Shaolin Kung Fu (1974)

• Year: 1974
• Released: N/A
• Country: Taiwan
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1556219/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/shaolin_kung_fu
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: Mandarin
• Genre: Action, Adventure
• Runtime: 91 min
• Writer: Tse Hsiao
• Director: Joseph Kuo
• Cast: Chiang-Lung Wen, Hung Yi, Ping Lu

5.9/10

Shaolin Kung Fu Storyline

A new rickshaw business opens in town and starts abusing the other rickshaw pullers and stealing their customers. One man from a rival business can’t stand idly by and begins fighting back which leads to lots of violence and death.

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Shaolin Kung Fu Movie Reviews

Shaolin kung fu

Lin Fung carries people with his rickshaw tirelessly to provide for his blind wife, but when a new and evil team of rickshaws comes to town with Tong Yan in charge, our hero starts a series of fights that leads to his wife being taken and a trap being set for him. Up until now, Lin Fung was held back by his wife’s ban on fighting, but now he’s going to take out everyone in his way.

Revenge is rough, though. Yan’s son is killed, so everyone Lin Fung loves must die as well, so while our hero remains triumphant, he honestly has nothing to show for it. That’s why I love martial arts movies and get upset – I seethe inside like Lin Fung wanting revenge – when people make fun of the bad dubbing and think they’re jokes. They’re melancholic musings on the fragile existence that we live in and the feeling that the only way out is through fists, feet and brutal death.

Another hero who must never fight

There are four plots for every kung fu movie ever made. 1: The fighter who must not fight (“I promised my mother never to fight again.”) 2: revenge (“You killed my master.”) 3: Finding the right master or style and 4: The tournament plot. Oddly, Bruce Lee made only four movies – one of each plot. I find “the fighter who must not fight” the most annoying plot. First, the story usually starts with beatings instead of fights because our hero can’t fight back. Personally, I find no entertainment value in watching beatings. At least in this movie some other people fight back and there are some real fights. The story continues that from not fighting back the hero suffers some injuries and he is falsely accused of fighting. He never simply replies that his injuries are proof he did not fight. Furthermore, if he simply blocked or evaded the attacker that is not fighting plus he would not have been beaten. Next the bad guys are emboldened and now innocent people are injured, raped, or killed. Somehow these crimes are never investigated and instead our hero seems to be in even more trouble. Or worse, our hero does fight back and injures the bad guys and now he is in serious trouble for injuring them but the bad guys were never in trouble when they previously injured him. Finally the hero is forced to fight back and kills all the bad guys but the victory is shallow because of all the preceding collateral damage. There are only seven to twelve plots for every story ever told: adventure, quest, coming of age, revenge, transformation, riddle, love, rebirth, sacrifice and such. The hero who will not fight is not a plot anywhere except in Chinese culture. (The love story in Chinese culture is also a different plot in that it is all about fate.) I think the hero who will not fight is actually another plot but they never got it right. Anyway, back to this movie. There is also a subplot involving revenge that is serious enough to supercede everything else but it is just a flashback. The hero, Wen Chiang-Long made about 54 martial arts movies from 1970 to 1980. they are all pretty good movies for the date and genre and this one is no exception. The fights are good and plenty yet do not become monotonous. I never once reached for the fast forward button. I’d rate it slightly above average 6.5 out of ten.

Rickshaw rivalry…

SHAOLIN KUNG FU should by all rights have been titled RICKSHAW RIVALRY. Having spent years driving a cab, I could relate to some of what we see in SHAOLIN KUNG FU. One of the problems we often had was arriving at an address only to find a cab from a rival company pulling off with our passenger(s). At first, the HOW was a mystery; then I happened to walk into a local convenience store one night. As I was browsing, I heard our dispatcher’s voice coming over a radio. I turned and saw a driver from a rival cab company seated behind the counter, bent over a radio, listening in on the outgoing calls to our drivers. As I watched, he called one of HIS drivers and gave him the address he’d just heard on the radio. Mystery solved. Another time, I picked up a rich kid (there’s no other way to describe him) at a local beach. He said he wanted to make some money and asked me what I would do if I could start up my own business. I said that, if I were him, I’d buy one of those three-wheel bicycle rickshaws and shuttle the drunks who lived on the beach to and from the bars. Inside of a year, he was doing just that. I don’t know if he’s still in business or not, but he was doing very well the last time I talked to him. Oh, yeah: SHAOLIN KUNG FU centers on Lin Fung and his blind wife and their efforts to survive on a rickshaw driver’s meager wages. Fung holds back for as long as he can when a rival driver attacks his wife (he made a promise not to fight), but it ain’t long before the promise is broken and the fists and feet start flying. There is a LOT of almost non-stop action throughout SHAOLIN KUNG FU (as one might well expect from a movie with such a title). None of that AFL/CIO nonsense, here. You want Justice, you gotta FIGHT for it. (The only problem I had with this one is a scene near the end, where Fung leaps across a lake to attack the villain.)