Ways of Kung Fu (1978)

Chi Kuan Chun takes on the villain from Fighting Ace (Cliff Ching Ching)

Chi Kuan Chun plays a young man who was an orphan and lives at the Shaolin Temple. He doesn't know any kung fu, but goes to learn from a teacher (Leung Kar Yan) when a senior monk at the temple (Cliff Ching Ching) starts picking on him. We know from the beginning that the monk is evil, but then we find out for sure. So after Chi KUan Chun trains and becomes a kung fu master, he's able to defeat the evil monk.

The story is not very good, and most of the characters get too little screen time. Leung Kar Yan barely gets to fight, and a bunch of other guys get limited screen time. Meng Fei plays a drunken kung fu student, and Yu Tien Lung plays his drunken master. And Chung Wa plays a police officer.

So the story doesn't really have anything going for it, but the fighting is decent. The evil monk played by Cliff Ching Ching has some strong kung fu skills, and we all know that Chi Kuan Chun is no joke.

2/5

The Crash DVD is partly widescreen and the picture quality is decent. April 10, 2008

Nostalgia with a thimble full o' Drunken Style

This is not a great piece of kung fu cinematic history, but it's certainly not bad either. This one has sentimental value to me. It was frequently featured on channel 20 in Detroit late Saturday night when I was a kid. Oddly enough, this and "Executioners From Shaolin" are the only ones I've found that were featured on "Kung Fu Theatre" that I remember.

Our hero, played by Chi Kuan-Chun (featured most recently in "Drunken Monkey") is booted out of a temple (I don't recall if it's Shaolin or not) by a cruel monk who's hiding out there and is a wanted criminal. He goes to live with a kung fu expert friend of one of his senior monks and is reluctant to learn the art at first. After a few years he returns to the temple to take out the trash. Easier said than done as the jerk-face monk has a couple o' buddies that won't allow such a usurpation. He then finds an old, crabby drunken master (not Simon Yuen, thank God) and his pupil to live and learn with until the next big showdown.

The picture quality is good but nothing fancy. What's particularly cool about this movie is that in the second half, you don't go three minutes without a fight or a training sequence, all the way through the end.

The DVD quality is a little sucky, and I was kicked out of the film and back to the menu at the end, but was allowed re-access to the point of departure. All in all, pretty cool. The stupid humor was brief and confined to the first half, as our hero is bullied and humiliated. The fights aren't anything fancy, but I've seen much worse.

1978 November 17, 2007

One of the Best Old School Kung Fu Movies for Hard Core Fanatic!

This is one of the best old school kung fu movies of its Time. This movie was made in 1980 so the quality is watchable but not remastered. The story line starts when a young student of shaolin is sent by his abbot to a friend that teaches him kung fu. He starts to learn kung fu because of a vicious fake abbot takes over shaolin temple. I will stop from there but do buy this movie if you enjoy old achool kung fu. I do need to add that my dvd did come loose and scratched but I just didn't want to go through the hassle of returning it. March 9, 2007

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