Jimmy Wang Yu, an authentic Asian superstar, directed and wrote this film which I have only seen in a dubbed videotape version. The widescreen (Shaw Scope!)shape was lost and the original actor's voices absent but this is still good to watch. The story is the usual martial arts school fights villains from Japan plot with our young hero winning out in the end by beating up loads of assorted thugs.

The combat gets better as the film unravels. Early in the film it looks stiff and dull but later there is a great scene where Wang Yu fights hordes in a gambling joint then walks out into a snowy scene and takes some more villains on with knives, sword and fists. That part is very exciting.

Quite good then but it would be interesting to see a non dubbed widescreen version if there is one.

Saw this as HAMMER OF GOD @ Loew's DELANCEY with Mario Bava's HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON-- -one of the *best* twin-bills I ever saw and I saw hundreds from the mid-1950s till the *end of the double-bill*, as a movie-going fact-of-life, mid-late 1970s.

The DELANCEY was a huge old "movie palace"-style theater, with humongous screen, super sound system, balcony, full-service concession stand in a big-BIG lobby, *the works*.

The big screen is absolutely *vital* to the peak enjoyment of the rich color, speed-of-light action of HAMMER.

The impact of HATCHET on a small home screen must be terribly attenuated, the atmosphere sharply reduced, surely.

BOTH these films were made with *big screens* in mind. The film-makers of that bygone era could not have foreseen today's cracker-box 'plex "theaters" (*hawk-ptooi*) which generally seat >500, in malls built in the ever-popular Birkenau style of architecture.

I'm High Church about the big-theater films of that era ---I simply won't see them again: My *memory* serves me well enough.

It is simply too depressing, too degrading to see the scratched and pitted prints with their bleached-out "colors" and raggedy soundtracks on a tiny home screen.

I wouldn't accept THE LAST SUPPER or LA PRIMAVERA as thumbnails, and that's what watching vintage movies of happy memory is to me today.

Cheers !

Good production values highlight this old-school kung fu movie which is packed with all the crazy action and excessive violence that you could hope for in a martial arts movie. Sure, the plot may be familiar and simple stuff to any genre fan, with the typical Japanese portrayed as the cruel bad guys and a young, everyday Chinese guy becoming the hero and training to take on the bad guys by using the usual methods of running with iron bars attached to his ankles and sticking his hands into a cauldron of red-hot iron filings. However, the direction - also by star Jimmy Wang Yu, who wrote the story on top of this - is lively and imaginative, the fight sequences nicely choreographed and the settings, which include a wintry landscape complete with falling snow, picturesque. Often the film is enlivened with a bright red splash of gore to highlight the action and worry the censors.

Jimmy Wang Yu - who was something of a star in China at the time, appearing in other Shaw Brothers classics like THE ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN - is acceptable in the leading role, conveying emotion when the script calls for it and displaying his athleticism in the action sequences. The supporting cast is mainly populated by caricatured bad guys who strut their stuff menacingly well, with Lo Lieh a real stand-out. The only offensive thing in the film to my mind is an ill-conceived rape sequence which feels unnecessary and out-of-place, even though nothing explicit is shown it still leaves an unpleasant taste. Where The Chinese Boxer hits home is in its imaginative touches, both in the directorial style and the many fights. The scene in which Wang Yu bathes his hands in iron shows him surrounded by macabre decaying dummies which proceed to disorientate him - a visual nightmare sequence straight from a horror movie. Another moment has two samurai swordsmen chopping up a dozen cage birds from the air to display their skill - what cold bastards. There's also a surprise homage to Sergio Leone's THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY as two fighters measure each other up.

Amongst the well-staged scenes of action are two large battles, one taking place in a casino in which Wang Yu dispatches dozens of black-clad bad guys, wearing a mask and gloves and looking bizarrely like a surgeon as he does so. There's also a spectacularly violent massacre which shows a man having his eyes gouged out in graphic blood splattering detail, much to the sadistic viewer's enjoyment. Other gruesome highlights include many bloody punches, bone-breakings, surprise decapitations, and a literal geyser of pumping blood. Marred by only a few flaws - one of which is a serious lack of music - The Chinese Boxer is an entertaining and violent kung fu romp with all-out action for the genre fan to enjoy. Simple, yet fun.