(“Dragon And Tiger Wars”)
Production: Hong Kong, 1970
Director: Jimmy Wang Yu
English release title: Chinese Boxer
Category: Martial Arts
Wang Yu’s last film for the Shaw brothers, the self-scripted and self-directed Lung-Hu Dou (released in the US as The Hammer Of God), featured a then-unprecedented approach to unarmed fighting (as opposed to swordplay) as the ultimate all-conquering art form. This landmark film is set in a small town where a trouble-maker, dismissed from his local fight-school, returns to wreak revenge. Accompanied by three deadly Japanese karate-killers, he picks fights with members of the school (one is bloodily dispatched in a restaurant by a double eyeball-gouge) before slaughtering the master teacher and all his remaining pupils – save one. The only survivor, Wang Yu swears vengeance and goes to a deserted, spooky monastery to discipline himself in the way of the Iron Palm. These ascetic training scenes, including plunging arms into red-hot coals, are contrasted with the sleazy crimes and decadence of the villain – now casino boss – and his cronies, including rape. Then, disguised in white mask and gloves, Wang Yu makes his return. After beating up various casino thugs and torching the building, he sets up a confrontation in the remains of the casino. All the customers clear out and he faces a vast mob of black-clad assassins single-handed; this frantic, choreographed set-piece ends with Wang Yu victorious and the casino littered with dead or unconscious bodies. Wang Yu sends a message to the villain and his cohorts to meet him the following day. The next day, in the snow-driven countryside, he is confronted by a gang of samurai-sword wielding killers. Finally unmasking himself, he takes on his opponents in the long grass, picking them off one by one – including one spectacular decapitation – before bloodily butchering the Japanese sword-fighters. The crime boss narrowly escapes. This scene, and the introduction of the two samurai swordsmen who demonstrate their skill by slicing to pieces a group of uncaged birds, is Wang Yu’s only serious nod to armed combat in Lung-Hu Dou. The film’s climax comes with a final confrontation between Wang Yu and the three karate-killers. As he faces them down in the snow, he is unaware that the treacherous casino boss is lying in ambush behind him. Finally removing his white gloves, Wang Yu employs the Iron Palm technique to kill two of the Japanese with some bloody ocular destruction and body-pulping. A lengthy climactic fight with the toughest karate-killer ensues. Just as Wang Yu is winning, having punctured his opponent’s chest with an iron punch, the boss comes up and stabs him from behind. Though badly wounded, Wang Yu pulls out the knife and fatally skewers his enemy before succumbing to a rain of furious blows from the Japanese. As the karate-killer starts to gloat, sensing victory, Wang Yu summons a final reserve of strength; leaping high into the air, he delivers a death blow – his fingers plunging into his opponent’s belly and withdrawing in a fountain of blood. The film closes as he limps away, bloodied but unbowed. Lung-Hu Dou and the films that followed opened the way for the cataclysmic advent of Bruce Lee in 1971’s Tang Shan Da Xiong; the short but incandescent era of the kung-fu film had arrived.
Posted by Cryptomaniac