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Fresh and Exciting

Don't Believe the Hype

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

This movie is why we have kung fu movie fans. It stands as an excellent example of genre. First we have the fights. Lui Chia Liang is such a master of fight direction I believe he could put my grandmother on stage and choreograph an entertaining fight with her beating up Bruce Lee and it would be believable. The fights here are masterpieces. Gordon against Lung Wei Wang in the alley was a classic. Gordon and Kara and Lung Wei Wang can all both act and demonstrate real skills. The spirit of martial arts is also respected. Chivalry and respect is emphasised. Lung Wei Wang does not portray his usual one dimensional bad guy but respects the rules. All the technicalities aside it's just a fun film to watch.

What starts out as a friendly lion dance soon turns ugly. Before you know it, kung fu experts Huang and Yinlin have decided to test their rspective skills- against someone OTHER than each other... Whoever scores the most punches the fastest, wins. Both men conspire with strangers to win, but the end result is a draw. Zhou then beats them both. The next day, after a brief interlude in a brothel, Yinlin is injured by a powerful fighter, Shan Xiong, who refuses to take a dive. Juying, Yinlin's sister, blames Huang. All of this leads to a close-quarters confrontation in the narrow confines of "Zig-zag Lane." Gordon Liu is as deft at comedy as he is drama or melodrama, and MARTIAL CLUB allows him to run the gamut. A solid seven.

This is a small wonder from the canon of Liu Chia Liang. The martial arts are absolutely excellent and the only reason that this isn't as well known as 36th Chamber or Dirty Ho is the story. The film is about three kung fu schools in Guangdong and the efforts of the "evil" school to disrupt and discredit the two "good" schools. A lot of yelling and fighting goes on but no-one is killed. The film is lighthearted with little of the seriousness of 36th Chamber or other films. Also, the film sort of stops with out much of a resolution.The director appears at the beginning to give the audience a little lesson about the etiquette of Lion Dancing. The rest of the film he spends behind the camera directing some of the most chaotic fight scenes I've seen. The scene in the theater is unbelievable at times. There is so much going on it's hard to focus. Liu Chia Hui, Kara Hui and Wang Lung Wei dominate the film with their martial skills. Usually playing a villain, Wang Lung Wei is great as a northern Chinese Kung Fu master who is being used by the bad kung fu school. His intensity is unusual among his cohorts at the Shaw Bros. studios. It shows that he was an actual kung fu master outside the movie set.A slow start with a lion dance is the only real problem. After that, it's a great kung fu film. The final dual in an alley is an absolute classic.

The fight scenes between Liu (student) & Wang (instructor) are just plain beautiful, especially at the end. This is the only movie I know of where Wang Lung Wei could be considered a "good guy".