Seen any good Kung-Fu flicks of late?

[QualityChimp]

My wife wanted to watch Lewis last night, so I took the opportunity to watch Police Story!

I didn't have chance to look at the special features, but the Bey Logan commentary and Jackie Chan interview only seem to be the stand out ones on this disc.

I'm sure you've all seen Police Story, so I won't bang on about it too much, but it's an absolute classic in kung-fu cinema.

They comedy elements have never really sat that well with me, but aside from that, the stunts and fights are brilliant.

Stand-out moments have to be the car/bus chase at the start, jump into a pool from on top of a building and the bar-raising finale fight in a shopping mall.

[monel]

Police Story 1 & 2 are just great. My fave bit from the both of them is the playground fight in part 2. I love the modern day setting for kung fu films.

[Arashikage]

Return of the Streetfighter is definitely worth a watch. It isn't quite as good as the first film but it does hold up on it's own merits. It is literally eye popping

[prinnysquad]

Now, tomorrow night...

Do I watch

i) Challenge of the Masters - a Lau Kar Leung Shaw Bros film featuring Gordon Liu?
or
ii) Shaolin Temple Against Lama - an Alexander Lo/ Alan Chui shapes classic?

Mark Pollard's review on kungfucinema:
"In a word, Shaolin Temple against Lama is unstoppable. It’s over-the-top, martial arts nonsense in all its glory and I wouldn’t have it any other way. The plot could make more sense and the characters could be more unique, but the sheer volume of acrobatic combatants clobbering each other for nearly ninety minutes between short bursts of zany dialogue is more than enough reason to highly recommend this film."

Decisions, decisions...

[monel]

I've never seen the second film, based on Mark Pollard's review I would go with that film. Challenge Of The Masters is a good film although not as good as the sequel, Martial Club, which features an absolutely amazing final duel.

I think Challenge Of The Masters influenced Drunken Master in so much as featuring a young, immature Wong Fei Hung who is sent off to train with a friend of his father.

Have you watched Legend Of A Fighter yet?

[prinnysquad]

*bows head shamefully*

No

I've got Martial Club on order

[monel]

Just watched Death Games.

It's a 90s HK flick witha revenge based story about a drug dealer who was killed by Leung Kar Yan and his friend, but the villain's wife and daughter was killed too. Flash forward 20 or so years and the drug dealer's son wants revenge.

The film stars Fan Siu Wong who you may know as the star of Story Of Ricky. He was recently in Ip Man and although he has featured in a fair few films (most of which I need to see) he never achieved the level of stardom he deserved, evidenced by his amazing performance in Death Games. His fighting skills are of a very high level, although of course credit must be given to the choreographer.

Billy Chow and Ngai Sing also feature in the film as villains, I wish the fight with Chow could have been longer but it was still a good one. I watched this film a few years ago and after rewatching it can say that this is the reason why I watch kung-fu films, the action is that good.

I'm trying to track down a dvd of it, I only have the out of print vcd. I think FLK have it but it could be just a transfer of the vcd but I may have to take the risk and order it. If you want a copy I can sort you out, but action wise this film comes with the highest of recommendations from me.

[prinnysquad]

That sounds fabby fab Shinobi. Good luck with the search, and I'll dust down my begging mat

http://www.fareastflix.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=deathgamesdvd&Store_Code=FEF

No idea about the reliability of these guys.

[monel]

Yeah I found it for sale on that site too but it's the vcd converted to dvd...

I'll probably purchase it from them or FLK.

[QualityChimp]

That sounds great, Shinobi!
Looks like there's some nunchaku action in that too.

If you do manage to get hold of it, maybe we could arrange a swapsie?
I'm sure I must have something you want to borrow in return!

My copy of My Lucky Stars arrived yesterday from eBay. It was less than a fiver and is in good condition, so I'm going to try squeezing in a viewing of that over the weekend.

[monel]

I think the dvd will take quite a while to turn up so I will send you and Prinny the vcd. The dvd is most likely just a transfer of the vcd, anyway but I just have to have it.

[prinnysquad]

Cool beans.

Well chaps, I'm afraid I'm going to have to lay down a skankfest, although not on a film, but on me.

I've 'watched' Shaolin Temple Against Lama tonight, but I refuse to review it properly. I'd had a headache for about 8 hours by the time I sat down to watch it, and the viewing suffered many other distractions. Anything I say (bar technical info) will give the film no justice.

Though, even in the piss poor state I watched it in, it seemed a good watch. There was a lot of fighting, and I mean, a LOT. The story seemed a little bit simplistic, although I'd not want to confirm that without a re-watch.

I can comment on the technical aspects of the Red Sun disc I watched though. Awful, awful print, like the screen is smeared in vaseline. The dubbing is pretty woeful. It's that annoying style of dubbing where the speaker stops his ... words at random points in ... the sentence to ... match the original speaker who ... is obviously talking in ... a different language. It just looks so silly, I'd rather have a consistent, more emotional performance, even if it means crap lipsynch, than an attempt to shoehorn the speech timings in.

The fights seem very busy and energetic. The camera often seems undercranked (although excitingly so), and even overcranked on occasion. The locations in the film are often grand.

Desperately need to rewatch this, preferably on a better print, and definitely in a de-skanked status. It seems like a really good watch, a 4-star effort.

[monel]

I wouldn't have bothered trying to watch anything with a headache, shows your dedication I guess.

About the disc-I stopped getting films from these bootleg companies after a couple of bad experiences. One was with Martial Club, before the remastered versions were released by Celestial I bought a disc by one of these dodgy companies and the intro was pretty much unwatchable. The disc also wouldn't let me skip certain chapters, at the time though I thought it was worth it because it was a film I badly wanted to see.

[prinnysquad]

lol have you ever watched the Region 1 ADV release of Destroy All Monsters? I'm not too sure about how legal it is (I think it IS official), but it's all one chapter. And there's no title screen. You put the disc in - bang! There's the start. Want to watch the last battle? Get your finger on that fast forward button.

Martial Club on order is this one:


which seems pretty good. I only got the Red Sun copy of STAL because I couldn't find it anywhere else. It's a widescreen copy but seems to be transferred straight from VHS, with hollow sound and the odd line down the print. Some of Red Sun's stuff is of decent quality, but like you say, they're a mixed bag. I just wish some of these classics would get proper releases, so you didn't feel so dirty going to these measures.

The headache ... I was round my mate's house, it was Kung Fu Film Night, and I thought it might just go away once I relaxed. It didn't

[QualityChimp]

Oh dear, I seem to have gone a little silly and started picking up some of the HKL discs I should've got first time.

I've got Police Story 2 (£4), Winners & Sinners (£4.50) and City Hunter (£2), but I wanted to get all the Lucky Stars films so I did a deal with an eBay seller and got My Lucky Stars and Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Stars for £15 each, which is much more than the previous purchases!

I watched Police Story with the Bey Logan commentary and it was great. He possibly revealed one too many secrets, but it doesn't totally remove the movie magic!

Last night I watched Police Story 2. My main problem with this when I first watched it was superkicker Benny Lai's deaf mute character. On the English dub, it sounds like John Major having sex and that's all I seemed to take away from it.

Thankfully, I got to do watch it in Cantonese with English subs and managed to avoid it. I'd forgotten how many great sequences there are in it! Crossing the street to fight a gang in a restaurant, the playground fight and the final battle are all really impressive. It's not as good as the original, but still has several standout moments.

The commentary is by Jude Poyer, which is OK, but he's no Bey Logan.