This is basically Lo Wei deciding he'd show Jackie what a "kung fu comedy" really should be like. Sssssshyeah, right! That man has a pretty weird sense of humor, then, and it seems to include shoving frogs down yer pants and pissing on ghosts. I would have loved to have seen the Mystery Science Theater gang tackle this film.
Basically Jackie plays a troublemaking guy at a Shaolin temple, who for some reason is befriended by a group of ghosts that hide out in a thought-lost book describing Five Style Fist kung fu. So the ghosts teach Jackie the style, then there's a murder at the temple, and suddenly the "humor" gets lost as the story turns into your typical revenge plot. It's more watchable than most Lo Wei films (though I shiver in horror to think that "Asian Cult Cinema" referred to it as one of his most highly regarded movies!) And the scene of Jackie frolicking around in the water, mud, and shoving things down his shorts IS worth watching for Jackie fans, especially as he flashes us a brief moon. Swoon!
SUMMARY:
Overall rating: C Compared to most Lo Wei films, this one is actually fairly tolerable, and you might feel inclined to at least watch parts of it over again.
Droolworthiness: A for the moon shot
Slashiness: F There was nothing that I noticed.
Action: B- Some nice scenes of Jackie showing off the silly snake-fist style he was developing for the movies, but the pan-and-scan copy I have is so bad, half the time the action seems to all be happening off-screen!
