The Flash Legs
(aka; Shaolin Deadly Kicks)
(55th Chamber/Prism Leisure Region 2 PAL DVD)
(1977)
review by Blackgloves

55th Chamber attempt another rescue of a long lost kung-fu classic, with familiar results: a dupey, low resolution, non-anamorphic transfer which has been sourced with a poorly dubbed English audio track, full of sound dropouts and a constant background hum that is often louder than the dialogue. Anyone who already has this flick on VHS need not bother upgrading -- the DVD is of such low quality it looks like a bootleg -- but fans of old school kung-fu flicks who have never seen this one before will be getting a fair-to-middling effort in which Tan Tao Liang takes on all-comers in a thinly plotted, though mildly entertaining demonstration piece for his expert legwork.

Liang was better known by his nickname 'the Flash Legs' because of his skilful kicking style -- thus explaining the film's re-titling from the original "Shaolin Deadly Kicks" -- and the whole film is structured around cramming in as much Liang action as humanly possible, thus giving the flick a very episodic feel. This does mean though, that the viewer gets exactly what he/she pays to see in a kung-fu film: lots and lots of fight action. A less-than-faithful English dub and the thoroughly flimsy plot means that one will struggle to find much substance in-between rounds of Martial Arts set-pieces though.

A gang of criminals called 'the Eight Dragons' steal a treasure map from a government official's home, killing him in the process. Because of an acute lack of trust between the eight members, they then decide to divide the map between each of them, go their separate ways for three years, and then meet-up when the heat has died down to put the pieces back together and acquire their spoils. Three years later, one of the gang finds himself in prison because of an unpaid tab at the local brothel (!) and has to join-up with the two other prisoners he finds there if he is to get out in time to make the rendezvous with his gang. After the escape, his erstwhile comrades reveal themselves to be undercover policemen who have spent the last three years tracking down the gang! After an intense fight, one of the cops and the gang member are left dead -- leaving the surviving detective, Fong-Yi (Lieng), alone to hunt down each of the remaining members one by one.

And that is precisely what he does for the rest of the movie; the plot takes a back-seat from here on in and resolves itself into a series of very stylised fight scenes that, though displaying skilful moves, are far to theatrical and "rehearsed" to pack a visual wallop. To make things worse, the dub is full of mistimed, bombastic punch noises that add an unintended level of comedy to proceedings. That's not to say the film is entirely devoid of interest: one of the gang members turns out to be quite sympathetic -- holding on to his piece of the map in the hope of providing for his blind mother and sick son, and making his inevitable dispatch at the hands (and legs) of the merciless Fong-Yi a lot more piquant than many of the other hackneyed scenarios that pad the running time.

The whole spectacle soon acquires an air of cartoonish excess with Fong-Yi surviving what should have been a lethal attack when he is cornered in a gorge by men working for one of the gang, and subjected to a hail of sharpened bamboo stakes raining down on him from above. Indeed, Fong-Yi seems to have superhuman powers of recovery: his injuries, sustained from each successive battle, have always completely disappeared in the next scene. The movie winds up with some melodrama when Fong-Yi is nursed back to health by a pretty young woman (herself possessing prodigious kung-fu skills) after being stabbed in the back with a poisoned dagger, only to find that her father is one of the gang he must hunt down!

The film possesses a disconcerting choppiness and many plot threads are left hanging; the ending is ridiculously sudden and the end title music cuts out over a freeze frame -- the disc returning to the DVD menu abruptly. This is no classic then, and the DVD provides a poor rendering of it, but fans of the golden age of kung-fu will doubtless glean some measure of enjoyment from this piece.