The Hero (1972)
A kung fu school's master is killed by a disgruntled former student and now casino owner (Sit Hon), and the master's children seek out the help of Tiger Wong (Jimmy Wang Yu) to get revenge.
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Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.
Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.
One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.
All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
This is a bad martial arts film and unfortunately, it isn't even worth seeing if you are a lover of films so bad they are fun to watch (such as the outrageous MASTER OF THE FLYING GUILLOTINE). Instead, it's bad because the film offers nothing other than the usual martial arts clichés and the fighting in the first 90% of the film is so pedestrian. I am not exaggerating to say that most of the "actors" in the film honestly looked as if they never were trained in any martial art, as almost all the "kung fu" moves were punches (this is in quotes because I have NO IDEA what martial art they were practicing--it looked like "crap poo" or something). The few kicks they did were almost all at knee level and the overall effect was just sloppy. Only near the very end when one of our heroes takes on dozens of bad guys in a knife fight do we actually see some quality martial arts. Otherwise, it just looks awful and forgettable. Life is too short to watch dull bad films.