Tag: trash

To Kill With Intrigue(1977)

The battle of Jackie Chan vs Lo Wei continues with another dud here. Another film with a bad, go-nowhere plot, and to make things worse, the filming conditions were apparently awful. Things between Lo Wei and Jackie are close to reaching critical mass, with Jackie only working for Wei for a handful of movies after this.

The movie is another generic revenge movie, with a gang killing Jackie’s character Cao Lei’s family. The leader of the gang, Chin Chang Yin then falls in love with Cao Lei. You know where this is going. It’s a boring, simplistic plot that they still manage to overcomplicate.

Fight 1- The Killer Bee gang attacks Cao Lei’s family, and proceed to have the most unimaginative 70’s kung fu flick fight you can imagine. Just really run of the mill stuff, and to top it off, it is poorly shot and also has superfluous wire work. There is literally nothing of note here, even though it goes a few minutes and is vital to the plot going forward. As stated above, this is where the villains kill Lei’s family. It sucks for them, and it sucks for the viewer. (Rating 1/10)

Fight 2 – Chang Yin has nursed Lei back to health after the previous battle, but he is none the wiser that she is the same person. A crew of flunkies show up, and of course they attempt to rape her, because that is what happens in all of these films. Cao Lei drops in to save her, since she didn’t fight back in an attempt to keep her cover. Another boring fight, and Lei easily handles the street toughs and they run away. I want to run away(Rating 1/10).

Fight 3 – Me against this movie. Choreography sucks and I am losing.

Fight 4 – Cao Lei is still being nursed back to health by Chin Chang Yin, when some mercenaries attack. They look like Chinese mariachis tbh. This fight is a little better than the previous ones, as there seems to be some semblance of effort. Maybe because they were indoors and Jackie was freezing to death. Lei is handling the 3 man easily, but one blow hurts him badly since he’s not healthy. He then kicks one of them through the roof of his thatch roof cottage. There is some weird stuff in here, like Jackie pinning a dude to a tree that is at least 20 feet away with a spear. It ends when Cao Lei is gassed by this guy.

There is some ok environmental use in this fight, and it’s overall a decent enough effort, even with the very blatant and overused wire work. (Rating 3.5/10)

Fight 5 – Cao Lei and his friends have tracked down the mercenaries, and a man who appears to be their master. He is the standard old master type. Long white hair, long beard. Super old but kicks everyone’s ass. They fight for a moment with the master of course having the upper hand, until some of the thugs jump in to help him. Cao Lei fights them off until the master rejoins, and the action here is actually kinda frantic and fast in a good way. Jackie fights about 6 guys, and there is some really decent weapon and prop work here. Cao Lei again sustains many wounds, including being stabbed and his mates take over from there. Not the best thing ever, but not the worst either. (Rating 3.5/10)

Fight 6 – It turns out the villain all along was the governor of Hunan. He doesn’t show up until late in the film, so that makes sense.

This is kind of a montage, with Cao Lei attempting and failing to beat Chin Chang Yin in order to prove that he is ready to advance to the final battle. He trains, then tries and loses multiple times. He never beats her, but he goes anyway. Nothing really special here, and there are some absurd things going on, physics wise. (Rating 2/10)

Fight 7 – This is the climax. Cao Lei should have trained more because the governor kicks the snot out of him. Lei fights him somewhat evenly, but can’t seem to really hurt the man. Cao Lei then deduces that the governor’s weak point is the top of his head, because he is wearing a headpiece. Ok. Lei eventually gets the headpiece off and is able to inflict some damage, and finally win the fight.

The fight choreography in this final battle was actually really solid, when it was just straight up with no nonsense. Unfortunately, there is A LOT of nonsense. Several really bad edits and cuts. A few instances of that weird special effect that Hong Kong films liked to use, where the actor jumps off of something, but it’s played in reverse so it looks like they are jumping really high. Had this been a couple of minutes shorter, and played to it’s strength, I would have liked this a lot. As it stands, it was frustrating. (Rating 4/10).

Final verdict: SKIP IT. This is a BAD movie, on par with The Killer Meteors. It almost hurts my feelings that this is the longest review I’ve done. You can tell the actors were freezing in every outdoor shot, and I’d say 70% of this was outdoors. I had to rewind several scenes to get the idea of what was going on, and I feel like I’m still off on a few things.

The Killer Meteors(1976)

Not going to lie, I’ve been dreading this one. The action in this movie is bad, and the overall movie, abandoned plots and bad editing make this a mess. I believe Jackie has gone on record as saying this is one of his least favorite films, and it is pretty bad. Jackie does serve as stunt coordinator, and this is the rare film where he plays the villain. There was some attempt to try something new here with some sci-fi elements, at least, and also has star power in Jimmy Wang Yu.

This will also be one of the rare occasions(until his later career) that Jackie Chan would use wire work in his action scenes.

Fight 1 – This occurs fairly early, and features a little bit of the wire work that I spoke of above. Jackie, as Immortal Meteor(this guy…) has attempted to have his guards kill our hero, played by the great Jimmy Wang Yu(Killer Weapon…..state of these names). Weapon of course easily beats the guards and has a showdown with Meteor.

They fight to a stalemate, until Meteor catches Weapon in a trap, and has him imprisoned. The action was very good here, but maybe relied a bit too much on wire work for my liking, as I’ve never been a fan of that style. It was a more “fantastical” fight than you’d normally get from Jackie. Whenever it was played more down to Earth, this was threatening to be really good. (Rating 3/10).

Fight 2 – Jackie’s involvement in this movie is limited, as this is the climatic scene, and only the second bit of action he has. Meteor appeared to die via poison earlier, but SURPRISE he’s not dead, and comes back at the end when Weapon appears to have won the battle.

This fight is really weird. They fight atop vertical wooden posts, with spikes underneath. Very dangerous. For such an unconventional setting, this fight feels really boring, and there is never a sense of danger felt. Two of the great martial arts stars of all time, and you get THIS. It ends when the Immortal Meteor is killed by an actual meteor. (Rating 1/10)

Verdict is SKIP IT. The nonsensical plot about magic meteors, the very uninspired action and shoddy production make this an overall stinker. There is a subplot with Killer Weapon’s bandit friends that literally doesn’t get resolved or even hinted at.

At this point, it was very clear that Lo Wei(the director) was a bit of a one hit wonder, and was very fortunate to be the one to direct Bruce Lee’s first two films. Every movie after that was an attempt to replicate that success and shoehorn actors into something that didn’t work for them. Jackie has gone on record to voice how frustrated he was at the time, as he felt like his creativity was being stunted. Put this one in the bin.