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Good story, Not enough for a whole film

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.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

THE 72 DESPERATE REBELS is a mildly crazy Taiwanese martial arts movie starring the unlikely-named Barry Chan as the erstwhile hero whose job it is to take out a huge pirate gang led over by a hulking leader who dresses as a monk. What follows is a film fill of glitz, glamour and cheese, not to mention plentiful action; the problem is that it was done on a very low budget, which means it's all rather silly and inconsequential.The action scenes are adequate but far from the best the genre has to offer. Bai Ying and Chen Sing play in support. One of the supporting characters is called the Ghost Killer and proves to be a rival to Chan. The only part of the film I really liked is the character of the pirate leader, who has been clearly inspired by Richard Kiel's Jaws in the Bond films, as he has the same power teeth and imposing, over the top presence. There are some crazy antics at the climax involving his character which did raise a few smiles but overall this is a lacklustre movie.

The narrator explains all about the pirates. A general comes to arrest the leader but the giant bites off his sword and spits the tip back into his forehead. Barry Chan teams up with the kung fu chick and they hear that "Ghost Killer" is coming to take on all 72 of Pai Ying's men. But Barry and the girl take the challenge first.The plot here is really all about the martial arts. Barry does his usual competent job in the fight sequences but the girl has no power in her moves. She swings the sword as if afraid she might hurt the stunt men. Wan Shan as "Ghost Killer" arrives during the final fight. This movie makes every attempt to put something different on the screen, something the audience has not seen before. The problem is creativity is more than just being different. True creativity shows the audience what they haven't seen before plus what they never would have imagined seeing.This movie seems to set the format for the upcoming "ninja" movies. I mean the movies with "ninja" in the title but have nothing to do with ninjas, with outrageous colorful shiny costumes, with fights that defy every law of physics, with weapons never before seen and with nothing that makes sense in between the fights.

Forget the films of Ed Wood. This film is definitely a contender for the worst film of all time. Tension, drama, script, acting, direction you name it, this film fails at every level.Every cliché of the Kung-Fu genre appears in this film. A blind swordsman, an indestructible enemy, interminable sequences of Kung Fu that seem more like country dancing than a form of combat, a plot so inchorent if not stupid it should get the kind of critical acclaim reserved for incoherent art house films and heroes so irritating they deserve a fate worse than death.The most stupid scene is probably in the inital scene where the merits of the 72 killers are described, each group wearing different colour head band to signify the number of people they have killed.Enormously funny if watched with a group of people in the right frame of mind.

72 DESPERATE REBELS is not terribly well-plotted or edited, nor is the kung fu what it should be in a film of this type, but it does have a certain visual flair and enough fight scenes to keep fans interested if not always seriously engaged. The plot has to do with a trio of heroes (two men, one woman) who take it upon themselves to try and bring down a powerful outlaw named Po Ho Nin (Pai Ying) who has an army of 72 killers and warriors whose combined skills have wreaked havoc throughout the region. The heroes are joined at one point by a blind swordsman (Lung Fei) who teaches them to 'fight in blindness' and, later, by a notorious swordsman who, they hope, can lead them to victory. At one point the heroes have to fight in different chambers set up by the bad guys, including the Tiger, Leopard, Crane and Phoenix chambers. In the latter, they are assaulted by hundreds of bells being rung overhead or thrown at them by women fighters.The villain's personal bodyguards include a midget and a giant. The giant (played by Siu Kam) has the same glandular condition as seven-foot-two actor Richard Kiel and sports a row of gold teeth, recalling Kiel's role as the steel-toothed 'Jaws' in a pair of James Bond films. The giant bites on opponents' swords and breaks them with his teeth. The running joke is that, like Jaws in the Bond films, every time he's left for dead, he always rises up in the next scene to continue the battle. The stars are not terribly charismatic. The female fighters are not memorable and not particularly skilled, although they are attractive. The only name actors in the cast are Tien Peng as one of the heroes; Pai Ying as villain Po Ho Nin; Lung Fei as the Blind Swordsman; Tsai Hung as one of the lead villains; and Chen Sing in one short fight scene as one of Po's warriors.The plot is somewhat incoherent, the actors not at their the best, the English dubbing awkward, and the kung fu too reliant on gimmickry, such as incredibly high leaps up great distances. However, there is a certain amount of imagination on display and the giant is quite a novelty.