(1974) Slaughter in San Francisco/ Yellow Faced Tiger
DUBBED
MARTIAL ARTS ACTION
You can tell this was intended for Bruce Lee to star on if it was not for his unfortunate passing as the movie was produced by Golden Harvest. And since this was the second starring Chuck Norris movie he has ever made before he began starring in his own movies, it was presumed Golden Harvest are able to capitalize on Chuck Norris's success by it's re-release for the US even though he was not the main lead. It may appear by looking at the poster "Slaughter in San Francisco" that he is the lead but as soon you watch it, Chuck Norris continued his role as the main baddie as in "Return of the Dragon", the main difference between the two movies is that he is given more on screen presence on this one than his minuscule role on "Return of the Dragon" . The one thing Return of the Dragon has for it, is that the Colosseum fight or fights overall are better, in Slaughter although there were many fight scenes viewers are able to tell they were hardly touched, and pretended they were hit.
Written and directed by Wei Lo the director of two Bruce Lee movies of "The Way of the Dragon"/ The Big Boss/ Fists of Fury" and "The Chinese Connection", it centers on Chinese cop, Officer Don Wong (Don Wong) doing the rounds with his African American partner, Officer John Summer (Robert Jones) doing the rounds. Until they both stumble onto Sylvia Chew (Sylvia Chang) who appear to look like she was being attacked by two men. A fight ensures and upon them bringing them in, Sylvia then denies that the assault ever happened, forcing the captain, Newman (Daniel Ivan) to let them go.
We then see John spending time with his wife, Diane Summer and after they both drop their son to school, they were then interrupted by a U-Haul moving truck, blocking their root of passage. A group of men then call John over, only so they can kidnap him. The first person Diane calls is his best friend and partner, Don. And he gets over there as fast as he can while riding on his motorbike. By the time he spots the moving truck, parked next to a beach, it would then lead to him taking on a bunch of thugs, leaves the question why they were ganging up on him and not on Don. We then see Don losing his police officer's job over this scuffle, fired by his captain, before we then see him as a waiter working at a Chinese restaurant. All is okay, since although the customers are quite rude, he said to his friend John, he does not mind the tips. And then after a round of drinking with together and leaving the bar they both go on their merry way. Except that he stumbles onto a robbery that includes using a manhole and instead of calling for backup, he would then decide to confront them himself.
All these convoluted scenarios is only intended to show martial art scenes that does not rival with the Bruce Lee films who was still popular way after his untimely death. Forcing studios to find another Bruce Lee substitute from Jackie Chan to Bruce Li or Bruce Lai to Jimmy Wang Yu. It was not until Yuen Woo Ping/ Jackie Chan revolutionized how fight films are made by allowing the fights to be hit for real, subjecting them with a little comedy. Jackie Chan then took a step further by allowing stunts into his films after doing the "Cannonball Run" movies. Anyways, from the time the movie was made back in 1974 the second starring Chuck Norris movie credit, this is not bad as it still consisted more action and interesting fights than the average chop socky film made during that time, presuming it was intended for another Bruce Lee movie Chinese/ US crossover had he lived.
