La furia de Shaolin

This is low budget beyond belief. The dubbing is hideous and the copy I have has no Chinese soundtrack option. There's no drinking, except the beggar looks pretty blitzed most of the time. There's no drunken fighting. There's no Monkey style. This film however does have everything you would expect from an old Hong Kong low budget Kung Fu film. The bad guy has a Fu Manchu and long white hair. The good guys are humble and ragged. Everyone is bent on revenge. The fighting is just great! All its low budget stupidity and lame slapstick comedy aside, it has beautiful fighting. And seriously, a lot of these movies are just like blue films from the 70s.. You fast forward through the plot and get right to the action.

For the dollar I paid, I am totally not disappointed.

Basically, the movie is about this guy named the Silver Eagle who is going around fighting and killing great martial artist "masters" so he can become the best. He kills the master of the Shaolin Temple, so the dead man's granddaughter and son (Mo) both try to take their revenge. Mo man learns to fight from an old beggar who also teaches him humility and finally the beggar, the granddaughter, and Mo join together to do battle with The Silver Eagle. My comments are somewhat short, but I just wanted to say that I did like this movie because the fighting scenes weren't that bad. However, if you're interested in seeing monkey kung fu or especially drunken monkey kung fu (which is not easy to find - I've only heard of it in maybe two movies) you will be disappointed as there is none. I repeat, there is neither the drunken monkey style NOR the monkey style of fighting as the title of the movie would lead you to suspect. I bought the movie and found out by watching it!

In the early '80s, a series of action comedies appeared starring one "Elton Chong" and released to American Markets under the creative credits of Hong Kong hacksters Josdeph Lai and Godfrey Ho, although they were more likely made in Korea by an uncredited crew and bought-out, re-edited, and very poorly dubbed. Most of these films are actually entertaining; Elton Chong is actually very likable, and he can handle broad comedy well and still perform fight-scenes with considerable credibility if not much style.

The main problem with all these films is that the re-editing was done with blunt scissors, reels are re-arraigned with no reason whatsoever, and so the story-line gets corrupted beyond recognition.

Western audiences may also find the broad, even low, humor of these films a little difficult to take; but if you just ask yourselves what a film starring Bruce Lee with the Three Stooges might have been like, and just leave oneself open to some plain old-fashioned stupid slapstick, it's not all that bad, and not badly done.

Anyway, this is one of the better Elton Chong action-comedies, largely because the relationship between Chong and "Mike Wong" as the old beggar who has to teach him Kung-Fu is especially personable; the two made several films together and definitely had a chemistry working between them. (NAME ALERT: "Mike Wong" was also used occasionally by producer Lai for Casanova Wong.) No, it doesn't make much sense, but as a silly bit of chop-socky fluff, it's definitely entertaining.

A chef, Mo, works for a kung fu school but is booted out for bunking off his duties and trying to learn kung fu. Once out he makes his way into the town and gets a job at a local restaurant but gets into trouble again when he keeps having fights with some local bullies, who work for Silver Eagle, a silver-haired villain who likes fighting top fighters to prove he's the best- he killed the chef's master... In order to get revenge, Mo teams up with a drunken vagrant with a red nose, who makes Mo train in order that he might get revenge. A woman whose grandfather was killed by Silver Eagle joins Mo and Red nose in their quest to beat Silver Eagle...

A knock off of Drunken Master, but not engaging or well constructed enough to be on the same level. The actor playing Mo is rather annoying at times. The training segment is weak, not very well structured. It's rather routine, with the fights bumping up the entertainment value. The finale is good. The villain has some menace and a mirror contraption to help him win. It's cheaply made, but not awful - still watchable. For Kung fu fans!