Dreadnaught (1981)

Touches You

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

...so I urge those with a fear of subtitles to "man-up" and make an exception for this film, as watching the dubbed version offers a very different, and inferior experience, to watching the subtitled version. The main issue is with the tone, which is more difficult to nail down with the dubbed version. In fact, Sunny Yuen Shun-yi – despite having no lines - comes off more comic than frighteningly psychotic in the dubbed version due to that version's prevailing tone... or rather, its awkward shifts from one tone to another. Sure, quite a lot of the film is comic, and both versions are hampered by scenes of that wacky cross-eyed pie-in-the-face humor that writer Wong Jing so adores, but still... these maddeningly ridiculous bits manage to seem more like "asides" in the subtitled version, thus allowing for far more successful shifts to the scenes of brutal terror. In any case, though often doubled, its nonetheless great to see Kwan Tak-hing (in his final film appearance) as the legendary Wong Fei-hung, a role he played in over 100 other films! Also, Leung Ka-yan (aka, "Beardy", though entirely beardless here) is as likable as ever, even though he is portraying a particularly trouble-making version of Master Wong's famed protégé, Leung Foon. Highlights include two terrific Lion Dances (the 2nd even more fantastic than the 1st), a classic bout of Tailor-fu (Fung Hark-on vs. Kwan Tak-hing), some very clever Doctor-fu (Shan Kwai/San Kuai vs. Kwan Tak-hing), and Lili Li as the scolding sister of Yuen Biao, who manages to teach him Laundy-fu without his being aware of it, a skill that - naturally - comes in quite handy in a final confrontation between Biao and Shun-yi. Yuen Woo-ping, of course, directs and choreographs the action with an assist from his famed "Yuen Clan". Also starring Philip Ko Fei as Wong Fei-hung's crosstown nemesis

In a hotel room in Kunming, China, 2005, four western tourists were getting ready to go out for that day's restaurant round, then this movie was on by accident - and we couldn't stop watching! We actually laughed at the lame slapstick, the "lion dance" was terrific, the energy - as mentioned in another review - was perfect throughout! Excellent work.Now I am at IMDb trying to check out this film, you see, we had to go 15 minutes before the ending to get to the restaurants before they closed, which was surprisingly hard to do with a random Chinese kung fu movie. We made sure to snap up the movie title, I'm going to watch this all the way.Then I see here it's from 1981 - which wasn't expected at all. Very good film, might look like your classic low-quality run of the mill kung-fu, but believe me, this is a notch above the rest!

Even though the movie had stereotype characters like the cross-eye goofy cop or the bad guy with the facial flaw, Dreadnaught also had some way cool scenes. If you can bear sitting through the slow, run of the mill parts, you'll be rewarded with 3 major scenes [in order of awesomeness]: 1) the fighting Dragons 2) the opera theatre fight and 3) the tailor. It's a slapstick comedy too, so you'll have a few laughs, too. I just don't get the title.

"Dreadnaught" is a consistently entertaining flick about Mousy (Yuen Biao), a hapless and clumsy coward who stumbles his way into plenty of trouble. While trying to collect a debt, he inadvertently runs afoul of a homicidal lunatic called White Tiger, and spends the rest of the movie being stalked by this freak. The flick is a very early attempt at a kung-fu/horror hybrid, with White Tiger sporting spooky Chinese opera-style make-up and frighteningly leaping into frame time and again. Of course, once he sneaks up on folks he karate chops them rather than stabs them. Still, the guy who plays White Tiger is genuinely creepy, and you really feel this guy's menacing presence. Yuen Biao is great as the goofy Mousy, tripping and falling his way in and out of danger. The fight scenes are excellent, played about half for laughs and half seriously. Add in Kwan Tak-Hing in his classic role as Wong Fei-Hung, and a couple of gross scenes involving ripping heads off chickens and cockroaches, and you've got the makings of a very intriguing kung-fu flick. If you're a fan of the slap-happy style of fighting perfected by Biao, Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan, and you like old school kung-fu stories, this one should be right up your alley.