Torgo Tours Hong Kong While Dodging Bullets

Damn, doesn't look like that's the case in Canada.

That sucks. The availability of movies like this one on Amazon makes up for Jeffrey Bezos's crookedness. Well, almost. There's always piracy (if you're into that sort of thing).

I hope to post or at least repost more writeups later this week.

I sent you a link to it.

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Muchas gracias.

I'm finishing up a Hall of Fame, so I can only share a repost. It's a good one, though.

Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky -



If you're a fan of Stephen Chow's movies, Big Trouble in Little China or fantastical, over-the-top martial arts movies in general, you owe it to yourself to see this. Part The Shawshank Redemption and part Mortal Kombat - which this movie inspired - the titular character is a man whose strength makes him impossible to detain since he can pull chains apart and whose punches shred human flesh to hilariously gory effect. Luckily, Ricky faces many worthy adversaries on his way to liberating the for-profit prison where he is incarcerated: besides the Gang of Four, there's Dan the gluttonous, glass-eyed assistant warden and of course the main warden, who must have been inspired by Judge Doom from the equally cartoonish Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

At the risk of seeming like I want to finish this review early, it's a movie I'm hesitant to say any more about because mere words cannot do justice to how crazy it is. It's better, not to mention more efficient, to just say that you should see it instead of praising its merits. The best way I can describe it is if Sam Raimi, Stephen Chow and Frank Darabont went on a drunken bender and then wrote a script, this is what it would look like if someone filmed it. Oh, and again, if the evils of capitalism are on your mind lately, the mere sight of Dan's typical meal and his pornography-laden office as well as the warden's spoiled, child-like adult son are bound to provide just as much catharsis as the blood and guts.

This movie is where this classic GIF comes from, by the way:



My guy (or gal): Our hero, obviously. He's who I'd want on my side, especially if I were a prisoner.

Been meaning to pick up the 88 Films Blu-ray release of that one.

Ooh, I'd easily watch it again on Blu-Ray, especially since the DVD I watched it on wasn't of the best quality.
Speaking of, it still isn't streaming or on VOD. However, I wonder if you'd be able to watch it by stringing all of the GIFs people have made from it because nearly every scene has been made into one, haha.

The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter -



It's high time I watched a five-popcorn movie for this project, and this one - which happens to be the first Shaw Brothers movie I've seen - is a perfect start. It kicks off in the jarringly best way with a massive, frantic battle scene in which the Mongols reduce our heroes, the seven Yang brothers, down to two: the sixth, whose resulting trauma gets the better of him and the fifth, who hides in a Buddhist temple in hopes of become a monk. All the while, his mother and sisters yearn for their wayward brother while Pun Mei, the traitor who masterminded the Mongols' attack, aims to finish what he started.



The pole is not a weapon I thought much about before watching this movie, but now, I want to seek out every movie that features it. Besides how it allows for massive battle scenes for how it can swipe at many soldiers at once, it's also deadly as a jabbing weapon and a projectile. All the pole-fighting scenes are delicious icing to the cake that is a resonant story about family and that there's no more powerful reminder of its value than when tragedy strikes. You see this in the mother and sisters' desire to keep it together, the sixth brother's PTSD that makes him violently lash out at everyone and most of all in the fifth brother, whose desperation to become a monk reflects a desire to turn the page and come back even stronger. While often exciting, their shared journey also has its heartbreaking and angering moments, but it's always nice to look at. It's a delightfully colorful movie that looks especially good in HD and several shots have a pleasant symmetry that would make Wes Anderson blush. Luckily, the movie saves the best battle for last, which not only weaponizes coffins and a wolf-shaped combat dummy, but also manages to find yet another use for poles: dental instruments. It ends up being a spectacularly fun wuxia movie that could possibly only be improved by watching it with likely its biggest fan, Quentin Tarantino (granted you make a deal with him that he doesn't talk during the entire runtime, of course).

My guy (or gal): The eighth Yang sister, who earns it by managing to have a fight while on horseback.

Oh boy, you've got so many good films still before you.

Out of curiosity, what Shaw Brothers films would you guys recommend? I've been meaning to get into their filmography as well.

That one's an all timer, and actually gains more the more Shaw Brothers movies you see, so definitely worth a rewatch at some point. I got to see it in a theatre with a very enthusiastic crowd, and it's been one of my favourite theatre experiences. Hearing them hush into silence and burst into applause in unison during one of the scenes was something else.


Interestingly, Alexander Fu Sheng (the brother who goes insane) was supposed to return for the climax but died during filming. You can definitely feel Lau channelling his grief into the finished film, which has a sense of trauma not common in the Shaw Brothers output I've seen.

A rough top ten, unordered:

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin
Bastard Swordsman
The Boxer From Shantung
The Boxer's Omen
Crippled Avengers
The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter
Heroes of the East
Killer Constable
Legendary Weapons of China
Vengeance

@Mr Minio
Nice avatar.

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The only Shaw Bros film I've seen so far is Super-Inframan and it's glorious.
Looking forward to watching one of their "good" ones some time.

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I am tempted to make this an all-Shaw Brothers thread now. Alas, I still want to give the good folks at Golden Harvest and Film Workshop some love.

Wow, jealous! I wish I had a theater near me that did revivals like that. Just curious, what scene made the audience react that way?

That is tragic about Fu Sheng. Looking at his Wiki page, the movie was apparently supposed to be about brother #6, but they changed focus to brother #5 and expanded sister #8's role to compensate.

I suspect you will enjoy this one:

It was the part where Gordon Liu blows out the candles with his kung fu, if I recall correctly

Now we know where this came from:

Yes, that poster is definitely pushing the right buttons for me.

Relevant to this thread: I had a copy of this bad boy come in the mail.






Looking forward to going through it at a leisurely pace, adding a bunch of things to the watchlist that I never get around to, and relating the occasional amusing anecdote.