Following a violent attack on his uncle, a young man seeks revenge by joining a Shaolin temple.
Written by Feng Huang, Pro Hung Ching, and Yu Ting, and directed by Sammo Kam-Bo Hung, this classic martial arts film seems to be one many current viewers may have missed, but it’s one that’s worth checking out. It has a decent story and is well-directed. A few scenes will be harder to watch for current audiences, including (tw) rape, which could have been left off screen, so be warned, sensitivities were different in the 1970s and this passed as more extreme and character-building scenes. The story is one that will be familiar to those who have seen The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, a tamer take on this story that came out a year after The Iron-Fisted Monk. This take here is one that is uncensored and known for having received a retroactive rating equivalent the US NC-17 for its violence and assaults. As it stands now, most people will have seen much worse on film and may not find it to hardcore. What it is, however, is a take on a well-known story from a brand-new director in Hung who took this film as his directorial debut and co-wrote with his previous director. Overall, the film offers an interesting story, with a few skippable scenes, and some good, well-directed fights.
The acting here is pretty much as expected on the better side of the 1970s martial arts films. Hung does show up here as Husker, giving a decent performance as the lead while also directing the film. His work here is good and shows how he came to became not only a mainstay in Hong Kong cinema before this film and remains so to this day. Spanning a career from 1961 to today, this is one of the films to look for to see where he started directing and mixing both acting and directing, shifting his career a little. The rest of the cast here has some familiar faces to regulars of the genre, all of whom do what they do best here.
The film does look its age in terms of style, how it was shot, framed, lit. This new release does look as good as it’s going to get, pulled from film elements from Fortune Star to create the 2k scan seen here. The re-release by Arrow Video looks and sounds great and has some interesting extras to make it worth picking up and checking out for martial arts film fans. Of course, the new release has some of the expected extras like the original trailer, a collector booklet with new art, a new cover with art by Gary Mills which looks great, and a fold-out poster. The best extras here are the interviews with Sammon Hung and Casanova Wong from archives and the audio commentary by Frank Djeng a martial arts cinema expert. It would have been great to see a new interview with Sammo Hung, I won’t lie. The two different tracks for the English dub are interesting, the original export one and a newer one in 5.1 which do have some noticeable differences. The better option for film fans should be the original Cantonese and Mandarin audio which is mono, to keep it like the good old days, accompanied by optional English subs.
This one may feel a bit more niche to most film viewers, but to martial arts fans, the directorial debut of Sammo Kam-Bo Hung in which he also stars is one of those films that is good to see and good to own for a more complete collection of his works. This release looks fantastic and sounds as good as mono is going to get. The extras are decent, and the new box art adds to the collectability of this re-release.