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Like a lot of these somewhat less celebrated kung fu movies, I had to watch this in an English dub, and like a lot of these somewhat less celebrated kung fu movies, all the voices except those of the heroes were in a constant state of shrieking or cackling. Obviously the main villain should do his share of cackling. But the children shriek. The good looking lady who presents a possible love interest shrieks. A bald guy who plays a minor baddie has a more guttural cackle. He and his goons decide to antagonize some poor bastard and you hear all of them shriek and cackle at the same time and the kid charges in and starts shrieking and one begins to wonder if this scene would have played more tolerably in its original audio.
That being said, this is not a purely unpleasant auditory experience, thanks to some deftly applied "borrowed" music. During a recent viewing of Cirio H. Santiago's Firecracker, I noticed how the liberal use of the Shogun Assassin score significantly upped the energy level. (The heroine in that one was played by Jillian Kesner, who I understand once played the girlfriend of the Fonz and was the real-life wife of Gary Graver, and let's just say she wasn't hired for her martial arts prowess.) Here, we open with Ennio Morricone's theme for The Big Gundown, and let's just say that it makes this relatively small scale movie feel a lot more epic. (The Korean forest locations also help greatly in this respect, and it was nice to see this in a pretty decent transfer on Tubi, as a lot of these movies are only available in much worse condition.) And it definitely adds to the excitement when that same theme is deployed during a training sequence when one of the heroes learns how to fight by kicking. But lest you assume that's the only music that's well used, I must note that the arrival of the main villain is announced by the James Bond theme.
There is a plot here, about a pretty tepid rivalry that is not easy to invest in, and let's just say that when you notice both leads are sympathetic and a more overtly villainous character arrives (with the aforementioned Bond theme queue), you won't win any prizes for guessing how this turns out. Most of this is pretty episodic, with an early incident involving an ******* foreign fighter who looks like a burlier William Redfield, a scene where one of the heroes tells the other to get outta town with real "Leave town, please, I'll be your friend" energy. Also Yuen Biao is briefly in this as a goon who fights one of the heroes at around the middle of the movie. I actually watched this for his involvement, because I'm trying to game my Letterboxd stats and get him to my most watched actor this year.
As far as Ng See-Yuen's directorial efforts go, this lacks the kookiness and some of the verve of Game of Death II and Invincible Armour, but knows mostly how to capture the fights in engaging ways, even if the style isn't terribly sophisticated and he sometimes cuts when he shouldn't. There is a bit of sharply used handheld near the end, which feels participatory without losing coherence, and the final fight has a cutaway that anticipates a much funnier use of the same flourish in Invincible Armour. I will note that in casting John Liu, Don Wong Tao and Hwang Jang-Lee, you have three extremely talented martial artists that are great fun to watch fight other people and especially each other. The latter two are saddled with an awful bowl cut and shitty blonde wig, respectively (one wonders how many of these martial arts stars resented Bruce Lee for popularizing a hairdo that only he could pull off). Liu however comes off as one cocky sonofabitch, and apparently had quite the ego offscreen, but when you see him kicking Tao in the face like his legs were windshield wipers, or swooping low kicks at Hwang like he's breakdancing, maybe some of that cockiness was justified.
The Secret Rivals (Ng, 1976)
Like a lot of these somewhat less celebrated kung fu movies, I had to watch this in an English dub, and like a lot of these somewhat less celebrated kung fu movies, all the voices except those of the heroes were in a constant state of shrieking or cackling. Obviously the main villain should do his share of cackling. But the children shriek. The good looking lady who presents a possible love interest shrieks. A bald guy who plays a minor baddie has a more guttural cackle. He and his goons decide to antagonize some poor bastard and you hear all of them shriek and cackle at the same time and the kid charges in and starts shrieking and one begins to wonder if this scene would have played more tolerably in its original audio.
That being said, this is not a purely unpleasant auditory experience, thanks to some deftly applied "borrowed" music. During a recent viewing of Cirio H. Santiago's Firecracker, I noticed how the liberal use of the Shogun Assassin score significantly upped the energy level. (The heroine in that one was played by Jillian Kesner, who I understand once played the girlfriend of the Fonz and was the real-life wife of Gary Graver, and let's just say she wasn't hired for her martial arts prowess.) Here, we open with Ennio Morricone's theme for The Big Gundown, and let's just say that it makes this relatively small scale movie feel a lot more epic. (The Korean forest locations also help greatly in this respect, and it was nice to see this in a pretty decent transfer on Tubi, as a lot of these movies are only available in much worse condition.) And it definitely adds to the excitement when that same theme is deployed during a training sequence when one of the heroes learns how to fight by kicking. But lest you assume that's the only music that's well used, I must note that the arrival of the main villain is announced by the James Bond theme.
There is a plot here, about a pretty tepid rivalry that is not easy to invest in, and let's just say that when you notice both leads are sympathetic and a more overtly villainous character arrives (with the aforementioned Bond theme queue), you won't win any prizes for guessing how this turns out. Most of this is pretty episodic, with an early incident involving an ******* foreign fighter who looks like a burlier William Redfield, a scene where one of the heroes tells the other to get outta town with real "Leave town, please, I'll be your friend" energy. Also Yuen Biao is briefly in this as a goon who fights one of the heroes at around the middle of the movie. I actually watched this for his involvement, because I'm trying to game my Letterboxd stats and get him to my most watched actor this year.
As far as Ng See-Yuen's directorial efforts go, this lacks the kookiness and some of the verve of Game of Death II and Invincible Armour, but knows mostly how to capture the fights in engaging ways, even if the style isn't terribly sophisticated and he sometimes cuts when he shouldn't. There is a bit of sharply used handheld near the end, which feels participatory without losing coherence, and the final fight has a cutaway that anticipates a much funnier use of the same flourish in Invincible Armour. I will note that in casting John Liu, Don Wong Tao and Hwang Jang-Lee, you have three extremely talented martial artists that are great fun to watch fight other people and especially each other. The latter two are saddled with an awful bowl cut and shitty blonde wig, respectively (one wonders how many of these martial arts stars resented Bruce Lee for popularizing a hairdo that only he could pull off). Liu however comes off as one cocky sonofabitch, and apparently had quite the ego offscreen, but when you see him kicking Tao in the face like his legs were windshield wipers, or swooping low kicks at Hwang like he's breakdancing, maybe some of that cockiness was justified.