In the 1978 Chang Cheh-directed "The Five Deadly Venoms," Tang Tieh (Chiang Sheng), the young, untested sixth and final student of his dying master - the head of the dreaded Poison Clan - is given a daunting task: track down his master's remaining five disciples and bring them together one last time, or kill them if they are using their extraordinary animal-based gong-fu fighting styles (centipede, snake, scorpion, lizard, and toad) for evil purposes.
Of course, for Tang Tieh, this will be no easy assignment: each of his master's other five disciples wore unique and colorful masks (based on his chosen gong-fu fighting style) and the master never knew their real names (and each man ALSO never knew his fellow student's real name), and each man is now living under an assumed identity. Further complicating matters, is the fact that because Tang Tieh's fighting style is a hybrid of the other five styles, his training is essentially incomplete; he will have to team up with one or more of the other disciples to defeat the rest. But how will he find them? And furthermore, which one of the other disciples can he trust to be his ally?
What I just described makes "The Five Deadly Venoms" sound like a rather plot-heavy Shaw Brothers kick-'em-up, and would be enough to fill a 90-minute martial arts feature. Yes, there is a lot of story and plot here - perhaps more than is necessary for this sort of film - but therein also lies the greatest fault with "The Five Deadly Venoms": it causes the film to drag for a good portion of its middle section, which combines elements of a police procedural with a courtroom drama.
This should add a degree of variety to what has typically been a genre of little variety or consistency. The plot-heavy elements would work better if they were more balanced with the elaborately-staged fighting sequences - by Liang Ting, Tai Chi-Hsien, and Chu Lu-Feng - which don't really come into play until the film's third act. What's more, Chiang Sheng is off-screen for a large chunk of the film's middle section - he's almost like a peripheral character here (even though he's the star and the film's chief protagonist) - and it instead focuses on the other five disciples and their conflicts.
"The Five Deadly Venoms" ends the way that it's supposed to, with a bloody five-way gong-fu battle between the remaining members of the Poison Clan. "The Five Deadly Venoms" has become a beloved martial arts movie cult classic, and has proved heavily influential in the years since its debut - particularly in the hip-hop community; the rap group Wu-Tang Clan sampled dialogue from the movie in their song "Da Mystery Of Chessboxin'," off their landmark 1993 debut album "Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)."
7/10.
Of course, for Tang Tieh, this will be no easy assignment: each of his master's other five disciples wore unique and colorful masks (based on his chosen gong-fu fighting style) and the master never knew their real names (and each man ALSO never knew his fellow student's real name), and each man is now living under an assumed identity. Further complicating matters, is the fact that because Tang Tieh's fighting style is a hybrid of the other five styles, his training is essentially incomplete; he will have to team up with one or more of the other disciples to defeat the rest. But how will he find them? And furthermore, which one of the other disciples can he trust to be his ally?
What I just described makes "The Five Deadly Venoms" sound like a rather plot-heavy Shaw Brothers kick-'em-up, and would be enough to fill a 90-minute martial arts feature. Yes, there is a lot of story and plot here - perhaps more than is necessary for this sort of film - but therein also lies the greatest fault with "The Five Deadly Venoms": it causes the film to drag for a good portion of its middle section, which combines elements of a police procedural with a courtroom drama.
This should add a degree of variety to what has typically been a genre of little variety or consistency. The plot-heavy elements would work better if they were more balanced with the elaborately-staged fighting sequences - by Liang Ting, Tai Chi-Hsien, and Chu Lu-Feng - which don't really come into play until the film's third act. What's more, Chiang Sheng is off-screen for a large chunk of the film's middle section - he's almost like a peripheral character here (even though he's the star and the film's chief protagonist) - and it instead focuses on the other five disciples and their conflicts.
"The Five Deadly Venoms" ends the way that it's supposed to, with a bloody five-way gong-fu battle between the remaining members of the Poison Clan. "The Five Deadly Venoms" has become a beloved martial arts movie cult classic, and has proved heavily influential in the years since its debut - particularly in the hip-hop community; the rap group Wu-Tang Clan sampled dialogue from the movie in their song "Da Mystery Of Chessboxin'," off their landmark 1993 debut album "Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)."
7/10.