Struggle Karate (1971)

Struggle Karate (1971)
Chinese Title: 龍虎鬥金剛
Translation: Dragon and Tiger Against King Kong

 

Starring: Chang Ching-Ching, Wang Yong, Yi Yuan, Huang Fei-Long, Wang Tai-Lang, Pan Chuan-Ling, Ko Hsiao-Pao, Pai Yu, Chin Mi
Director: Chien Lung, Jeon Beom-Sung
Action Director: Huang Fei-Long

 

It was a struggle alright. Struggle to understand (I watched the Turkish-dubbed version), a struggle to figure who played who, and a struggle to enjoy. The movie was released a good two months before The Big Boss set the bar to dizzying new Heights, so this film is understandably crude in comparison. It's also cheap, drab, badly-edited, and just a crappy film all around. Aficionados might find a certain charm in it for all those reasons.

Wong Yung (the Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre films) plays an enforcer for a local crime boss (Yee Yuen, who often played a Japanese heavy) who carries out an assault on a local school. Everybody is murdered except the master's daughter (Cheung Ching-Ching, whose short career included Champion of the Boxers and One-Armed Swordswoman), who's taken captive. Wong Yung is having women problems with his girlfriend (Qin Mi, whose career was even more short-lived, the only other martial arts film she made being Extreme Enemy). I guess to shore up his prospects with her, he saves the daughter from his boss's cronies and sets her free. The act of defiance becomes full-on rebellion once they kill his girlfriend. Thankfully, he has the dead master's daughter, her brother, and their friend to back him up.

With regards to the title, there is a scene where the bad guys are beating/torturing the brother character, including five guys dressed in karate gis. Strangely enough, they disappear from the film after that scene, including the finale.

The film is almost non-stop basher action. We know what that means: Everybody kicks low and without power. Wong Yung throws scores of Mississipi Haymakers which are apparently enough to kill people in a single hit. Everybody has bionic legs and is capable of jumping like the Hulk. Cheung Ching-Ching uses lots of backfists and chops in her fights, although they lack any sort of real intensity (being pre-Bruce Lee, I can't complain too much). I don't know who the action diretor was, although I'm guessing it was Wong Fei-Lung (Story of the Dragon and Shaolin Deadly Kicks), who plays one of the bad guy's main henchmen. His work in those films was pretty solid, but here he was probalby learning the ropes. The fight editing is horrific, with the settings changing from forest to mountain to Lord-knows-where-else in between cuts.

Musical cues are taken from On Her Majesty's Secret Service and from Akira Ifukube's backlog (re: the guy who scored Godzilla and other Japanese sci-fi films). In the end, it's a bland affair and mainly a curiosity for people who want to see what pre-Bruce Lee films were like.