Shaolin Long Arm (1974) Poster

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4/10
Below average and hard to make out in the dark
ckormos124 August 2019
The movie opens with the monk giving a speech to the student and explaining the story to the audience. The student is set off to find his aunt. He is also instructed not to fight. So he didn't fight and "The End". Just kidding! The "fighter who must not fight" is a standard martial arts movie plot and not my favorite. Our hero goes to town and is promptly robbed thus giving him his first opportunity not to fight.

Cut to the bad guys talk business and explain the plot. Next the protection gang goes collecting money.

Shih Feng is the lead and this seems to be his first leading role. He did not go one to make more martial arts movies but he did continue acting for about 40 years.

The fights are poor and mostly filmed in the dark. There just was not much action to see even if you could see it. I rate this as below average and cannot recommend it even to a hard core fan of the genre. For me it was a "one and done" meaning I watched it once and probably will never watch it again.

This 1974 film from Taiwan goes by many titles such as "Chinese Kung Fu" or "Super Dynamo" or "Duel of the Masters" or "Shaolin Long Arm". If you are new to this genre I can explain. Back when there was a VHS rental store on every street corner in America there came a flood of action movies from Asia to get in on the profit. The picture on the VHS box and the title were the only clues the renter had to the content. The title and picture were there for the sole purpose of grabbing the eye and scoring a rental. So they just made up anything.

My copy is a digital file made from one of the old VHS tapes. It is labeled by Ocean Shores from 1986. It plays on the HDTV as a square shaped video and is dubbed in English.
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4/10
Extremely generic
Leofwine_draca30 June 2017
Warning: Spoilers
SHAOLIN LONG ARM is a stock kung fu movie made in Taiwan in the mid 1970s. It has absolutely nothing to distinguish it from any other film made in the country during the period. The rural story is about a couple of rival masters who come to blows. The fresh-faced hero is young and upstanding, the villain of the piece is swarthy, and the storyline is padded out with mild peril and romantic sub-plots. Inevitably it all builds to a big fight climax, which is okay and the best part of the movie, but even this does go on a little bit too long and tests the viewer's patience.
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