Fearless Fighters (1971)

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Good concept, poorly executed.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

It takes a special sort of person to watch these older Hong Kong martial arts films, as the average person will no doubt watch them and laugh themselves silly at the stupid physics, silly plots and hapless dubbing. But if you are like me, you'll consider the cheesiness as all part of the film's charm and understand that this is all part of the genre. In this light, this is a slightly better than average film. Just try to ignore the silly special effects with involve flying heroes, explosions, exploding golden Frisbees, people catching arrows in flight and throwing them back and killing the shooters and many other impossible tasks.The film is about a fight within a family clan. One member is evil but claims that he is seeking a man with a whip to get revenge--while what he REALLY wants is to murder him and steal a government gold shipment. A fellow clan member, Lei Peng, urges him to abandon his revenge--and he later realizes that it isn't about revenge after all. When this happens, he takes the gold himself and plans on returning it to the government. In the meantime, the evil dude and his toadies attack and murder all of Lei Peng's family.Later, the guy with the whip's children seek to kill Lei Peng--thinking he was the one who murdered their father and stole the gold. But, since they want the gold, they pretend to want to help Li Po to find out where it's hidden. In addition, a lady in white joins their merry gang. The four of them eventually have a major showdown (after they realize Li Po is a good guy) and the action and silly special effects reach a very strange and odd conclusion when Li Po seemingly arises from the dead to beat the baddie and his evil henchmen.Despite the silliness of the plot, this is a pretty good film with decent fight scenes--it won't lose your interest if you are a fan of these fantasy films. Plus, there are some really dopey moments that are so unintentionally funny that I loved them, such as when one man said "If I lose, I will cut off my own head"--huh?!

No, it is not the incredible beauty of House of Flying Daggers or Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, as it is the early years of Hong Kong chop socky, but it is an incredible experience.Trading on the success of Bruce Lee, many films like this were released. The actors in this film, with the exception of the villain Hung Lieh Chen, only made one or two movies besides this one.The action is almost non-stop. As soon as one bunch is dispatched, another takes their place. We see an incredible variety of weapons used in martial arts - some that I have never seen before. There is the typical kung fu with magnificent leaps to rooftops and even flying at times -actions we are used to seeing in the current films.A satisfying chop socky treat.

I bought this movie unseen at Best Buy. They had a section of martial arts movies, about 30 in all. I actually let the IMDb fan review (on the back of the box) sway me- I should have known better. This film is pretty boring with a few exceptions. There is a quick scene towards the end where a man using lion technique ( I know that because he had silly lion claw gloves and ridiculous blonde hair that was supposed to resemble a lion's mane) gets taken care of in an amusing way.I was looking for a good 70's supernatural kung fu joint like this one I saw that was totally creative- of course, I cannot remember the title. In it there is this scene where the local prefect receives an urn as a gift from the emperor. Instead of food inside, there is a clown type of guy. He looks silly yet proceeds to put up a good fight as he rolls underneath his opponent. At one point he breaks his arms through the sides of the urn and presents a simple paper sword from his mouth. You're like... what the $%&^? Yeah, well this movie didn't have enough of that kind of creative mayhem.

That's the typical salad bowl martial arts movie from the early 70's, when hong kong low budget movies were the new wave in cheap entertainment. The acting is poor, yet not unwatchable. The white martial artist looks like a Miami vice ripoff Don Johnson ripoff ante litteram. Bolo makes his figure as a henchmen's leader playing two drug kingpins against one another. It gets scenes shot in Turkey, so it hadn't to be a really really low budget flick.The screenplay is a mess. You get drug kingpins & traffickers trying to cheat on their colleagues without a clear understanding of anything. You get lame subplots about romance. Many people run, like in the police thug telepictures, ex Inspector Bluey, etc.You watch it, and suddenly you can't make a difference between it, the many "American ninja" hotdog movies & hong kong rubbish.There is no Ninja in the movie, except for a fight scene where masked people overpower Bolo, who then just asks them who they are, and they take the mask off!!!Cheap VHS feed even during the cheap VHS boom of mid 80's.