Month of the Dragon

 

Gong Hei Fat Choi!!!

Well, I'm actually about 10 days early.

Normally, I reserve February for "Fighting Female February" (or Fighting Femme Fatale February) at my site. However, this year is special.

This year, my birthday will fall on the same day as Chinese New Year -- February 10th. And this new year will be the Year of the Dragon. To me, it is a sign. A sign that I should dedicate this month to reviewing films with "Dragon" in the title. There are hundreds of those in China-Hong Kong-Taiwan alone, so there will be no shortage of options.

Join us this February for the Month of the Dragon and may my (Authoritative) reviews bring my readers Prosperity and Good Luck throughout 2024!


Films reviewed:

Four Dragons (2008)
Enter the Fat Dragon (2020)
Firefist of Incredible Dragon (1982)
The Cyan Dragon (2020)
Lady Dragon (1992)
Skinny Tiger and Fatty Dragon (1990)
Dragon Tiger Gate (2006)

The Delta Force (1986)

The Delta Force (1986)

 

Starring: Chuck Norris, Lee Marvin, Martin Balsam, Joey Bishop, Robert Forster, Lainie Kazan, George Kennedy, Hanna Schygulla, Susan Strasberg, Debra Levine, Bo Svenson, Robert Vaughn, Shelley Winters, William Wallace, Charles Grant, Steve James, Kim Delaney
Director: Menahem Golan
Action Director: Don Pike

 

On November 4, 1979, hundreds of Iranian student revolutionaries in Tehran stormed the American embassy in Tehran, taking 52 hostages. They were motivated primarily by then-President Carter’s allowing their former ruler, the Shah of Iran, to be transferred to the United States for cancer treatment. Although the Shah had been an American ally for decades, he was not a particularly popular leader with his own people and, like many far-right dictators that the Americans supported during the Cold War, was never above using his CIA-trained secret police to “purge” dissidents. With the blessing of their new leader, the Islamic fundamentalist Ayatollah Khomeini, the students broke into the embassy and started taking hostages[1] once it became clear that the guards would not respond with deadly force.

A notoriously-failed military engagement was put into action to free the hostages in April 1980. Eight military helicopters were mobilized along with a Hercules transport aircraft which would get the hostages out of dodge. Unfortunately, two helicopters were damaged during a sandstorm and a third helicopter crashed into a tanker aircraft, resulting in the deaths of eight soldiers. This is the context in which The Delta Force begins, with one of the helicopters blowing up in the Iranian desert and the Delta Force being ordered to abort. Although they successfully make it out of Iran, they almost lose one of their number and Captain Scott McCoy (Chuck Norris) is almost left behind trying to rescue on of his men. In a huff over the government’s handling of the entire operation, Scott decides to retire from the Delta Force.

Six years later, an airplane flight from Athens to New York City (via Rome) is hijacked by a pair of Lebanese terrorists, Abdul Rafai (Robert Forster, of Alligator and Jackie Brown) and Mustafa (David Menahem). They initially force all the passengers into the coach class seatings, but upon discovering that there are Israeli/Jewish passengers aboard, they start separating the passengers. In a very emotional moment that would remind 80s audiences of the Holocaust, a German flight attendant (Hanna Schygulla, of The Marriage of Maria Braun and Poor Things) is forced to go through the passengers’ passports and look for Jewish names.

At the moment of the hijack, the pilot was able to push some button that sent out a “hijack alarm,” so the American embassy in Athens is quickly alerted to the situation. It doesn’t take long for the news to reach Washington, and General Woodbridge (Robert Vaughn, best known as “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”) orders Nick Alexander (Lee Marvin, of Emperor of the North and The Comancheros) to get his Delta Force team together. Although Scott McCoy has retired, his watching the news report of the hijack awakens something in him and he drives to their base of operations in order to join the team.

