I’m a kung fu movie fan of the kind where, providing there’s enough spectacular kicking and punching on show, then I’m happy to forgive a movie a lot of its problems.
That being said, I was very excited to hear about Terracotta’s new imprint label Classic Kung Fu, and their plans to bring a series of films to UK DVD for the first time. Sadly, the label’s first release has proven to be something of a let down.
The story being told in 1984’s Hero of Shaolin is fairly typical. Four brothers, three of whom are Buddhist monks while the eldest (Alexander Lo Rei) has been refused entry to the order, find themselves framed for the murder of the abbot. They go on the run, pursued by both their evil former master and by bounty hunters.
Unfortunately, simple as this story is, Hero of Shaolin - perhaps better known as Ninja Vs Shaolin Guard – struggles to tell communicate it in an engaging manner. The brothers are broadly drawn and lack personality, beyond Eldest Brother’s seriousness and Third Brother’s contrasting, supposedly comic, silliness.
An attempt at a love story fares little better. As a character development it’s flat and perfunctory, and it certainly adds nothing to the action scenes either, as love interest Ah-mei is the only character who doesn’t get in on the fights.
The mugging performances don’t help. This isn’t uncommon with kung fu movies of this vintage, but it’s still irksome, and especially when an English language dub is the only audio option.
Alexander Lo Rei may prove to be a notable, memorable onscreen presence, but perhaps that’s thanks to his ridiculous eyebrows rather than his acting. He’s also great fighter, but certainly have the charisma of a Jackie Chan or a Gordon Liu.
The most distinctive character, a creepy eunuch of dubious affiliation, sadly has little to do and disappears from the film in pretty short order.
The filmmaking is also quite slapdash. Hero of Shaolin was clearly made on a low budget, but there are errors that have more to do with a lack of care than a lack of cash. The editing is particularly problematic, with cuts often being poorly paced and awkward. It frequently feels as though a few frames from the end of one shot and the start of another have been lost, giving the film a jagged abruptness.
This may be less prevalent in the film’s many fight scenes, but even there, when its arguably most needed, the editing isn’t entirely fluid.
Many of those criticisms would fall by the wayside if the film impresses with its action choreography and performances. It’s certainly true that there’s a lot of action, packing a good hours worth into a slim 86 minute running time. Most of this action is rather well executed, with the notable exception of some infrequent but extremely obvious wire work.
This film is at its best during longer exchanges of technique, whether that’s horseplay between the brothers, or Lo Rei’s climactic battle with his former master. It’s in these sequences that director Mai Chen Jsai gets to have some fun.
One particularly notable shot looks straight up from the ground as one of the brothers fights a female ninja over the lens. This is an angle we don’t often see on a fight.
There’s also a fair amount of variation in the choreography. Comedic scenes near the start establish the relative levels of mastery between the brothers before things turn serious – at least until a rather silly, but hugely entertaining, fight in a graveyard towards the end.
Ultimately, the film does become little more than a series of tenuously linked fights, but it’s hard to hold that against it when the quality is at its peak: the Abbot’s seated fight with the ninjas is a standout; as is the confrontation with the female ninja, who gets to perform some of the best action in the film.
While the final fight suffers from its editing as well as a lack of well-stoked anticipation for the villain, the final fight scene proves pretty effective. It’s an excitingly choreographed one-on-one contest, and there’s some clever prop use built in. This fight seems to have been influenced by some of Jackie Chan‘s early Golden Harvest work, and that’s never a bad thing.
All of the martial arts performers acquit themselves well, though the overly technical style and pacing of the combat might feel slow moving, especially when compared to some of its contemporaries. Hero of Shaolin was made around the same time as Shaw’s 8 Diagram Pole Fighter and Sammo Hung‘s Wheels on Meals, bI’m a big fan of the UK distributor Terracotta. They’ve done a lot for the profile of Asian films and filmmakers in the UK, and I was excited to hear that they would be adding a series of classic kung fu films to their schedules. Sadly this is disappointing release, even beyond the fact that this film itself is no classic, .ut both of those pictures leave this one looking rather stiff and old hat.
On the positive side, Hero of Shaolin is presented in widescreen at approximately 2.35:1, which would appear to be how it was intended. The broad frame compositions sometimes work wonders, particularly in larger scale action scenes.
For most martial arts films, all available soundtracks are a dub of some kind as they were usually shot without sound, but this disc features on a rather cheesy and badly synced English language track. For some that will be a draw, but I’ve never found English dubs anything but annoying. I’d be intrigued to know whether Cantonese or Mandarin tracks were ever produced and, presuming so, why one or the other isn’t on this release.
Even taking into account the film’s age, Hero of Shaolin could look a lot better. On a 37 inch screen, run through my blu ray player, the image quality was soft overall and the detail was limited.
There are also some infrequent, occasionally serious examples of print damage – see below – and compression artefacts.
I’d still guess that this is the best looking home release this film has ever seen, but I would have liked to see more care and, ideally, a proper restoration, and particularly since this was the first title in a new collection.
I’d say the picture quality here is comparable to the early work of Hong Kong Legends, on discs which are now around 15 years old.
There are very few supplements. A trailer for Hero of Shaolin - under another alternate title, Guard of Shaolin – shows how much worse the picture quality might have been. The only other film-specific extra is a stills gallery, drawn straight from the transfer, and this does little but show off the compression artefacts more clearly.
There are also some extras related to Terracotta in general, with a page of online links and trailers for other releases – though nothing hints what else may be coming up in the Classic Kung Fu series.
Overall, this is a disappointing and underwhelming package, offering an average film with a weak transfer. I was hoping for a fine launch for what I was hoping would be an exciting new imprint. Hopefully Terracotta and Kung Fu Classics will pull something better out of their bag next time.
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