Two Great Cavaliers

Although she starred in over 30 kung-fu movies, it's difficult to find Angela Mao's movie these days. She has this school girl kind of looks that makes her unique even amongst many Hong Kong actresses. She's no different in this movie.

A girl named Cheng (Lam Mei Ling) is chased by band of assassins (Their appearance reminds me of magic monkey) and Yung Cheng (John Liu) becomes her bodyguard until the middle of the story. Su Yuen (Angela Mao) is never too far behind Yung Ching and hearing that he's been poisoned by the assassins goes out to find him with a man in white clad named Bai Lung Sing. In the end Su Yuen, Yung Cheng, and Bai Lung Sing confronts the boss of the assassin clan,

There's kung-fu action in every turn of the story between good and the bad, and good and the good. In this sense, this movie follows the classic kung-fu movie format.

Not at all bad kung-fu action picture with of course lots of action by Angela Mao as well.

Worth the watch.

This old-style kung fu movie from the 1970s stars John Liu, a famous super kicker and Angela Mao, one of the greatest kung fu fighting females in the business. The plot is the typical "Ming patriot vs. Ching government" story. The movie starts out great, with John and Angela getting in a lot of good fights. The movie then slows down a bit and never quite regains the original momentum. The final battle is disappointing. A decent film but not a classic.

It starts in the mountains with Beardie and gang. Beardie wants the list of the rebel's names. Who keeps making these lists? Don't they know by now it is a bad idea? So we start with the old Ching versus Ming plot that's been done so often I forgot which ones are the good guys. A bigger gang shows up to fight Beardie. The list ends up hidden in a tree knot hole.

Chan Sing seeks John Liu. John has met a girl. They are attacked by "woodcutters" and John defeats them all just using kicks. Cut to Angela at a teahouse discussing the rebellion. John arrives with the girl and Angela seems jealous. John has decided he will no longer fight. In these movies the decision not to fight always leads to many fights. Angela's gang is attacked and a new guy all in silver, Wen Chiang-Long appears and helps. Angela's gang kidnaps John's girl to get him to fight. Angela gets romantic with Wen Chiang-Long and teaches him the family style. John also gets framed for murder.

Things keep getting worse and John is poisoned and Wen Chiang-Long helps him. The final fight is four against the one remaining bad guy. The Crashmasters DVD copy is widescreen dubbed English. It came from film stock but was not restored. This is very evident because each new reel starts off scratchy.

The fights are good. The story suffers from no clear protagonist/antagonist. The dramatic scenes were padded, too lengthy, and therefore less dramatic.

Deadly Duo is another very typical kung fu movie from the 70's. This one is a Hong Kong/Taiwanese co-production. It does have a story I gather but it did seem to be a very muddled plot indeed, so it was quite difficult knowing what was precisely going on a lot of the time and character motivations seemed unclear to me at least. There seemed to be a male/female couple who are joined by a man in a white suit. They appear to be the good guys and they fought a succession of baddies with long hair, whose boss was a man with a beard who appeared at the start and the end of the film. That's about as much as I can muster from the plot. But, like most of its ilk, the story seems to be just an excuse for lots of fighting which in this case incorporated much punching, kicking and jumping very high in the air. The dubbing was of course absolutely atrocious and the budget is, shall we say, 'competitive'. In other words, Deadly Duo is essentially more of the same if you have seen a few 70's chopsocky films. There didn't appear to be much to really differentiate this one from the crowd but it delivered on its basic remit of copious amounts of martial arts fighting, which is I guess all you can ask for in a flick such as this.

Yet another Angela Mao old-school kung fu flick that is beneath her (and everybody else's) considerable talents. The "plot" is an ungodly mess – all I could make out is that there is this list of rebels and everyone's looking for it, and is prepared to betray / kill anyone to get it. I think Angela is on the rebels' side, yet one of her friends / co-fighters seems to be on the government's side! Anyway, when the film focuses on its plot, it only manages to be unwatchably boring. And despite the obvious martial arts skills of the participants, the fight scenes are generally unremarkable. The best one is probably the last, when John Liu and Angela Mao unleash a double attack of consecutive kicks on the final bad boss. Angela looks very beautiful in this film; I wish I could say the same about the DVD print! *1/2 out of 4.