User Reviews

It starts with men riding horses across a sandy basin and stopping at an inn. They order food but then they all are smitten by the waitress. The boss takes her out to rape her. The others start murdering. They leave without eating their meals. It is obvious who the bad guys are in this movie. Chang Yi returns from getting water to find his family killed.

I also watched the video CD release as "Stormy Sun". I have never seen the ridiculously titled version.

Chang Yi's first fight is against four opponents. It leaves plenty of room for improvement. He finds the killer and the next fight sequence does take it up a notch. Chang Yi must retreat because he was shot. I've said it before and I will say it again, guns have no place in martial arts movies. Pai Ying enters the movie as an expert fighter. He gets work as muscle for the bad guys.

The fights do get better. Weapons, in particular the Japanese katana, are used toward the end and in the final fight. The fighter does hold the katana with the correct grip, something I always watch. A whip is also used. I have practiced martial arts for over thirty years and a whip is not a real weapon in any style of fighting. It is used in movies, I think, because risk of injury is minimal.

Overall I rate this as simply average for the year and genre.

In the 1970s, Shaw Bros. kung fu films were notable for their lavish production values and action staged amidst standing period backdrops on studio backlots or large, elaborate sets built on studio soundstages. Rival studio Golden Harvest, lacking such facilities, gave their kung fu films a very different look, opting to shoot on location (usually in Taiwan) and finding old sections of cities and towns in which to shoot their period films. When they did use studio sets, they weren't the biggest or most well-appointed. Everything had a gritty, lived-in look to it. As outlandish as the kung fu sometimes got, the settings were at least realistic.

THE STORMY SUN (1973) is a Golden Harvest production offering a standard revenge tale of a man with kung fu skills seeking to vanquish the criminal gang which slaughtered his parents and sister in a wanton act of pillage. It's set in rural China and a region of flat plains and sparse development. The time is roughly the 1910s or '20s, in the post-imperial era, but just before Japanese occupation. The only real commercial establishment we see is a brothel where the crime boss and his minions hang out. The film is shot on location and includes outdoor scenes in an old section of town marked by sprawling stone walls, narrow corridors and drab brick buildings. The exterior of the "brothel" looks like a colonial-era government building. The hero, Hung Ching (Chang Yi), is an expert with knives and goes after the crime boss, Li Ta Yeh, and his gang in a series of often reckless assaults. A loner named Chen Chun (Pai Ying) comes to town and gets a job with Boss Li after proving his worth by defending himself when attacked by the gang, but he soon makes it clear that he wants to be an ally of Hung Ching. Chen Chun's weapons are a handful of coins that he throws with lethal force. Li Ta Yeh hires a pair of Japanese fighters to provide extra muscle, and soon forces Hung Ching's hand when he abducts a girl, Tsui Feng, whom the hero had aided, and consigns her to the brothel.

The film is full of fight scenes, both indoors and out. It reaches a point where all Hung Ching has to do is enter a room and everyone leaps into position to fight him. He plunges into the fray, jumping on tables, kicking attackers away, leaping up to second floor landings, and even swinging on a chandelier at one point, all while throwing knives with unerring accuracy. Boss Li has an automatic pistol that he uses occasionally, but it's neutralized when Chen Chun throws a coin that plants itself on the barrel, effectively blocking it. A bit far-fetched, to be sure, but a clever and original move nonetheless. The best fights involve multiple opponents for each of the heroes. The final showdown, however, pits the two heroes against two of the villains on a "beach" that's basically just a vast field (with not a drop of water in sight). These one-on-one fights are not as interesting or imaginative as the earlier ones.

Chang Yi played a rather stolid hero in many Shaw Bros. films (SILENT SWORDSMAN) and a memorable villain in many later kung fu films (EAGLE'S CLAW). He has a few quiet dramatic scenes here, but once he starts fighting he stays strictly focused on the combat. He's like Jimmy Wang Yu (ONE ARMED BOXER), but without the histrionics. Pai Ying was occasionally a hero, but usually a villain, which lends itself to the mystery about his character's loyalties here. There are two leading female roles, although I can't identify the actresses. They look like real women of the era and not like the Hong Kong starlets you'd find in the Shaw Bros. counterpart of this film. A turn of storyline late in the film involving the women was particularly unsatisfying and diminished my overall enjoyment of the film. The final sequence of fights is kind of anticlimactic as well. Still, I liked the look and feel of the film and was completely engrossed throughout.

I watched this on a Fortune Star Legendary Collection VCD (video compact disc) under the title, THE STORMY SUN. It was not a great print, but at least it was letter-boxed and in its original language--Mandarin with English subtitles. I've never seen the English-dubbed version known as "Super Man Chu: Master of Kung Fu," which is referenced in the other comments here.

SUPERMANCHU (1 outta 5 stars) Terrible, terrible Chinese action movie from the 70s... complete with atrocious dubbing and badly-synced sound effects. A bunch of bad guys randomly kill and terrorize some innocent people and a pair of good guys team up to beat the snot out of them. There... that's it... that's the story. All you're going to get out of this movie is some barely competent martial arts action (the heroes don't seem to have too many fancy moves) and some unintentionally stupid American dialogue dubbed in. One pretty good scene has one of our heroes surrounded by bad guys up on some balconies who lasso him with ropes and pull him up into mid-air (marred only slightly because you can obviously see the "invisible" wires that are actually keeping him suspended). Hey, it's not a great scene but it's the only thing in this movie that sticks in my mind and I need to write *something* to pad this review out to a decent length.

Personally, this is the definitive B-Movie. It's got bad acting, bad overdubs, bad filming, just plain out bad everything. But, more importantly, it's so bad it's funny! Really really funny! I was rolling on the ground laughing the first time I saw it. It's been a real hit with my friends and I and we always put it on if we're in the mood for the ultimate in cheese. Don't buy it if it's over $3.00 though. I purchased my copy for $2.00 at a bargain store.

I once saw it in English under Super Man Chu in English on VHS during the 90's. Later during the 2000's, I watched it in Mandarin on VCD. Sometimes I wish that Shout Factory should've released it on DVD in both Mandarin and English. Other than that, The Stormy Sun is a cool Golden Harvest Kung Fu movie.