The plane lands briefly in Beirut in order to unload the Jewish hostages (plus two American servicemen and a Catholic priest, played by The Naked Gun’s George Kennedy) and pick up some more terrorists. The plane then heads for Algiers, where the Delta Force lands in order to engage them and eliminate them. Although the terrorists release the women and children in Algiers, they plan on taking the men back with them to Beirut. The Delta Force’s plan to storm the aircraft is aborted at the last moment after Nick interrogates Ingrid and discovers that there are more than just two terrorists on the plane. They regroup to fly to Israel and sneak into Lebanon to find the terrorists’ base. They are assisted by a member of the Mossad posing as an Eastern Orthodox priest (Shaike Ophir), whose church happens to be located right next to the school where the male hostages—except the Jews and American soldiers—are being held. But Abdul Rafai is a paranoid guy and he wonders just how neutral that priest is...

Second history lesson: On June 14^th, 1985, TWA flight 847 from Athens to Los Angeles was hijacked by Lebanese terrorists en route to Rome. The terrorists, today associated with the Hezbollah terror group, demanded the release of some 700 prisoners in Israeli custody. They had passengers with Jewish names separated from the rest of the passengers; killed an American Navy diver; and kept forty hostages inside Beirut until President Ronald Reagan and Lebanese officials were able to negotiate their release, which occurred at a schoolyard. The entire ordeal lasted 16 days.

The Delta Force is essentially a retelling of the TWA flight 847 hijacking, but from the imagination of Chuck Norris. Norris felt that the U.S. government could have acted in a way that would have neutralized the threat without acquiescing to any of their demands. The story follows the events of the hijacking closely, from the murder of the American Navy diver to the movement of the plane from Athens to Beirut to Algiers and back. Thus, The Delta Force presents viewers with alternate version of history, much like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Inglorious Basterds, in which the good guys win in the best way possible.

It is generally considered one of Chuck Norris’s best movies from a film critic perspective. It doesn’t require Norris to act, and that heavy lifting is left to the myriad of character actors who play the passengers and Robert Forster in a “that’s him!?” performance. In fact, the Delta Force spends much of the first half of the film in the background, with the attention given to the events transpiring on the hijacked plane. It has the effect of making The Delta Force feel like two different films: the first half feel like one of those 1970s Airport movies, complete with a role for George Kennedy. The second half feels like your more typical Canon right-wing action epic, complete with Uzis, bazookas, and motorcycles that fire missiles from both ends!

The problem with this approach is that the film ends up feeling a lot longer than it actually is. By the time we get to the Delta Force getting ready for action in Beirut, I was thinking, “Okay, we’ll have a big 10-minute set piece and will wrap it up.” Nope. The “human portion” of the movie that I thought took up about 100 minutes of screen time actually only took up maybe an hour or so. Thus, because of the very slow first half, a movie that is slightly longer than two hours feels closer to two and a half.

Because of that, I was rather surprised when we got not one, but four different action sequences in Beirut. The first is an extended car chase through the streets of the city as Chuck and one of his men are fleeing from the terrorists. Then you have the siege of the school where the male hostages are being kept, which is a bit longer. That is followed by the Delta Force ambushing Abdul Rafai’s caravan as they try to flee Beirut to Syria with the Jewish hostages. And finally, there’s the assault on the airport as Nick Alexander and his team take out the remaining terrorists and try to get the rescued hostages to safety (in Israel). Chuck Norris’s martial arts skills are kept to a minimum here, mainly used when he’s fighting a militant driving a truck full of hostages and then when he beats the living snot out of Robert Forster a few minutes later. But that fight is predictably one sided, although I imagine most 80s audiences found it cathartic.

Although the action antics of the last act go a little over the top, The Delta Force feels far more realistic in its execution than Invasion U.S.A. did. Director Menahem Golan, one of the two brains behind Canon, does a surprisingly good job at directing (he usually just produced) and making the film feel grounded. He does get some nice emotion out of the passengers during the first half of the movie. I just wish the script would’ve given the Delta Force more to do in that first half to keep the pace a little livelier.

---

[1] - Several diplomats managed to flee to the British Embassy and were eventually smuggled out of the country under the pretext that they were part of a film crew. This incident was dramatized in Ben Affleck’s Argo (2012).

