More Bronze men - and better one too. Especially the challenges our main characters have to endure are way better thought of. Even the ones that may seem or feel like copies from the first movie. Which you do no have to watch to understand this by the way. And you do not have to have seen the 36 chambers movie - though it may be an indicator if you like movies like this one of course.

There is more achieve (no pun intended) and it harder to get there. Of course there are some musical cues and there is some punishment or the other if you fail. Overall really nicely done - and I would say a bit better than the other bronze men movie. Of course there are also bronze girls, which I am now curious to see ... which of course will have even less to do with these two movies Kuo made. Love Kung Fu and martial arts in general? Well then do not wait and watch this (included in a Kuo box set in the UK for example)

Carter Wong may be the star while Tien Peng and Polly Shang Kwan show up - in different roles for each of them - but Return of the 18 Bronzemen isn't a direct sequel to The 18 Bronzemen. Wong is Ai Sung-Chueh, a murderous prince who leaves behind the throne to study the rebels up close by studying at the Shaolin temple. He's at once determined to pass the tests of the temple to gain their skills and to destroy it.

This installment has way less story, but the real reason to watch it is the nearly hour-long sequence where Wong studies and then challenges the Bronzemen. It's literally a movie based around one long fight and it's just as great as it sounds. There's not much more of a story than that. Really, you expect Wong to get some kind of change of heart or become a better person and he never does, which is odd for someone who has devoted three years of his life to being part of the Shaolin.

The titular fighting masters remain the real draw of this film and the scenes where they battle Wong are worth whatever price of admission that you pay. Kuo would tell further stories of the Shaolin and the Bronzemen in another film made in 1976, Blazing Temple.

Carter Wong plays Ai Sung-Chueh, a conniving prince who uses forgery, murder and deceit to become emperor. On hearing that the Shaolin monks are about to revolt, he enrols himself at their temple, determined to learn their kung fu secrets.

My DVD of 'Return of the 18 Bronzemen' describes this film as 'Old Skool Kung Fu'; reading between the lines, this means unimpressive martial arts, bad dubbing, unusually large eyebrows, wobbly music, a woman unconvincingly passing for a man, and lots of crap sound effects. Sure enough, the first half an hour or so delivers this in spades, but once the action moves to the Shaolin temple, where Carter Wong trains as a Shaolin warrior and attempts to pass the bronze-man test, things begin to get a LOT more entertaining.

Fans of creaky kung fu films will have a blast watching Carter as he battles robotic monks wearing gold lamé and cardboard armour sprayed gold, wanders through booby-trapped tunnels, and fights blokes coated from head to toe in metallic paint; I couldn't get enough of this guy as he repeatedly fails the test but keeps coming back for more. Finally, as he looks set to complete the challenge, he is thwarted at the final hurdle, after which the woman who unconvincingly passed for a man earlier in the film turns up once again, unsuccessfully tries to kill him, and the film abruptly ends.

6.5 out of 10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.