Despite the great-sounding title, IRON OX, THE TIGER'S KILLER is an entirely cheap and near worthless kung fu flick that comes to us from Taiwan. A relatively early entry in the genre, this bears all the pitfalls of the way this genre is treated in the west: appalling dubbing in the English version, poor and grainy picture quality, and a fullscreen print that robs the fight scenes of the full impact of their choreography.
The tale is about a champion fighter who takes on all comers in order to get revenge for a past transgression. Eventually he comes up again some real bad guys and the scene is set for some brutal fights to the death. Not that there's much plot here; IRON OX, THE TIGER'S KILLER is basically a series of fight scenes that seem to go on and on and on without end.
The fights start off completely unmemorable but do pick up a bit in the second half thanks to some novel surroundings. There's a bit where participants are battling on a speeding cart which reminded me a little of the BEN HUR climax but my favourite moment is the fight on the slate roof which looks really dangerous. Watch out for the bizarre domino game where the loser drains his blood until death. There were no actors in this I recognised and the martial arts is only just about adequate, so it's only one for the true genre aficionados.