Invasion U.S.A. (1985)

Invasion U.S.A. (1985)

 

Starring: Chuck Norris, Richard Lynch, Melissa Prophet, Alexander Zale, Alex Colon, Eddie Jones, Billy Drago, James Pax
Director: Joseph Zito
Action Director: Aaron Norris

More than the Missing in Action films, Invasion U.S.A. is the most masculine Chuck Norris action flick of them all. This was his entry ticket into The Expendables franchise. Arnold had Commando and Predator. There was Die Hard for Bruce Willis. Stallone had Rambo: First Blood, Part II and Rambo III. For Dolph Lundgren, it was Red Scorpion. Mel Gibson got in on the strength of the Mad Max and Lethal Weapon movies. This is the movie where an entire army of Soviet (and Cuban) terrorists invade the United States, set off both a race war and the sort of anti-authority protest that followed the George Floyd riots, push the country to the brink of societal collapse, and the only man who can stop them is Chuck Norris, working entirely on his own.

The movie begins off the coast of Florida, where a refugee boat is floating aimlessly after its motors have died. Before long, they run into a Coast Guard vessel, whose captain welcomes them into America. As the refugees are cheering for their good fortune, the Coast Guard captain shoots one of them in the head at point blank range and orders his men to massacre everybody else, including little boys. We then discover that the purpose of the bloodbath was to get a hold of the Cuban cocaine that someone had smuggled aboard. The next day, authorities discover the trawler floating off the coast with several dozen dead bodies stuffed into the galley.

The “captain” of the Coast Guard boat is Mikhail Rostov (Richard Lynch, of Dragon Fury and Cyborg 3), a Soviet terrorist who has big plans for the “decadent” United States. First, he has to acquire an absurd amount of guns, which he does using the cocaine he has acquired. But just to show us how EEEE-vil he is, after completing the deal, he shoots the arms dealer (Billy Drago, of Cyborg 2 and Delta Force 2) in the crotch and rams a coke straw up the nose of the dude’s girlfriend before throwing her out the window.

Although both the FBI and the local police don’t really know what’s going on, the C.I.A. does. One of their agents, Adams (Martin Shakar, of The Children and The Dark Secret of Harvest Home), heads out to the Everglades to find retired agent Matt Hunter (Chuck Norris). Hunter now lives in a shack at the edge of the swamp with his pet armadillo, doing manly things like catching alligators and stuff. Adams informs Hunter that Rostov is back, but Hunter doesn’t want to back in the game. “I had the chance to kill him and you didn’t let me. Now he’s your problem,” Hunter growls.

Well, it will soon be Hunter’s problem. You see, Rostov has been plagued with nightmares of Hunter kicking him in the face. I swear I’m not making this up. So, much to the chagrin of his comrade, Nikko (Firefox’s Alexander Zale), Rostov leads an assault on Hunter’s swamp shack. They blow up the place and kill his Seminole(?) friend, John Eagle (Dehl Berti, of Wolfen and the late 90s TV series “Werewolf”). So now Chuck is ready for action.

The same goes for Rostov and his men. Using 40-year old landing craft that they somehow acquired legally, Rostov and Nikko sneak in a hundred or so terrorists into Miami and then spread them out all over the city. They start blowing up houses in the suburbs, dressing like cops and opening fire on parties at Hispanic community centers, committing acts of arson in black neighborhoods, etc. Basically, they do everything to erode Americans’ trust in the authorities and in each other, allowing Media coverage to spread that distrust and incite race-based attacks and violence against the government all over the country. In other words, the Soviet bastards are using our own freedoms—including the Freedom of the Press—against us. Thankfully, Chuck Norris and his two-fisted Uzis are on the case!

Yep, this is the film where Chuck Norris fires hundreds of rounds from his mini-Uzis, which he carries like a pair of six-shooters, before having to reload. This is the movie where we learn that rocket launchers are perfect for close-quarters combat. This is the movie where Chuck Norris can remove a bomb attached to a bus full of school children (when it has 10 seconds left before detonation) and catch up to the bad guys in his manly pick-up truck and throw it inside, and still have time to drive to safety. This is the film where the events leading up to the hero getting involved with the conflict get kicked off by the main villain dreaming about getting face-kicked by Chuck Norris! In short, Invasion U.S.A. is Chuck Norris Facts: The Movie, made two decades before that even was a thing!

