I haven't run a chop socky review for a while, but since I've been catching up on my review writing lately (lots more yet to post), I thought I might as well start off with this one. It's called
Blood of the Dragon, and for once it's not a Bruce Lee rip off. It's a period piece, set in the old sword fighting days of China, and while nothing about the plot or the acting or the fighting is particularly good, at least it's not laugh out loud bad, as so many other chop socky films are.
My
chop socky review strategy has continued to evolve, and I've decided to do away with the double scores I used for the first couple of titles. I'm no longer scoring each category for chop socky & for regular films, so just know that the following totals are only valid in comparison to other films in the chop socky genre, and that if I had actually paid $9.25 to see this one in theaters, it would have 1s and 2s across the board.
To the scores!
Blood of the Dragon (Zhui Ming Qiang, 1973)
Script/Story: 5
Acting/Casting: 5
Action: 8
Combat Realism: 6
Humor: NA
Horror: NA
Eye Candy: 4
Fun Factor: 5
Replayability: 5
Overall: 6.5
Not a terrible film, and it's got a good amount of combat and weapon-play, but none of it is of great quality, and it's never exciting.
Production ValuesPretty poor. The dubbing is awful, with no attempt to match the lip synch, the color is washed out and muddy (it looks rather like a colorized black and white film, at times), and all of the "nighttime" shots were obviously shot in the day with a dark filter on the lens. There is a great deal of fake blood and gore though, to the film's credit. It's not one of those "guy gets stabbed and falls down dead without any fluid loss" films; they bleed a ton, but it's very orange and watery stuff, and quite a few of the guys who get stabbed through by a sword or spear obviously caught it between their arm and chest, before their dramatic tumble into oblivion.
StorySet in feudal China of no particular dynasty (they say "the emperor" a lot, but never name him), this film opens with a dreadful sword vs. spear fight. The spear guy eventually wins, in events that foreshadow later plot developments.
After that fight, the film cuts to a man and a woman as they ride through the Chinese countryside. They're both members of the rebellion, who are working to overthrow the evil emperor, and for no clear reason they are carrying a list of everyone who is a rebel sympathizer, which they must get to the rebel leader, Prince Ma Tung. Why Ma Tung doesn't know who's in his own rebellion is never explained, but don't let it bother you.
Predictably enough, the man/woman are ambushed, and they have a long and relatively non-violent fight against evil government soldiers. Eventually the man makes a run for it and takes a spear through the back, but gets away on his horse. The woman stays behind to cover his escape, and is eventually defeated and murdered.
The speared guy makes it to small town, and is there found by a beggar boy who is pretending to be blind. The man gasps his final words and hands the kid the list and tells him to take it to the prince, and after various complications the kid ends up running from the bad guys and being saved by the mysterious White Dragon. White Dragon is a criminal with a heart of gold, and the spear guy we saw in the opening scene of the film, which was apparently a flashback to action that took place years before. WD chases off the bad guys, then reads the list and realizes what it is at once. He then agrees to help the boy deliver the list, which entails walking across the dusty countryside for like, 10 minutes.
Unfortunately, the Prince turns out to be the son of the swordsman WD killed in the movie's opening, and he attacks WD who escapes with the list. Further complications ensue, with tons of incompetent government soldiers showing up to fight WD, as well as hunting for the rebels.
If you're already figuring that the Prince and WD will end up fighting together against endless bad guys, and that WD will nobly sacrifice himself for the good of his country, you've probably seen a few other chop socky movies in the past. Congrats.
Martial ArtsThis film has almost non-stop combat, virtually all of it with weapons, and while the sword and spear work is pretty mediocre, you've got to appreciate the sheer volume of it. The final showdown, with WD taking on like 50 bad guys with swords, goes on for literally 25-30 minutes, though that includes a few breaks when the badly-wounded WD (he spent a good 5 minutes earlier in the film gushing blood from a nearly-disemboweling cut down his back) retreats to a restaurant to drink heavily to kill the pain. No, really.
It's not great special effects and fighting, but almost all of it is shown from a distance in one long shot, so at least the guys fighting have some idea how to use their weapons. None of the combat is very imaginative, and this is well before the era of wire-fu, so there's minimal leaping and flying, though there are a few of the requisite trampoline leaps shown in extreme close up.
You could do worse than this film though, on the whole.
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