Qi sha jie

A Japanese nightclub is poisoning a Chinese village with morphine and opium, making addicts of the locals. A doctor offers free treatments, but the Japanese put a stop to it by falsely accusing him of malpractice and extorting money from him. The doctor's young assistant (Tien Lung Yu) seeks to avenge the man who is his employer, guardian and future father-in-law. But the duplicitous wife of an addict and the vengeful men from the nightclub will stand in his way. His worst enemy of all will be a man called the Chairman, with his fingers of death.

A simple story, good fight scenes and an appealing lead make "Infernal Street" a top-notch martial arts film. Extra credit for those who can identify the music cue taken from "Rosemary's Baby" (1968).

This Taiwanese programmer is no different to a hundred other low budget martial arts outings. It loses points for being very cheap, with every single setting looking like the same set just redressed over and over again. The story follows Bruce Lee's FIST OF FURY in that the Japanese are the stock villains, here running a brothel/gambling/drug den and generally making the life of the local Chinese very difficult. Cue a young, upstanding hero who goes against them.

I'll make no bones about it, this movie looks awful. The choreography in the fight scenes is standard and unspectacular and the acting over the top. The dubbing is horrendous, with lines like "Don't stand there, get dinner ready!" delivered in unintentionally hilarious ways. Expect lots of racism ("Those pigs shouldn't live!" one character exclaims of the Japanese), some music stolen from blaxploitation flicks, red tinted flashbacks and fight scenes that play out with all the monotony of an '80s beat-em-up video game. The only memorable scene is the one in which the hero severs the ears of his opponents as punishment (by apparently cutting them off with the edge of his palm!).

Evil Japanese are making Chinese villagers drug addicts by way of their nefarious opium den. A young doctor decides to go up against these foreign criminals. Much punching, kicking and chopping ensues.

Infernal Street is yet another in a long line of many, many low budget chopsocky productions knocked out in the 70's and 80's. If you are a fan of the sub-genre then it has to be admitted that this is pretty much more of the same. It's rammed to the gunnels with martial arts action from the get go, so at the very least you can't accuse this flick of not at least trying to deliver the expected thrills. It all got a bit tedious for me though to be honest as the fights more or less rolled into one after a bit and the overall feeling was that this effort was pretty indistinguishable from most of the others in this field of action films.

I think I may have watched all the good films in Mill Creek's Martial Arts box set by some kind of coincidence, because if this reflects the quality of what's left, I'm giving up.

Honestly, I don't want to see drama in a martial arse film and I don't want to see martial arse in Emmerdale (note: I DO want to see martial arse in Emmerdale). This film has too much of it's run time taken by folks interacting dramatically. Like this: There's this kung fu kid who's been adopted by a doctor and is very keen on the martial arts, but his doctor half-dad wants him to help all the junkies in town, who are hooked because of the local Japanese casino, and also the doctor's daughter fancies him, and then there's this junky guy and his wife who kind of want to help but also work for the bad guys, and then there's this mysterious boss and then there's some sort of marriage and the doctor keeps giving in to the Japanese who set up the young guy and blah blah blah blah blah I hate films like this.

Eventually, right before the end, this film remembers it's all about kung fu and there's a pretty not bad showdown, but there's a huge slog through lots of drama here that's not welcome. Also, another reviewer here said this was packed with action. It's not. People slag off Godfrey Ho films? At least he knew when to insert footage of Richard Harrison teleporting and shooting flames from the end of his sword.

Slight positives: There are some really violent bits contained within and the hero does get to spit a dislodged tooth into a guy's forehead. Plus he also cuts the ears off an awful lot of fellows (including the keyboard player from Sparks!).

Nevertheless, this is a downer from a box set that contains such glory as Ninja Wars (eh...unless you buy it now, because it's not on there), Ninja Death, City Ninja and The Big Fight.