Further making this movie memorable are some of the dastardly villains of all time, before Sylvester Stallone one-upped them with his Burmese warlords in John Rambo. The Commie terrorists in this movie massacre Cuban refugees by the dozen. They plot to blow up both churches and school buses. Richard Lynch’s Rostov has this thing for killing men by shooting them multiple times in the crotch! The dude has a blast firing RPGs into random houses…on Christmas Eve! Have you ever seen a more absurdly over-the-top depiction of the evils of the U.S.S.R. than that? They also have a Japanese terrorist, Koyo, played by James Pax (the Lightning Elemental from Big Trouble in Little China). I like to think that Koyo was a member of the "Red Bamboo" from Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster.

If Missing in Action was Chuck Norris’s Rambo: First Blood, Part II and Missing in Action 2 was his The Deer Hunter, then Invasion U.S.A. is his Red Dawn. But he doesn’t need months of strategy and guerilla warfare to defeat the Enemy. Just give him a pair of sub-machine guns, a hunting knife, and a pick-up truck and he’ll send the Ruskies back Mother Russia…in pieces.

The Cutter (2005)

The Cutter (2005)

 

Starring: Chuck Norris, Joanna Pacula, Daniel Bernhardt, Bernie Kopell, Todd Jensen, Marshall Teague, Tracy Scoggins, Curt Lowens
Director: William Tannen
Action Director: Eric Norris

 

During the 1970s and 1980s, Chuck Norris was a relevant figure in both Hollywood action movies and the then-nascent martial arts genre, at least in the Western Hemisphere. Although he started to slow down in the 1990s, considering that he was already in his 50s, he maintained some degree of relevance by making the hit “Walker, Texas Ranger” series, which ran for nine seasons before ending in 2001. By this point, Norris was already past 60, which was way past the expiration date for an action star at that time (this was before Stallone, Jackie, and Schwarzenegger pushed the limits on what age might prevent one from doing).

It was in early 2005 that Chuck Norris enjoyed a rather peculiar revival in popularity, this time on the internet. A humorist named Ian Spector published a website called chucknorrisfacts.net (formerly chucknorrisfacts.com), in which hundreds of facts were created to inform the internet generation of the greatness of Chuck Norris. They remain popular even today, and have been referenced in films like The Expendables 2 and the “Hitler reacts…” videos on Youtube, in which the subtitles from the German film Downfall are changed according to the event being reacted to.

 

“Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.”

 

The Cutter came out in 2005 when the Chuck Norris Facts were taking off. It was also Norris’s last starring film role, followed only by an extended cameo in The Expendables 2. He has hosted a History Channel documentary called “Chuck Norris’ Epic Guide to Military Vehicles” and acted in a cameo of the “Hawaii Five-0” reboot as well. Recently, there have been reports of Chuck Norris coming out of retirement to make Zombie Plane with former rapper Vanilla Ice, plus an action film called Agent Recon alongside Marc “the Beastmaster” Singer. Whether or not these two films materialize remains to be seen.

 

“There is no chin behind Chuck Norris' beard. There is only another fist.”

 

This movie opens on the Sinai Peninsula, where a team of archaeologists are hard at work uncovering what appears to be mummy hidden in a cave off the beaten path. Their success is short lived; a mysterious man (Daniel Bernhardt, of Bloodsport 3 and The Matrix Reloaded) shows up and murders all the archaeologists. Upon a examination of the mummy, it would appear that this particular specimen is quite unique: beneath the bandages is the Priestly Breastplate, as in the one Aaron the Priest wore. Even more unique is that the breastplate also has a pair of large gemstones, which we know as the Urim and Thummim. The killer makes off with both items in his possession.

 

“When Chuck Norris turned 18, his parents moved out of the house.”

 

Jump to Spokane, Washington, where a young girl has been kidnapped by Russian mobsters. The police are slow to act, so the girl’s wealthy mother hires private eye John Shepherd (Chuck Norris) to find her daughter. He eventually does, but arrives a few minutes after the kidnappers have offed the poor girl. He does manage to off them in return because…well…nobody makes a fool out of Chuck Norris and gets away scot-free.

