Tie jiao wa

1973 Taiwan with Nancy Yen Nan-see, Tien Peng, Lung Fei, and action director Ng Tung-Kiu I am currently in the process of watching my collection of about 3000 martial arts movies in chronological order. To get straight to the point – They all look alike quickly and what a pleasure for something different. The movie starts out as a total stinker with a feeble demonstration of martial arts techniques that would not even cause a bruise and then the USA title "Murder Masters of Kung Fu". Major cringe moment. The story did not make any sense even though every time a character spoke it was exposition. There was one great moment of dialog from Lung Fei though, where he tells the girl "Sure I said that - to get in your pants" (paraphrased – see the movie for the actual lines.) Despite the bad acting and vague story line we know why we are watching this – for the fights. This movie makes a good effort to show something different and realistic with the fights. I'll give one example – the karate guy gets into seiza position (kneeling Japanese style – Google it if you don't know karate) and takes on the kung fu challengers. The fight choreography demonstrates ground work and submission holds that – in 1973 – you only saw elsewhere in Bruce Lee's movies. After watching this I'm looking for all the movies of the action director Ng Tung-Kiu, this guy knew how to put a good fight sequence on film. Plus some of the sequences were remarkably long single takes. This movie is mandatory for all fans of the genre and I rate it highly.