L'homme qui défia la brigade des tigres

A champion level fighter who's basically overcome all the criminal threats in his area decides to use his skills to exact his own special brand of vigilante justice against those he blames for the death of his crippled trainer. His girl and others meanwhile try and convince him to let the law deal with it but his anger and frustration is so intense he refuses to stop his vigilante ways no matter what.

This film is interesting in some ways. I like the angle involving vigilantism and that the film actually seems to concern itself with it as an issue, something of a rarity when it comes to Kung Fu films. The final fight also proves quite thrilling and makes use of some rather unique locations for such a climactic showdown. That said, this film does have its problems too. There's way too much fighting, in fact fighting seems to be almost always going on way too often way too long, a lot of which unfortunately just isn't all that good in terms of execution. Still if you like your Kung Fu films to have lots and lots of fighting action and raw intensity, you'll most likely enjoy this.

Despite the great-sounding title, IRON OX, THE TIGER'S KILLER is an entirely cheap and near worthless kung fu flick that comes to us from Taiwan. A relatively early entry in the genre, this bears all the pitfalls of the way this genre is treated in the west: appalling dubbing in the English version, poor and grainy picture quality, and a fullscreen print that robs the fight scenes of the full impact of their choreography.

The tale is about a champion fighter who takes on all comers in order to get revenge for a past transgression. Eventually he comes up again some real bad guys and the scene is set for some brutal fights to the death. Not that there's much plot here; IRON OX, THE TIGER'S KILLER is basically a series of fight scenes that seem to go on and on and on without end.

The fights start off completely unmemorable but do pick up a bit in the second half thanks to some novel surroundings. There's a bit where participants are battling on a speeding cart which reminded me a little of the BEN HUR climax but my favourite moment is the fight on the slate roof which looks really dangerous. Watch out for the bizarre domino game where the loser drains his blood until death. There were no actors in this I recognised and the martial arts is only just about adequate, so it's only one for the true genre aficionados.

Revenge was the most frequent plot driver of the era and genre. But it's invariably a sympathetic underdog vs. A Big Evil person or group for noble reasons. Not so here, Grasshopper. This protagonist is a smug jerk, molded that way by an even assholier teacher. The teacher forces a fight against guys who've done no wrong, and who even try to walk away, but the old schmuck winds up dead by accident. All this because our "hero" was jealous over a woman he wanted who had already rejected him.

Plenty of fights ensue, some of which are almost ridiculously long. They could have been more satisfying if we had a customary Good Guy to root for. This isn't the worst flick the Hong Kong movie mills of the 1970s cranked out, but it's a lot closer to the bottom than to the middle of the pack.

The hero has learned everything from his master except how not to be a jerk. Five guys, the Five Tigers (one of them a policeman) are responsible for the death of Wong Goon-Hung's master. He becomes a vigilante and takes them out one by one. Or is this all because of a girl?

This movie has a lot of fights. I do not have a problem with that. Fans of martial arts movies today expect the fights to reveal character or advance the plot. In the 1970s such advanced concepts for more sophisticated audiences simply did not exist. In this movie there are lots of fights that add nothing to character or plot but they are all different. None of the sequences seem to be the same moves over and over again. Different sets and obstacles such as the Shaolin poles and a runaway cart are used. All the outdoor scenes seemed to have been filmed during a tropical windstorm. The last fight is on top of a barn. The set itself seemed to be a real danger to the fighters. For 1974, this made the difference between the same old thing and better than the same old thing.

There is a twist on the old revenge plot in this movie that I will not reveal. I will only add that, for me, it didn't work.

My copy is a digital file that plays on a HDTV as wide screen but a bit small. It is dubbed into English by the "A team" of voice overs so the dialog is flows without being a distraction or laughable.

I rate this a tad above average for the year and genre on the fights alone. I recommend it for other hard core fans like myself.

Badly dubbed, this film contains nearly 99 per cent fighting and nothing else. The ridiculous speed of the punches and kicks begins to become tedious as does the fights that never seem to end, although the few lines in the film are genuinely funny,

Brilliance that unfortunately is not repeated any where in the fight scenes.

Don't bother, theres plenty more that are plenty better.