 

“Chuck Norris talks about the Fight Club.”

 

At about the same time, Mystery Man (we’ll just call him Dirk from now on) has arrived in Spokane and starts looking for a legendary jewel cutter named Zalman. Initially unsuccessful, he learns of a famous Jewish cutter named Isaac Teller (TV actor Bernie Kopell) who seems to match the description of Zalman. Dirk pays him a visit and invites him to take a look at a pair of 500-karat stones—the Urim and Thummim—that he has in his possession. Intrigued, Teller takes him up on the offer. But when Dirk starts talking about the configurations that he would like the stones to be cut in, Isaac gets suspicious. Too late, however, he’s now been kidnapped.

 

“Chuck Norris doesn’t do push-ups. He pushes the world down.”

 

Isaac, however, has a niece named Elizabeth (Joanna Pacula, of Tombstone and The Kiss) who is also in the jewelry cutting business. Coincidentally, she’s a friend of the old lady who lost her daughter to Russian kidnappers, so both she and John Shepherd are at the young girl’s funeral. It is after the funeral that some shady types try to kidnap the woman. However, Shepherd witnesses the crime and chases down the kidnappers in P.I. van until he finally broadsides their car, rendering it un-driveable. Both men are killed in the ensuing shootout, but Elizabeth flees before Shepherd can question her.

 

“Chuck Norris can go to a feminist rally and leave with an ironed shirt and a sandwich.”

 

After a run-in with the law—FBI agent Parks (Todd Jensen, of Ninja and The Code) hates him, but he gets along well with Spokane P.D. Sergeant Moore (Marshall Teague, of U.S. Seals II and Special Forces)—he goes back to his apartment where he is approached by Elizabeth. She informs him that her uncle has been kidnapped. He is initially skeptical, but after an assassination attempt by a guy dressed as a repairman, he agrees to take her case and help her find her uncle. Thus begins a complicated cat-and-mouse chase across Spokane involving Shepherd and Elizabeth, the Fuzz, Dirk (and his employer), and a secret arm of Interpol acting in the US.

 

“When Chuck Norris went off to college, he told his dad, ‘You’re now the Man of the House.’”

 

The Cutter is a very talky crime drama, with a few action sequences dispersed throughout. Although Chuck gets into the occasional fist fight or shoot-out, once the conflict is established, there is a lot of going from one lead to the next, trying to find any sort of clue that will help them find Isaac. A lot of the film consists Chuck and Joanna going to see a fellow jeweler, only to find a pair of dead bodies; then Chuck and Joanna go see a Hebrew expert at the local university to decipher one man’s dying words; and then they talk to a Rabbi who might’ve been questioned by Dirk; and then they go see a lady who survived her stay in Auschwitz, etc. etc. etc.

 

“Chuck Norris is the reason Waldo is hiding.”

 

According to the IMDB, the script was picked up by several studios and underwent several re-writes before finally getting made by Nu Image, best known at the time for their cheesy low-budget “killer animal” films and straight-to-video Steven Seagal movies. Their subsidiary, Millenium films, later went to some degree of fame and success with the 4^th and 5^th Rambo films, the Expendables series, the Mechanic remake and its sequel, and the Olympus Has Fallen series. Apparently, the story itself had a lot more religious implications and talk of Israel in it. A lot of that was written out so that the movie could be sold to certain markets. Unfortunately, that means that the characters’ motivations are rather fuzzy. The subplot involving Interpol spying on Dirk ends about halfway through and we never quite learn how they knew about the whole Priestly Breastplate business, or why they were interested in it. I’m guessing they might’ve been the Mossad in a previous incarnation of the script. Moreover, we never learn what Dirk’s employers plans with the stones actually are. Does he just want to cut them and keep them in his personal collection? Does he have some sort of occult design on them a lá Raiders of the Lost Ark? None of that ever really gets explained.

 

“When Chuck Norris tells a joke about Will Smith’s wife, Will Smith slaps her.”

