Raiders of the Shaolin Temple Film Review

This is another odd-ball Taiwanese kung-fu film. Someone needs to write a book about this parallel kung-fu film industry to the one going on across the sea in Hong Kong. With the Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest, Hong Kong gets all the attention and publicity, but Taiwan was making some fairly interesting and often weird martial arts films. And a lot of them. Though there was certainly cross over, Taiwan developed their own talent both in front of and behind the camera that nearly worked only in Taiwan. Taiwan had much smaller budgets to work with and it certainly shows in their production values, but there was a lot of talent. This film has some fine martial arts talent and chances are most people have never heard of them. With the exception perhaps of Pai Ying again playing a white-haired villain, a role he had played many times starting with his classic performance as the eunuch in King Hu's Dragon Inn.

There are two separate tracts here until they finally meet up at the end. Both are basically excuses for action. There is a lot of that, competently and at times imaginatively choreographed by Chan Siu-pang who did similar duties on 60 films such as the The 18 Bronzemen, Shaolin Death Squads but also a couple Golden Harvest films - The Comet Strikes and The Hurricane (both with Nora Miao). He has his hands full with this one - nearly 90-minutes long, much if it action with various styles. And the Mechanical Horses. And the two disabled actors.

In one of the narratives, the always sneaky slimy Wei Ping-ao ( 165 credited films) advises his master Pai Ying to destroy Shaolin Temple. He sends away to Tibet for men to do so. Their expertise is cymbals that slice. At the same time, a Shaolin monk Wisdom (Chan Siu-pang) decides to visit Shaolin monks outside the temple and is set upon constantly by the men of Pai Ying. In the other narrative, Little Lu decides to challenge the 24 bronze Mechanical Horses. A little explanation. At one time, the Shaolin Temple had a training area in which monks had to fight these horses that move and kick, but there was a problem and they had to shut it down. The monks were all killed. But two. But one lost his legs; the other his arms.

They are played by real actors (Shun chung-cheun, Thomas Hong Chiu-ming) with those disabilities. This is not CGI. The two actors appeared in four films together - this one, The Crippled Masters, Fighting Life and Two Crippled Heroes. I don't know what their story is but they are pretty amazing. They decide to train Little Lu to defeat the Horses as does the standard Drunken Master character. His fight against the Horses is pretty nifty and strange. Little Lu is portrayed by Sonny Yu who won a National Martial Arts Championship in Taiwan in 1982, but left the film industry after only four films. He definitely impresses. A big finale.

Dubbed but decent print.