^ Looks up at
@Huntn 's image and laughs at Kevin J. O'Connor.
Five Superfighters (1979)
Lo Mar's energetic kung fu flick focuses on the downtrodden Master Wan and his three young students. While they are trying to make a living, a mysterious fighter in black (sporting a cape no less), challenges all of them to a duel. Said baddie is an 'expert in correcting bad kung fu'. He corrects not only the students, but even their sifu too.
The boys leave their wounded mentor behind without so much as a peep, but they have a plan. To find masters who will teach them various styles of kung fu over six months. At the end of that stretch, the boys will return to their master to avenge him from the wicked Corrector. In their absence, Master Wan unfortunately crosses paths with the Corrector yet again and is beaten even harder.
This is a good thing as it pushes not only the students, but the Master to up his martial arts game too. Master Wan leans in on his wine addiction to become a master of drunken sword. Soooooooo...when the boys return to Wan at the six month mark, they bring the Corrector with them thinking they can avenge Wan.
This is a kung fu movie where the masters are infinitely more interesting and fun to watch than their students. The villain and catalyst is played by Kwan Fung who should have been a member of the Venoms Mob as his acrobatic, bare hand and weapons skill easily matches the most versatile members of the Mob. After his first few films, Kwan was demoted to playing older sifus who do not do much, which was unfortunate as the man was brilliant with pole weapons and very physical forms of kung fu. The choreography by Hsu Hsia is quite good. He balances White Crane, shaolin rod, acrobatics, Monkey style, drunken sword and various kicking techniques into a very fluid and fun series of fights. As someone who loves White Crane style, it was great to see it (even if the "master" teaching it to one of Wan's pupils was not convincing.)
Some of the performers playing the younger cast are pretty good, including Leung Siu Lung's little brother as a rather spirited kicker (he's nowhere near the foot beast as his older brother, but very talented all the same.) The two other standouts beyond Kwan Fung, are Hau Chui-Sing as Wan and Wong Mei-Mei whose amazing high kicks are employed here, in
Monkey Kung Fu (with much of the same cast), and even against Ti Lung in
The Convict Killer. Why she didn't have a bigger career based on her footwork alone is beyond me.
I've seen this movie before and sort of blew it off outside of Kwan and Wong Mei-Mei (who teaches the deadly kick style), but as I revisited this a couple of cliches come to mind: "If you want something done right, do it yourself," and "Don't judge a book by it's cover." Added bonus, some of the humor is actually fun (although
Monkey Kung Fu's humor feels even more natural and goes into LOL territory in spots.) There's the also the underlying theme of respecting your elders which is huge in Chinese culture and it was interesting to see how that was interpreted here. As simple as this movie is, it's a blast and another interesting Shaw Brothers love letter to kung fu.
The Mr Hyde aspect of this lastest version was a bit pathetic.