 

The action sequences were staged by Eric Norris, Chuck’s son. The gunfights are the most basic “point, shoot once or twice, guy goes down” variety. Chuck was 65 years old when the film was made, so there wasn’t much point in having him do over-the-top movie gun tricks. Norris is doubled for much of his fights, so I’m guessing that was Jeff Wolfe (Once Upon a Time in China and America) throwing most his kicks. The fights themselves are more punch-centric, keeping in with Norris’s diminished agility. There are some nice handwork exchanges between Chuck (and his double) and Bernhardt at the end of the film. They’re certainly better than the more static punching of your average Van Damme film. Bernhardt has a couple of fight scenes, against both Chuck and his brother Aaron, who plays an Interpol agent. Bernhardt gets to throw a few good kicks here and there. Aaron, who is also a bit older, looks like he may have been stealthier at that moment than his brother was, even though his fight scene is very short.

 

“When the boogeyman goes to sleep every night, he checks his closet for Chuck Norris.”

 

I think one IMDB reviewer said it best when he said that The Cutter was a good 80s action film, but too bad it wasn’t the 1980s anymore. I’d say it was an early-mid 1990s DTV action film made a good 10 years too late. And to be horribly honest, I think I enjoyed the average Seagal opus from the 2000s more than I liked this.

The Criminals, Part II - Homicides (1976)

The Criminals, Part II – Homicides (1976)
Original Title: 香港奇案之二《兇殺》
Translation: Hong Kong Strange Cases 2: Homicide

 

Although we mainly know the Shaw Brothers studio for their extensive kung fu movie output, the truth is that they dabbled in practically all genres, from comedy to drama, from period drama to sexploitation, from to horror to musicals. Hell, they even made a few detours into science fiction at one point. The Criminals series, of which there are five entries, represent their attempts to make true crime movies. They are sordid and sleazy affairs, mainly taking stories from the newspapers, dramatizing them, playing up (or inventing?) the exploitation elements, and then presenting them in anthology form.

The first story is “The Deaf-Mute Killer,” written by Szeto On and directed by Kuei Chih-Hung (The Boxer’s Omen and Bewitched). Ah Cai (Hon Kwok-Choi), of Call Me Dragon and The Cub Tiger from Kwangtung, is a mute (despite the title, it is implied he can hear) living in a small rural community, problem in the New Territories. He works on a farm shoveling pig poop (it would seem), but his tribulations extend beyond his disabilities. The locals treat him like crap, the kids constantly tease him, and the man can’t even go to the local Peking Opera production without being pushed around. The only person who shows him any sympathy is Ah Lan (Mak Wah-Mei, of Killers on Wheels and To Kill a Jaguar), a young widow.

But Ah Lan has problems of her own. Most of them stem from her living with her mother-in-law, who constantly berates her for no reason at all. There is a reason, but it’s of the intangible “you’re a jinx whose bad juju killed my son” variety. Not a lot you can do about that. Even worse is that her brother-in-law, Chang Huo-Chuan (Yeung Chak-Lam, of The Golden Seal and Five Fingers of Death), has started putting the moves on her. Although she rebuffs his advances, he’s not about to let some put-upon widow tell him what he can do with her body. One night, he rapes her and puts the blames on Ah Cai.

A torch-wielding mob comes for Ah Cai and almost succeeds in drowning him, but he escapes and flees to the nearest town. He manages to find work at the local general store, but Chang shows up and starts spreading those rape rumors about him. Rinse and repeat until Ah Cai finally snaps…

The second story is “Mama-san,” written by Ni Kuang and directed by Hua Shan, of Super Infra-Man fame. This story is set in the big city and revolves around a fellow named Xiao Hua-Tou (Kang Kai, of On the Verge of Death and Crazy Sex). Xiao works as a gambling agent, but has gambling problems of his own. He owes enough money that somebody is going to start knocking on his door soon if doesn’t start making real money, if you catch my drift. His friend, Xiao Pi San (Keung Hon, of Heroes of the Underground and Big Brother Cheng), suggests that he sell his girlfriend, Fang Li (Mi Lan, of Amsterdam Connection and Killer Clans), to the local brothel. Said establishment is run by a hard-ass madam named Blue Pearl (Zheng Lou-Si, of Bruce’s Fingers and Lady Exterminator), although everyone just calls her “Big Sis.”

