Spiritual Kung Fu

This movie was shot back to back with Dragon Fist, and the similarities shows. They both take place at Shaolin temple, and Jackie is a student. This one has more comedic flavor to it. Lo Wei directs this movie as well.

Book of Seven Fist has been stolen from Shaolin temple. Only Five Star fist can win over the Seven Fist, but this technique has been lost. Conveniently, the spirits of the Five Star travels to earth and shows Yi-Lang (Jackie Chan) where the lost book is located. They also give private lessons to Yu-Lang. Killing starts to happen around the temple with Seven Fist technique. It turns out that a man kept in the dungeon Wei-Wu is the culprit who stole the book, and doing the killing. He feels that his Seven Fist style is invincible. Yu-Lang volunteers to leave the temple to settle the score with Wei-Wu. But the real culprit turns out to be a surprising person, and more unexpected things happen with the spirits during the battle.

1978 must have been a good year for Jackie Chan, as he made slew of good movies including his early master piece the "Drunken Master". While this movie is no masterpiece, Jackie Chan looks so good in his role as the Shaolin student. The movie came out after the Dragon Fist, and the Drunken Master, and this movie almost looks like a cross between the two. There's lots of comedy, but Jackie's kung fu looks so sharp and stylish.

To be perfectly honest, I couldn't enjoy some of the comedic parts of this movie. Problem with Lo Wei's directing style is that he always portrays supporting cast as low class or no class idiots. He might feel that this is a necessary comedic touch to entertain the audience, but this in my opinion has kept the status of Hong Kong movie low for years. This became obvious when younger directors like Jackie Chan came along and started to direct movies with quality comical touch. Now Hong Kong is considered to produce top notch movies, second perhaps only to Hollywood.

The movie is better than average kung fu movie from the same era. It's a charming movie with good kung fu action mixed in.

I watched this movie a few month back. It's plot is pretty forgettable, same for the fighting scenes. For the most part the movie is cliché-ridden and steadily mediocre, but there is one, big exception.Around the half of the first hour of the movie there is this scene that will stay with me forever. As you might have figured out from the synopsis, the ghosts that haunt Jackie are the big part of this movie. Before the said scene they appear a few times, later they teach him some moves and thank to that Jackie wins the final fight. But the first encounter between the ghost and Jackie is one of the funniest moments in all of Jackie Chan's films. The poor special effects, the ridiculous script (Jackie starts peeing at the ghost), the whole insanity of seeing a fake skeleton bounce on the screen because the guy used X-Ray Vision scroll and looked at his friend is more then enough reason to watch this movie. I haven't laughed much at the movie for a long time, and I'm happy that I saw this low-budget martial arts extravaganza.

In conclusion if you have the opportunity to watch this movie, please do. The first 1/3 is pretty boring, and for the rest of the movie you wish that the craziness that occurred around 30 minutes in repeats itself, but sadly that doesn't happen. But this 10 minute segment of Jackie playing around with ghost is more than enough for you to rent this movie.

A sacred manual of the Seven Fist technique is stolen from the legendary Shaolin temple, and the only style good enough to conquer it, the Five Fists, has long since vanished. Thankfully a meteor hits the temple walls, unearthing the spirits of the Five Fists style, who summarily teach their deadly animal kung fu to lazy student Jackie Chan, so that maybe he can help when the Seven Fist thief strike again. What makes this Lo Wei adventure so endearing is the shoddy special effects – with Star Wars released the year before, Spiritual Kung Fu plainly outlines how behind the times HK was in their effects department (the meteor is a sparkler on a piece of string), and the flame-haired, hula-skirt wearing superimposed ghosts do retain a certain charm despite the cheapness.

Okay, so it's basically a crappy chopsocky movie. There are perhaps hints of Jackie Chan's unparalleled skill and comic brilliance, but not a whole lot more. The action is pretty run of the mill for the period. However, the dubbing in this film makes it pretty entertaining at points, my favorite part being the interaction between Jackie and the the young woman, who is the first girl his character has ever seen. After flirting with her, he tries to show off some of the 5-style fist he's been learning from the white-faced ballerina ghosts (that's a whole other story, but also pretty amusing). Jackie goes into a stance, and the following dialogue ensues: Girl(coy): "What's that?" Jackie(smug): "Oh, you wouldn't know that. That's the famous crane style." Girl(bitchy): "Really? Well, you look like a teapot. Pouring tea!" Jackie(indignant): "You insult my style?! I'll show you!"

They fight, and she defeats him. After consulting with the ballerina ghosts, Jackie waits for a rematch:

Jackie(sly): "I've been waiting for you all morning." Girl(chipper): "Why? To get beat?" Jackie(confident): "I won't get beat. But you will."

He then proceeds to mop the floor with her; poking her in the head with his crane beak/fist, he goads, "A teapot? Is that right?!"

If you found that at all funny, then maybe it's worth checking out. For some reason I thought it was amusing. But you'd better be a pretty serious Jackie Chan fan, 'cause there isn't much else there.

Lo Wei, the director of this rubbishy kung-fu comedy, as usual never let Jackie Chan shine properly in this slow-paced story about some ghosts that teach

Chan ‘Five Fists' kung-fu, for he is in search of a stolen book containing the means of learning Seven Fists kung-fu.

Dreadful dubbing, awful special effects (mind you, this was Hong Kong with very limited budgets - something that HK fans are undoubtedly used to), not all that funny, and just plain dull. Not even the intricate fight scenes are worth looking at, and even these are a bit tiresome. Costumes - what were those ghosts

wearing?!

And of course there's the diabolical dubbing. Distributors should learn that the original language makes it a lot easier to appreciate even a bad movie, but it still wouldn't save this...