Shi hou

It opens to the lumber mill and the Chinese workers are exploited. A fight breaks out and Cliff Lok attempts to stop the fight. He seems to have difficulty pulling his punches though as he kills the foreman. Quite a bit of melodrama follows as he must now run away and leave his ailing mother. He and his cohorts end up in the very same exploited worker situation but now in Thailand.

This movie has all the look and feel of Bruce Lee's "The Big Boss" and that includes the role played by Lee Kwan. The big boss here is the biggest of all – Sek Kin.

There is always the question "What was the best fight sequence ever in the history of martial arts movies?" That can never be answered because simply defining the best is impossible and all is really opinion anyway. I will say this – the final fight in this movie with Cliff Lok against Sek Kin (in my opinion) was the best fight sequence ever as of 1972 when the movie was released. The final fight was brutal and realistic, everything that Bruce Lee attempted in his movies. The moves were genius level choreography and executed with speed, power and focus. There is true mixed martial arts choreography with submission moves, take downs, and ground fighting. Sek Kin even gets Cliff Lok in an arm bar on the ground! That is realism and I loved it.

I've watched over a few thousand martial arts movies and never heard of this one. It is obscure and hard to come by. I know of no legitimate copy ever sold in the USA. This is truly one for the fans and I give it my highest recommendation and rate it above average.

THE ROARING LION is a typical kung fu movie of the decade, and an open rip-off of the Bruce Lee hit THE BIG BOSS (a personal favourite of mine). The star is rubber-faced Cliff Lok, who starts off killing an evil boss and being forced to flee to Thailand as a result. There, he finds work in the ring as a Thai boxer, but soon discovers that boss Shih Kien is an evil mastermind with murder in mind. Eddy Ko plays a good guy and Bai Ying is Kien's son. The film has plenty of action to recommend it, but most of it is undistinguished and of the typical 'basher' variety, so don't expect much in the way of style or finesse. The ending picks things up a bit.

Cliff Lock (aka Kin Tung) came from the same Opera School Jackie Chan came too, and had several degrees in Kung-fu and Karate. He was hired as a stuntman by Shaw Brothers in the late 60's and debuted as main star in this "indie" production. The predictable plot about is blatantly stolen from THE BIG BOSS, including the Thai setting and a couple of actors. The good cast shows the moustached evil Shih Kien (ENTER THE DRAGON), his on-screen son Pai Ying (DRAGON GATE INN), the henchman with a whip Thompson Kao Kang (STRANGER FROM CANTON), Eddy Ko (LETHAL WEAPON 4) and others. Shih Kien also helped the Kung-Fu coreography, since he was fluent in Northern China Kung-Fu, but overall the action level is outdated (expecially if compared to Bruce Lee). There's some unintentional laugh caused by the unlikely main hero: as zealous as it was, Cliff had a very childish face that fit better to Kung-Fu Comedy, as proved by his brilliant performance in Wilson Tong's KUNG-FU GENIUS, 1979. ROARING LION was released in Hong Kong 12/21/72 and April '73 in Italy as KUNG-FU: FURIA, VIOLENZA E TERRORE (Kung-Fu: fury, violence). It doesn't deserve highly recommendation, you can find better Kung-Fu than this, but even worse.