War of the Shaolin Temple

WAR OF THE SHAOLIN TEMPLE is a lousy, no budget kung fu film made in Taiwan to cash in on the success of the SHAOLIN TEMPLE series with Jet Li. It's a cheap-as-chips production let down by poor storytelling and a generally annoying execution that sees drunkenness and drunken behaviour play a big part in the proceedings (seemingly every '80s kung fu film had to have a drunken master in it somewhere).

The villains are once again the Manchus who wage war on the Shaolin temple for no good reason. Their costumes are more imposing than they are. Some monks are killed, others rebel and fight back, and there's plentiful cheap action which is fairly bland and repetitive, it has to be said. At one point, the film's hero ventures into a cave and is trained by a drunken master. It's at this point it becomes apparently just how bad the mugging, over the top acting is, while the hideous dubbing just makes it even more annoying. WAR OF THE SHAOLIN TEMPLE is definitely a film I won't be coming back to...

This movie is a low budget chop-sockey flick. The fight choreography is done in the "punch-pause" style. This style is where the fighting is done in a very stilted manner, i.e. punch/block - pause - kick/block - pause. So, instead of the Jackie Chan 123456 type of fighting, it is much more 1-2-3-4-5-6.

While the fighting scenes tend to be this older, less fluid style, some of the non-fighting action is tremendous. Some of the athleticism shown by the actors is as good as any other movie you might see. The wire work is very low key, which is a nice change from the normal genre of that period.

Overall it had decent action. Unfortunately it had the typically crappy plot, storyline and characterization that we expect from this type of film. At least the dubbed version bounced around enough that it made the storyline and the characters a little difficult to follow. Maybe the original audio makes more sense.

War of the Shaolin Temple (aka 13 poles from Shaolin) is a great flick for 1980. This is not done in the "punch-pause" style from what I saw.

Sure, it's no IP Man Jet Li Jackie Chan stuff, and of course it focuses on your usual revenge plot, but the fighting, story and scenery are great.

The drunken monk in the cave is awesome.

I was in my 20's when I used to watch black belt theater late at night. I've seen lots of cheesy fu flicks in the past 40 years (some of which I like) but this is not one of them.

I watched the English dubbed version. Nice clear picture.

No, it's not drunken master or venoms, but its still a good movie.

I would say this movie is a recommended watch...