...In other words, a typical Hong Kong film of the early-to-mid-'70s. "The Bloody Fists" is yet another entry in the Chinese-versus-Japanese subgenre of martial arts movies, so if you're looking for a novel storyline you'd better look elsewhere. Cackling, mean-spirited 'Japanese' villains (led by Shaw Brothers stalwart Chen Kuan-tai) heap unbelievable abuse on the residents of a small Chinese village until stocky, mustachioed Chen Sing, a kung-fu expert and a fugitive from the law, finally snaps and gives them a taste of their own brutality. The central conflict of the film involves a secret stash of 'dragon herb'--which cures the plague--and the attempts of the evil Japanese to get their hands on it. If you've seen hundreds of these movies already, there's no need for you to go out of your way to see "The Bloody Fists". The fight scenes are competent but unremarkable and the film doesn't really hit its stride until the end, when Chen Sing and Chen Kuan-tai literally rip into one another on a beach--the former wielding a sai, the latter a nunchaku. The true charm of this film resides in the little things: the soundtrack (listen for the theme from "The Young and the Restless" and even a few seconds of the early Black Sabbath standard 'The Wizard'!), the very unprofessional-looking credit sequence, the crude sets and costumes, and just the atmosphere of the whole damned thing. No one made movies like the Hong Kong independent studios of this period, and if you grew up watching "Kung Fu Theater" on Sunday afternoons as I did, you know precisely what I'm talking about :) One more thing that makes "The Bloody Fists" entertaining: Chen Kuan-tai's character appears early in the film, but Kuan-tai himself doesn't show up until about a quarter of the way through. He actually has a masked stand-in! For no good reason, because we already know his name and intentions, the character walks around with a black cloth on the lower half of his face. Finally, enraged by the presence of Chen Sing's character, he removes the mask...and one of his henchmen whispers to another, "He's taking it off. That means he'll do it (kill Chen Sing) himself!" Shades of Bela Lugosi and Ed Wood's chiropractor in "Plan 9 From Outer Space"? Yes, that's the kind of silly, tacky film this is! Now you have a pretty good idea of whether or not you'll enjoy it.
