The opening scene is all dialog to establish the story. Two imperial jade seals must be delivered to the south of China in order to crown the prince as the new emperor. Meng and Jing head south on the mission. Jing arrives wounded at Lo Lieh's cave. Meng arrives at Shih Szu's house.
The exposition dialog drags the first 20 minutes or so of the movie but then the fighting picks up. All the fights involve weapons and I rate most of the fights above average.
Lo Lieh had the best line of the movie when he asked the naked woman "Aren't you cold?" I can't imagine any man ever said that to a naked woman!
Hao Li-Jen (1911 - 1978) is an actor I affectionately call "Old Snaggletooth". He has an impressive 222 movies to his credit and has shared the screen with everyone from Jimmy Wang Yu to Bruce Lee to Jackie Chan. He has played the role of "villager" enough times to fill an entire village. In this movie he has many lines plus he draws a sword but I can't say he really uses it.
With the short run time of only about 80 minutes the final fight could have certainly been much longer. Also, I dislike hokey weapons in favor of authentic Chinese. The claw and chain appears hokey but is actually a real Chinese weapon though not from the time period of the movie.