Somehow, Xiao Hua-Tou manages to convince Fang Li to go along with the hustle, even if it results in her getting banged into the racket by one of Big Sis’s enforcers, Brother Chang (Ng Hong-Sang, of Black Magic and The Snake Prince). I guess it’s because he was able to convince Fang Li on the grounds that a) he would be her first client, and b) he would spring her from the hotel she’s tied down to on his first visit. So now he has his girlfriend and Blue Pearl’s money, but Big Sis’ is not the one to be bamboozled that easily…

The next story is “Informer,” once more written by Szeto On and directed by Kuei Chih-Hung. This one involves a police informer, Lin Wen-Fu (Kang Kai, in a different role), who is having problems with a loan shark, Ah Fa (Chan Shen, of Five Fingers of Death and Night of the Devil’s Bride). Ah Fa gives Lin a week to come up with the money he owes, or he forfeits his life. Standard loan shark procedure. With the help of his friend, Xiao Ding (Hon Kwok-Choi, also in a different role), Lin elaborates a “can’t miss” plan to make some quick money: jump a cop, steal his gun (a very serious issue in Hong Kong), pin the crime on some sucker, and then turn him in for the reward money.

Although they successfully get their gun, Lin kicks the policeman a little too hard, causing him to crack his head open on the concrete. If you read enough stories about people getting punched and hitting their heads on the way down, you can imagine how this will end. Now that the stakes are raised though, poor Xiao Ding will be in extra danger once Lin tells the investigating detective (Shih Chung-Tien, of Shanghai Lil and the Sun Luck Kid and The Iron Monkey) and Xiao was the culprit…

Finally, there’s “Nude in the Box,” written by Ni Kuang and directed by Sun Chung (The Avenging Eagle and A Fistful of Talons). On some corner in Hong Kong, street vendors are getting ready for a new day of commerce when a woman notices a rather heavy TV box lying on the sidewalk. On further inspection, she finds the naked body of a dead woman inside. Three months later, a suspect has been apprehended and taken in for trial. That would be Szeto Bing Cheung (Lin Wei-Tu, of Illicit Desire and The Flying Guillotine), a young family man who works at the ice cream factory/outlet store thingie near a tram station. The evidence is largely circumstantial, backed by new scientific methods that place the victim at the factory the night of the murder. But did Mr. Szeto really commit the murder?

The general rule for anthology films is that there is one really good story and one weak story, with the others ranging from “decent” to “pretty good.” I would say the weak link is “Informer,” mainly it feels too similar, thematically, to the preceding story and there is no real suspense to the narrative. That said, Kuei Chih-Hung does manage some nice visuals on occasion, especially at the end when one character is leaving a darkened train station and is bombarded with the glares of dozens of police search lights. “Mama-san” had the same premise of someone doing something really stupid to pay off debts, but manages to generate genuine suspense by not making it clear which of the protagonists is going to die. Beyond that, it sets itself apart from the rest by having copious amounts of nudity—these are sex workers, we’re talking about here. There are also some brawls and choreographed beatings, staged by Yuen Woo-Ping, who hadn’t quite hit his stride in 1976.

“The Deaf-Mute Killer” is a particularly tragic tale of an innocent man pushed way too far by a vile and wicked one. When Ah Cai finally goes off the deep end, he does so on the person who deserved it the most. And considering the events that led up to the murder, the police response was arguably disproportionate to what could be considered “justifiable homicide.” The story is filmed in black and white, which matches with the rural setting of the tale. Once more, Kuei Chih-Hung does sneak in some neat visuals, like the torch-bearing locals moving about in the dark like a choreographed formation, set to Peking Opera percussion music.

Sun Chung ends up walking away with the movie with the final story, even if it feels like your typical episode of Law & Order for most of its running time. The story focuses on the prosecution and their case, complete with cuts to dramatizations of the crime as they describe it. It successfully convinces the audience that their version the chain events leading up the murder is what really happened. And then, at the very end, Sun shows the defense attorney giving his final arguments…and suddenly you do not know what to think. It almost feels like an inversion of 12 Angry Men and you just feel…bad at the very end. Bravo, Sun Chung! Bravo!