I don't recall when I first saw this, but I must have watched an English subtitled version, as I gave it 9 stars and the dubbed version I just watched on a Ground Zero DVD doesn't quite live up to that level of praise. In part, this is due to some goofy English voicing, but there also appears to be a bit of dumbing down of what I remember to be the plot. That said, the film also suffers from excessive undercranking... and I'm not talking just about the fights, given that it's fairly standard to undercrank those in order to speed up the action. No, I'm talking about EVERYTHING being undercracked. While this is not quite as obvious as it is with a lot of old silent comedies, it's still fairly obvious. Even if one were not to notice the actors sometimes walking at an unusual clip, it's hard not to recognize the voice actors being forced to talk a mile-a-minute in an attempt to fit all of the dialogue in. To this end, I should note that the official running time is listed as 90 minutes, but the Ground Zero version only runs 85 minutes.
All that aside, this is a fun film, suggesting that the real reason the Qing authorities took a disliking to the Shaolin monks was that they were harboring a young Ming Princess... a seeming uncredited (at least in this dubbed version) LIAO Li-chun.
CHEN Chien-chang, aka CHEN Kin-cheung (and credited elsewhere as LUNG Siu-Fei) starts as the official escort who helps the Ming Princess escape to Shaolin Temple in an effort to avoid capture by Qing soldiers. Once inside the Temple, the escort trains to become a fighting monk, receiving some of his training from the Temple's top fighter, a peculiar Abbot with a taste for wine (Mark LONG; aka LUNG Kuan-wu; aka GHOSTFACE KILLER). Though this Drunken Master is a former associate of a Qing General (CHANG Shan; aka CHARNG Shan; aka CHEN Shan), and though this General will stop at nothing to extract the princess from Shaolin, the drunken abbot sides with the Princess against his friend in a dramatic scene involving multiple toasts to the end of their alliance.
As a Joseph Kuo flick, it should go without saying that the film presents some excellent martial arts. Interestingly, these demonstrations come - not only from the three male leads - but also from an unheralded actress named LING Chien (aka LING Sen). Playing a goat herder oddly named Cowgirl, it would be nice if this actress were to one day be given her due (OK, I'll admit it... I have a bit of a crush).
