Shao Lin nian si liu ma

It begins with Monk Wisdom teaching kung fu to students at Shaolin. The students are not any good and he is criticized for being too hard on them, after all kung fu is really for good health. Problem is, Shaolin is soon to be attacked by political opponents and good fighters will be needed for defense. He goes out in the world to find better students.

The other plot is Sonny, the horse master, learning kung fu from two crippled masters. They got that way from the "horse challenge" at Shaolin.

Sam Chung-Chuen and Thomas Hong Chiu-Ming play the two crippled masters. They originally starred in the 1979 movie "The Crippled Masters." I have tried more than once to watch that movie. The graphic abuse of the two cripples was horrible so I turned it off. In this movie they display their skills without being tormented first.

This movie was made in 1984, the end of an era for these movies. The golden age of martial arts movies was from 1967 to 1984. It ended in a fizzle in 1984 because everything that could be done had been done to death. Yet the genre did not die, instead a new wave began due to the genius of men like Jackie Chan and the Yuen brothers who completely reinvented the genre. This movie is not an example of that but an example of the done to death part.

The plot centers on Little Lu (Sonny Yu) who tends horses for the local Shaolin temple, and wants to learn skills that will help him defeat some corrupt officials who want to destroy it. He has a couple of friends (one with no arms, the other with no legs) who help him train using some bronze mechanical horses in a secret room in the temple.

Overall, this movie was pretty good. The bad parts were the dubbing, and the overuse of an echoey sound effect in some of the fights. The plot is a little strange, there were some confusing scenes that really weren't explained too well. And then there are the ridiculous bronze horses. Other than that, it was good.

The strength here was the well-choreographed fight scenes with various interesting weapons, and good editing. My version was full-screen pan and scan, but I could still see all of the action. Sometimes the fights in kung fu movies have obvious cutting points because the actors can only do a few moves at a time, but in this one I didn't really notice that. There was some minor gore, but not too much that one wouldn't expect from a movie of this type.