Rare was the film in 1973 that incorporated the star's name in the title. One of the few such films was Screaming Ninja, aka Wang Yu, King of Boxing. The story is set in China in the early 1900x. Essentially playing an extension of himself, action-star Wang-Yu spends much of the time defending himself against evil martial-arts masters. He also tries to make sense of a tragic incident in his past.
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I saw this Jimmy Wang Yu vehicle under the title THE SCREAMING TIGER. IT was one of the films he made in Taiwan immediately following his split with the famous Shaw Brothers studio. The plot is a straightforward one for Wang Yu fans; he plays a kung fu fighter whose village is slaughtered by the ruthless Japanese, causing Wang Yu to travel to Japan in order to get revenge on the Japanese people as a whole. After a time, he discovers that there's an even worse race in existence: the Koreans! This is a nondescript vehicle for the actor which lacks the finesse and enjoyment factor of both his Shaw vehicles and later, funnier efforts like THE ONE-ARMED BOXER. The plot is simple and the action even simpler, merely consisting of the actors kicking and punching until one dies. A standard basher, then, only enlivened by the lengthy chase climax. Regular heavy Lung Fei gives a fun turn as the villain of the piece.
As a rule, I generally don't like Hong Kong martial arts movies from the 1970s; I prefer those made in the 1980s or later. If you are wondering why I feel this way, a look at this movie will provide a clue. As I said in my summary line, this is for the most part a typical Hong Kong martial arts movie from the 1970s. It's pretty cheap, with little with what could be called "production values", as well as with appalling dubbing. The story makes little sense; I understood that the character played by Wang Yu was out for revenge for his village's massacre, but little else. The biggest fault with the movie, however, is that it's pretty boring. There's endless talk, and when the characters get around to fighting, the fight sequences are choreographed and directed with little vigor. That is, with the exception of the climatic fight sequence, which is pretty well done in all departments, from direction to choreography. Apart from that sequence, the only genuine merit to be found with this movie is one scene where the soundtrack uses (probably without permission) music originally composed by the great Ennio Morricone for a spaghetti western.
note - the information on some packages for this film is frequently false - not this film's cast, not its crew, not its international release title. 'screaming tiger' - written, directed, and starring wang yu, along with what was, at the time, his ensemble cast and crew, who worked with him on many other films of the period.ej's kung-fu capsule review for films of the chop-socky old-school - 1. basic plot type - revenge; school vs. school; ethnic conflicts; buddhist message 2. plot construction - standard English-version pretty badly chopped up; but what is there is actually well-constructed, if occasionally derivative 3. dramatic - yes 4. funny - occasionally; marvelous moment when wang yu finds himself surrounded by 20 thugs and, without a word, smiles and shrugs, and just starts tossing them around 5. dialog - good for this genre 6. cast performance - very good 7. crew performance - not great, but above average for this genre at that time 8. amount of fighting - a lot 9. quality of fighting - good 10. special any cast or crew notes - occasionally credited to lo wei in reviews, the film was actually written and directed by star wang yu; although wang yu had contributed to the general 'jap'-bashing that plagued chop-socky 'fu for a while, he had quite a large following in japan, where he would eventually co-star in 'zatoichi vs. the one-armed swordsman'; this film is the first effort, in hong kong 'fu films, to find some way to 'forgive and forget' and abandon ethnic strife 11. big positive - just a nice bit of genre film-making over all 12. big negative - editing is weak bottom-line - who should see this movie - solid kung-fu entertainment for those with any interest in the genre
Version: RBC Entertainment's 'Kung-Fu Theatre' DVD.This movie is really just an 85 minute long fight scene. Jimmy Wang Yu stars as 'the Chinese guy', who wanders around beating up bad guys, while these bad guys are beating up good guys, who are also beating up bad guys. This is one of the movies where you just have to assume that everybody knows kung-fu - because they all do. Add the dubbing, and you have near-pure awesomeness.5/10 - Wow. Nothing much to it, apart from awesomeness. It really is no better than a lot of other cheap kung-fu movies, but it seems like it wants to be more awesomely cool than the rest. It so is.Final note: Why do these Kung Fu Theatre DVDs smell weird?
