Duel of Karate (1971)

Duel of Karate (1971)
Chinese Title: 鐵腿降魔
Translation: Iron Leg Demon

 

Starring: Roc Tien, Doris Lung Jun-Ehr, Yee Yuen, Chen Hung-Lieh
Director: Fu Ching-Wa
Action Director: Yen Yu-Lung

 

When I watched Struggle Karate a few days ago, I was treated to a cheap, ugly, drab-looking production with no karate, sloppy fight scenes, and all around badness. I braced myself mentally before watching this one, since it too was a pre-Bruce Lee kung fu movie with "karate" in the original title. What I didn't expect was some as solid and entertaining, albeit far from being any sort of classic, as this film turned out to be.

We open with two guys engaging in a sloppily-choreographed fight on a mountain top, which is definitely a bad omen. Cue the opening credits, played to "Générique Western" by Francis Lai from the French film Un homme qui me plaît, which also shows up in The Drunken Master and The 7 Grandmasters. A few laters, one of the másters is greeting his twin sons into the world, when the other master shows up with four Japanese karate másters in tow. The other máster lost the duel, but then spent three years learning karate in order to prepare for a rematch. The evil máster kills the good one, and the four karate guys slaughter everybody else, including the man's wife. Only the twin sons live, one of whom is taken by the good master's student, the other who is left at the scene of the crime. The former is brought up and taugh the Iron Palm technique, which he uses to get revenge. At the same time, another Iron Palm fighter shows up and is employed by the Evil Master...

The movie is basically non-stop fighting for its entire 86-minute running time. I'm pretty sure that the movie is never more than five minutes without a fight. There's one big plot hole that the story leaves open which I would've liked to have known: *who* exactly saved the second son and how did the second son learn the Iron Palm technique, if it was his father's signature style? The second son says that he was found and raised by a boxer (re: martial artist), but never goes into detail about who he was.

The action was provided courtesy of Yen Yu-Lung, who worked a handful of obscure Taiwanese films during the early 70s. I actually would like to check out more of his work to see if he was able to evolve his style, since it was a lot more animated and interesting than what Struggle Karate gave me. He also frequently worked Taiwanese action starlet Doris Lung Jun-Ehr, so that's Always a plus. Yen actually choreographs exchanges of strikes and blocks, as opposed to the sloppy evasion approach seen in many early 70s basher films. He also experiments with wires, giving the villain a special Superman technique and some truly hysterical "guy gets knocked back dozens of feet" moments. Yes, it's all crude, but it was certainly more imaginative than Struggle Karate. Too bad he couldn't get crisper kicking techniques out the leads.

With regards to this film's portrayal of karate and the Japanese, it's surprisingly not as racist as your average Jimmy Wang Yu film or Fist of Fury variant. The four Japanese characters aren't a bunch of Chinese-hating bullies, they're just four martial artists in the (Chinese) villain's employ. Karate is portrayed as being a particularly fearsome style, although here it's mainly composed of chopping techniques. That's unfortunate, since as one who studed Goju-Ryu for two years, I know that karate has a wealth of hand and foot techniques, none of which are on display here. Moreover, once the fights kick off, it's virtually indistinguishable from the Iron Palm style the hero uses, in that both sides are content to parry the opponents attack and deliver a downward chop to the back, which is frequently fatal. That makes the film almost worthless as a karate movie, but as an example of a pre-Bruce Lee kung fu movie, it's certainly worth a view.