Iron Fisted Monk, heavyweight HK superstar Sammo Hung's directorial debut, is a powerful old school kung fu movie which sees the portly one at his physical peak on screen as well as calling the shots behind the camera.

The story is a familiar one of revenge and retribution, but it is told with style and verve and features some truly incredible martial arts sequences.

Husker (Sammo) is a student of the Shaolin monks, learning kung fu so that he can avenge his uncle, who was murdered by the nasty Manchus who control the province. He leaves his training early, desperate to teach the killers a lesson and teams up with a martial artist monk (Chan Sing) who is teaching a group of factory workers how to defend themselves. When the Manchus attack the factory and kill everyone there, Husker and his Buddhist pal decide it's time to even the score.

Sammo directs this polished film with surprising skill and delivers a superb movie that blends humour, action and some moments of shocking violence. The scenes of sexual violence (there a couple of nasty rapes perpetrated by the Manchu baddies) may be hard to take at times, but they do give the viewers a real good reason to want to see the Manchus get their comeuppance.

The final fight scene is a fantastic display of athletic agility, superb choreography and totally mind-blowing action. Sammo's first movie is a brilliant example of late 70s HK movie-making and should be seen by all fans of the genre.

Well, given the fact that this was a 1977 Hong Kong martial arts movie and that it had Sammo Hung in it, I assumed that the movie would prove to be an entertaining one. Especially so, since other movies from that same time turned out to be rather enjoyable.

But "The Iron-Fisted Monk" (aka "San De huo shang yu Chong Mi Liu") didn't turn out to be as interesting or entertaining as I had hoped for. Sure, it was still a watchable movie, but the storyline was just way too mundane, almost bordering on being boring actually.

The action and martial arts sequences were good enough, though the fighting definitely felt staged and you could sense the choreography throughout the fights, as the performers took odd breaks in between moves. It made for a less than natural feel to the fighting sequences.

As for this being a director debut for Sammo Hung, well it wasn't really all that great. I am sure, though, that back in 1977 then this was a fantastic movie. But having sat down to watch it for the first time ever now in 2021, it wasn't a movie that had withstood the test of time particularly well or gracefully.

Sure, "The Iron-Fisted Monk" is a movie that has an appeal to hardcore fans of the martial arts genre. But if you look at the movie objectively in terms of entertainment value, then it just didn't stand out.

My rating of "The Iron-Fisted Monk" is a less than mediocre four out of ten stars. While it was watchable, it is hardly a movie that will ever find its way back to my screen.

It's hard to review these 70s kung fu flicks. It's not like anyone watches them for deeply moving portrayals of the human condition, dialog that slices through social pretense or cinematography that makes you look at the world in a whole new way. These movies are a form of adolescently macho ballet where guys pretend to beat the holy heck out of each other in often ludicrously elaborate ways. You can evaluate them, but you've got to use a standard that doesn't apply to another other form of cinema.

To start with, I'm not going to concern myself with how poorly constructed is the plot of The Iron-Fisted Monk. Husker (Sammon Hung Kam-Bo) is a goofy student at a Shao-Lin temple who runs away one day because he's anxious to get revenge on the Manchu clan who killed his uncle. So of course, he really does nothing to seek revenge until he's dragged into it kicking and screaming by Tak (Sing Chen),a villager who has both of his sisters raped and his mother killed by the Manchu. But before either of them go looking for justice, they naturally try and drag Husker's Shao-Lin master (James Tien) to a whore house. In fact, the whole "revenge" thing is almost forgotten until the Manchu slaughter an entire factory full of guys after an attempted business scam involving all the red dye in town goes awry. But, once everyone else is dead, Husker and his master do finally get around to kicking Manchu ass and taking Manchu names.

There's also no point is trying to analyze any of the performances here. As with many other 70s kung fu flicks, the acting in The Iron-Fisted Monk is of a very broad and almost vaudevillian nature. Between that and the ridiculously bad dubbing of the dialog into English, it's impossible to tell if you're watching bad acting or good acting from a different cultural context.

Occasionally, the direction of one of these things can be a bit more interesting than usual. That's not the case here. If you've seen another 70s kung fu flick, you pretty know what this one looks like.

The only thing that ultimately matters with this film and all its brethren is…what are the fight scenes like? And the answer is…they're pretty good. The Iron-Fisted Monk is pre-wire fu, so nobody flies through air and does a triple lutz before landing on the petal of a daffodil and toe-kicking some guy across the room. But the ritualized back and forth of strike and counterstrike is pulled off nicely, with the "fights" following a certain logic and staged in such a way and you can see what each combatant is doing and trying to do. Distinguishing a lot of a action here is the fact that Sammo Hung Kam-Bo is just plain old fat. He's got a double chin and a physique like a pickle barrel, but he moves with surprising grace and power. Watching him do kung fu is like watching a guy with no fingers play the violin. That he can do it at all is impressive. That's he's really good at it is makes it impossible to take your eyes off him.

The Iron-Fisted Monk also has some naked female flesh and a weirdly graphic rape scene. I say weirdly graphic because the tone of the rest of the movie is more slapstick than serious drama, yet the rape of Tak's first sister is pretty explicit and goes on for a while. The effect is almost like someone took a Three Stooges short and spliced in a few minutes from the middle of I Spit On Your Grave. But again, it's hard to know if it's crude and exploitative storytelling or it's some Chinese thing that Caucasians don't understand.

If you want a see a 70s kung fu flick, this one is as good as any other. Beyond that, I'm not sure what to say.