Chou tou xiao zi

This is one of my personal favorite martial arts films starring Sammo. Aside from some stabbings, this is a very light-hearted movie. Sammo Hung portrays an orphan who helps rebels fight against an evil and incompetent emperor. As usual, Sammo doesn't act like a macho fighter, but rather a goofy character wearing a filthy wig while showing off his martial arts skills. The talented Shih Tien co-stars, but is reduced to a whipping boy for the other characters to mistreat. One of the best gags in the film is where an army of cows rescues Sammo and his friends when they're being attacked by imperial troops.

A very entertaining martial arts-comedy. I highly recommend it.

This film stars Sammo Hung, an actor and director you might be familiar with, though he isn't a household name. A few years ago, he played the fat cop on the silly TV show "Martial Law". At this point in his long career, he was so obese that many of his stunts seemed to be done by stunt men. However, earlier in his career, he directed many of Jackie Chan's films and made a few of his own. Even in his younger days, he was pretty chunky and far from the typical martial arts hero image. However, with his extensive training as a Chinese acrobat, he was surprisingly light on his feet and could do some interesting tricks in his films. The problem in this particular one is that the movie was supposed to be funny but I never found myself laughing, as the jokes were very broad and the film just bored me to tears. Cheap and forgettable--this isn't one of Sammo's better films (unless you want to see him smashing clay pots over his head--there's a LOT of this in the film).

Oh, and lest I forget, the version I saw was the English dubbed one. The dubbing was just awful and the accents sounded a lot like Eric Idle and a lot of working class Englishmen--not the sort of accents you'd expect for this movie and they sounded pretty lame.

I thought it was a good old-school kung fu movie, but I expected a little bit more from Sammo Hung. I agree with the other comment I read, that the part with the cows was the best and original. I've never seen anything like it. I also liked that Shih Tien watched everybody's head to find out if it was Dirty Su. I did not like a lot of jokes, I also think that Yueh Hua (I'm not sure) who played the right hand of Shih Tien is not funny at all. And also the way it was dubbed into English was terrible.

I feel more like an archaeologist examining the remains of an ancient city rather than a movie reviewer. Only a VHS pan and scan with English dubbing converted to a digital file is left of this original film creation. That means as much as a third of the movie is missing from the sides and the dialog is at best 60% correct in the translation. Also the resolution only captures about 20% of the original film quality. Realistically the only person watching this movie almost 40 years after it was filmed would be a hard core Sammo Hung fan looking to view every movie the man ever made. I am one of those people. My review has little to add to the obvious. Dean ,Carter, and Sammo collaborated to make some of the best movies of the genre but this is not one of those. Why? I think mostly because the filthy head gag is funny at most two or three times and cannot possibly make up for the otherwise lack of comedy. Outside of that not every movie can be your best. This is simply slightly below average stuff when compared to everything else released in a very prolific year for martial arts movies.

This is the worst of the Sammo Hung films of the old-school chop-socky 'fu film era that I've yet seen. Hung is burdened with an ugly wig - a wig conventional to Cantonese comedy, it indicates that the character never washes his hair. This would be mere annoyance, except that the wig is actually the whole point of the movie! Hung is even made to use it as a weapon in hand-to-hand combat! Hung did not write, direct, or even choreograph this mess. The film is clear indication that the chop-socky film producers had not the slightest idea of what to do with the new generation of 'fu stars showing up in the period 1978-1980. Obviously, knowing Hung was beginning to earn a reputation for comedy, the producer decided to hire him for what the producer obviously thought was a funny script. The humor is so low, you can scrape it off your shoe. Hung mugs like the village idiot. This is a far cry from the sophisticated comedy Hung himself writes and directs. And the kung-fu? well, if the dirt on the top of a guy's head counts as a weapon, what sort of fighting can one expect from this? The surviving English-dub video of this film is the worst pan-and-scan job I've seen in a long time, and the dubbing ridiculous.

Remember that Hung had already directed the far more polished Iron Fisted Monk by the time he made this film. Clearly he's just picking up a few bucks as quickly as possible. Wish I had known him back then, I'd have paid him not to make the movie! The two stars is for the performance of Carter Wong as the bad-guy of the pic.