King Boxer aka 5 Fingers of Death 1973 Review

Got a thing for those badly dubbed old school Kung Fu fighting, chop-socky films from the 70s?   This is the one that started the martial arts invasion and opened the flood gates. 

Just prior to Bruce Lee Films invading the U.S. full force and as Martial Arts was being discovered in the suburbs, Warner Brothers picked up this Shaw Brothers Production, emphasizing the violence and leaping fighters.   They changed the international title KING BOXER to  5 FINGERS OF DEATH, cut a great trailer and unleashed it on the public.

The film was a huge hit and it was the film that introduced millions to Hong Kong and Chop Socky films back in 1973. For more than a decade its success (among Martial Arts films) was only topped by Bruce Lee's films--most of which were discovered by audiences after this film!!!

This is the film with the infamous scene where eyeballs are ripped out of an opponents head. It employs the now very familiar plot of rival Chinese/Japanese training schools. Training, punishment, sadism and over the top revenge. The gore created a bit of a backlash and films with similarly graphic gore (like Streetfighter with the one and only Sonny Chiba  were rated X or cut to avoid the X rating).

It's an energetic and still enjoyable to watch film for any chop socky fans out there. The fight scenes range from fairly well choreographed to over the top violent (and pretty gory) to absolutely silly with men leaping high into the air (trampoline and early wire work) flipping and fighting. It's badly dubbed, and a great film to watch with a crowd of kung fu movie afficianados.

There's all the cliche's of the genre at play here including the rather dull love story too. It's star is one of the first international stars of the Hong Kong cinema Lo Lieh. He would later make a well known cult film fave The Stranger and the Gunfighter (1974) with Lee Van Cleef and many might know him best as the star of Kung Fu Theatre favorite : Master Killer (1978). He was a popular star of martial arts films since the mid-60's and has been in such well known films as Dirty Ho (1979); Sex and Zen (1992) and appeared with Jackie Chan in Police Story 3 aka Supercop.

Previously the film was available in poor quality VHS and DVD.  But I'm happy to report that the 2007 DVD  loaded with extras that include commentaries from Quentin Tarrentino and film critic Andy Klein  is a keeper.  You've probably never seen the film looking this good every before and you get the silly dubbed version as well as the original Mandarin language.