predictability of it all. Despite the hype on the DVD cover, it's definitely not to be taken too seriously.

Where to begin ? I suppose my first mistake was spontaneously purchasing this DVD at a Dollar Store. I should've saved that $1 for the vending machine at work tomorrow, hands-down it would've been a better purchase.

To call this film a "martial arts film" is like comparing Jim Belushi's TV-show "According To Jim" to sit-com classics like 'Seinfeld' or 'The Larry Sanders Show' or 'Absolutely Fabulous' or 'Monty Python's Flying Circus'.

This movie starts with a contest of 5 warriors fighting for the right to marry a princess and it ends with an immortal vampire seeking revenge after 20 years. The direction of the plot inbetween the beginning and the end felt like the movie was built like a mud house. The editing was horrible and I had to lower the volume setting on my TV to 3 because the sound quality was so loud.

I am saving the best for last. I don't know how the makers of the movie got away with this but towards the end of the movie, you can a riff of music taken from "Raiders of the Lost Ark" ( the scene when Indy was in the Map Room waiting for the sun to strike the gold medallion to reveal the location of the Ark ). According to IMDb, the movie was made in 1977 however in the credits on the DVD the year in Roman Numbers says 1982. ( 1 year after the release of "Raiders" ).

I think I may stumbled upon a conspiracy that has gone un-checked for decades. If I mysteriously disappear, somebody please avenge me !

OK... where do I begin?.. I just noticed that this issue has been brought up on the message board in 2012 and still nothing has been corrected... so I'll continue...

IMDb has the right Year (1977) and Cast lineup (Yu Wang, Feng Hsu and Yi Chang), But the DVD box cover, the name "Silver Hermit from Shaolin Temple" and the Storyline do "not" belong here. These all belong in the IMDb "The Silver Spear (1980)"...

As for the reviews here, jmmjg's review belongs in The Silver Spear (1980) area because when he stated "a contest of 5 warriors fighting for the right to marry a princess and it ends with an immortal vampire seeking revenge"... That's a description of that movie. I can see how he was mislead to post it here, although if he looked at the cast on his movie he wouldn't see Yu Wang but instead, Peng Tien, Ho Tien and Chung-Erh Lung.

squelcho has the right review and sums it up pretty decent so there's not a lot I would change there.

This movie "The Deadly Silver Spear" (1977) aka "Shaolin's Silver Spear" and U.S. re-title "Deadly Kung Fu Lady" is a decent flick I enjoyed.