Hong Gil Dong

There are two comments on IMDB about this film which are interesting. One is from a Bulgarian user who says that this film was among the most popular movies in Bulgaria during the 1980s, and that it had more psychological depth than other martial arts movies being shown at the time.

Another is from a user from the ex-USSR who says that it was also very popular there, and recalls the blood spraying everywhere and so on. These comments are interesting because they show that there were many young people in socialist countries in the 1980s who found this sort of thing captivating, much as young people did in the West. The latter comment is particularly so because it might hint at part of what was called the 'cult of sex and violence' in the late 1980s in the USSR, i.e.

The uptake among youth of images of sex and violence that were increasingly available with glasnost. Yet in this case, this is a film with a clearly Communist message, even if it is delivered with more gratuitous blood and violence than one would normally see in a socialist film.