The Five Venoms (1979)

the leading man is my tpye

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

I recognised this Chinese film as one of the titles that used to feature in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, so I keen to see if I would agree with this recommendation. Basically the dying old master of powerful Poison Clan and head of Five Venoms House (Dick Wei) sends his last pupil, Yang Tieh (Sheng Chiang) on a crucial mission to find five former students. The students, the Five Venoms as they were known, were each taught unique, special and deadly styles of kung fu, they are the Centipede, the Snake, the Scorpion, the Lizard, and the Toad. Each have now changed their identities, the master never saw them remove their masks during training, so he has no idea what they look like, and some of the five students also don't know each other. Yang is tasked with finding them and seeing what they are doing now, he knows little about each style of kung fu, but he eventually finds two of the good students, Lizard (Phillip Chung-Fung Kwok) and Scorpion (Chien Sun), they must work together to destroy the students that have become evil, Snake (Pai Wei), Toad (Liang Shen) and Centipede (Feng Lu). Also starring Lung Wei Wang as Judge Wan, Feng Ku as Old Master Yuan and Shu Pei Sun as Constable Lin Kuang. The story is just about simple enough to follow, there are some sections when it slows down, but the training and fight scenes, filled with superhero style gimmicks and very high pace, are the most memorable moments, overall it's not a bad martial arts adventure. Worth watching!

Five Deadly Venoms is a movie which never pretends to be more than it is. A rock-em sock-em, poorly dubbed Chinese Kung Fu masterpiece. The poster and cover draw a fairly clear idea of what the film inside contains, and anyone pulling this item from the shelves should know that full and well going in.On top of being exactly what you expect (and hopefully ergo, what you wanted to watch) the story line and plot points are generally well put together, unlike a lot of movies of this era which tend to draw cob-web patterns of politics which become a headache to keep up with.One of my personal favorite things about this film (and others like it) is the quintessential "slap" sound effect that happens just about any time a person makes skin-to-skin contact. You'll find just about every typical Kung-Fu trope at some point along the story and anyone who's surprised by that fact probably shouldn't have jammed this 97 minute thrill-ride into their players in the first place.

I admit, I'm a huge fan of the Shaw Brothers studio; alongside Hammer, it's my favourite film production house. Most of their films seem to be bright, action-packed and thoroughly entertaining, and THE FIVE VENOMS (aka FIVE DEADLY VENOMS) is one of their most influential outings.Here's the good news: the director is Chang Cheh, one of Shaw's most prolific and best, so you can rest assured that the film is a visual treat. The cast is decent, featuring the five famous Venom kung fu actors in their most memorable roles (Lo Meng is particularly good as the tough Toad, forced to undergo a number of strenuous trials). Production values are exemplary, as you'd expect.What about the martial arts? Well, it's plentiful, as you'd expect, but not quite up there with the best of the Shaw Brothers. Oh, it's good, you can be assured of that, but it's not on a level with the frenetic action of, say, FIVE ELEMENT NINJAS or CRIPPLED AVENGERS. The complex, angst-filled mystery-cum-kung-fu story is actually better than the action. Still, it's all good, and THE FIVE VENOMS is a classic for a reason; there's little to dislike here.

This movie stars most of the same cast of The Crippled Avengers. It suffers from the same problems too. This movie has an interesting premise but it falls apart because the fighting choreography is more flips and ridiculous spinning low kicks than genuine gungu fu. It makes me think the one who choreographed these fights was a circus perfomer or gymnist/opera type person and not a genuine martial artist at all- if he was he must be real low class and must have been kicked out of his school or quick because none of the fights in this movie show a skilled practitioner in the martial arts yet there are supposed to be martial art heroes in this movie- martial artists that can do the impossible- and what do they do? Break chains? Do flips? Big whoop- Conan the Barbarian can do that. Nothing in this movie is special or representative of the true martial arts way or kung fu- there are so many stupid things about this movie besides the poorly staged fights. For example: They are all trying to steal a fortune. One of them is rich already so why is he involved and trying to get the money? It's never explained so technically he doesn't have a motive and yet goes after the money anyhow. Does that make sense to you? Then there is another guy who GETS the money/treasure and yet thinks he has to kill the rest too. Why? And then why doesn't he just do it? He could have skipped town when he got the treasure and yet he stayed like a fool- and more importantly he didn't kill all the members when theoretically he was absolutely in a place to do so. Stupid movie. It doesn't make sense because it's not supposed to- it's just plain dumb. When Bruce Lee said Kung Fu movies at the time had pointless fighting that was explained with no real reason he sure was right- and movies like this and My Young Auntie prove it. That movie too was dumb. At least The Crippled Avengers had a very good reason for fighting but again that had bad choreography like this one and the story got very weak by the 2nd half. Save yourself time and watch another Shaw Brothers film. - Mad Monkey Kung Fu is a good one. And Clan of the White Lotus is a good one too.