Xue bao

The escort company travels across the countryside during the opening credits. The home they arrive at seems abandoned. Chiang Pin is upset and the flashback explains he misses Chang Ching-Ching. Cut to a gang of thugs on the street push around a kid. He resists so they kill the boy and his mother. Cut again to the Chinese Opera. The big shots argue and Chen Hung-Lieh comes out on top. He insists the opera troop leave because he doesn't like them but wants to bed the girl. A fight breaks out and he is killed by electrocution. As the troop ponders what to do next his gang surrounds the theater to kill all of them. They escape but the girl is held hostage until they turn over the man responsible, or until she goes to bed with the new bad guy.

The fights are short, a good thing because they are not good. There is no focus, no power, same moves over and over, too close, too many short cuts - all the problems typical of poor fight choreography. The story line did not hold my attention and needed to fast forward through half of just to technically take credit for watching it.

IF you manage to watch this movie to about the 30 minute mark there is a memorable moment for the hard core fan of martial arts movies of the golden age from 1967 to 1984. The actor Got Siu-Bo (a.k.a. Ko Hsiao-Pao and about six other names) fights. Got Siu-Bo is an easily recognizable and one of my favorite character actors from this movie era. He has a remarkable 292 film credits. What is remarkable is that because of his body habitus he is always cast as the fat guy. I have noticed from watching so many of these movies that he is capable of so much more and whenever he was given the chance to actually act he rose to the occasion and stole the scene. See my other reviews for particulars. In this scene he leads his brothers to recover their master's corpse. He fights briefly and dies a good death.

My copy is a digital file that plays as widescreen (but not true widescreen) with Arabic over English subtitles on a HDTV.