I have seen an awful lot of martial arts films over the years and the plot for this film is roughly the same as at least half of them. THE most common plot in all of martial arts-dom is the battle between the good martial arts school and the evil one. In some cases, the evil ones wipe out all but one of the good guys--only to eventually be destroyed by the lone survivor at the end. In others, the evil guys are more surly and less deadly--like this film. They beat up the good guys, break the rules and act nasty...but never get around to killing people. Ultimately, the one guy who goes off into hiding and non-stop training returns to vindicate his people--not kill off the baddies. This is what most would think of as the "Cobra Kai" scenario--and that is what happens in CHALLENGE OF THE MASTERS (or "Lui A-Cai yu Huang Fei-Hong").
The film begins in a town where there are several competing martial arts schools, though the problems only occur between two of them--the guys in gray and the guys in black (which, naturally, is the evil one as black is ALWAYS the evil color). The baddies cheat and break every rule to win in the big contest and the bad guys are punished for following the rules! Gee...it sounds like WWE wrestling, actually! However, this is the not the worst of it. A wanted criminal is hiding among the baddies and he's a killer and thief (gosh) and eventually one of the goodies is murdered by him.
So, it's up to the seemingly inept son of one of the goodies' leaders to leave for two years to train rigorously with the Master. And, much of the film shows him working out, getting his butt kicked and busting his butt to be good enough to capture the murderer and win the next contest his school participated in--which was coming in two years.
Ultimately, he does have a lovely little showdown with the murderer. Interestingly, though, when the baddies found out this guy was a wanted killer, they said they were glad he was caught and praised his capture! Seriously. These guys are bad, but only to a point! And in the final contest, an unexpected result comes about and EVERYONE becomes good pals! Now from my description, it sounds like I was making fun of the film. However, I didn't mind the familiar plot because the martial arts in this Shaw Brothers film were top-notch. Not only that, but unlike most films in the genre, they used many types of combat and weapons--and did great with each. Wonderful sword, pole, spear and hand to hand fighting filled the movie from start to finish and you had to admire them. In the DVD extras, one of the stars talked about how they used real weapons and practiced the scenes again and again--and it showed. The bottom line is that there are a lot of ultra-crappy martial arts films out there and this is NOT one of them.
Additionally, I loved that the DVD had both the dubbed version (yuck) and the original Chinese version with subtitles (yeah!). To make this even better, the print was pristine and made viewing the film a delight--something that cannot be said of most martial arts films. Too often, they are poorly dubbed, nonsensical and laughably bad--technically this one is among the best.
The film begins in a town where there are several competing martial arts schools, though the problems only occur between two of them--the guys in gray and the guys in black (which, naturally, is the evil one as black is ALWAYS the evil color). The baddies cheat and break every rule to win in the big contest and the bad guys are punished for following the rules! Gee...it sounds like WWE wrestling, actually! However, this is the not the worst of it. A wanted criminal is hiding among the baddies and he's a killer and thief (gosh) and eventually one of the goodies is murdered by him.
So, it's up to the seemingly inept son of one of the goodies' leaders to leave for two years to train rigorously with the Master. And, much of the film shows him working out, getting his butt kicked and busting his butt to be good enough to capture the murderer and win the next contest his school participated in--which was coming in two years.
Ultimately, he does have a lovely little showdown with the murderer. Interestingly, though, when the baddies found out this guy was a wanted killer, they said they were glad he was caught and praised his capture! Seriously. These guys are bad, but only to a point! And in the final contest, an unexpected result comes about and EVERYONE becomes good pals! Now from my description, it sounds like I was making fun of the film. However, I didn't mind the familiar plot because the martial arts in this Shaw Brothers film were top-notch. Not only that, but unlike most films in the genre, they used many types of combat and weapons--and did great with each. Wonderful sword, pole, spear and hand to hand fighting filled the movie from start to finish and you had to admire them. In the DVD extras, one of the stars talked about how they used real weapons and practiced the scenes again and again--and it showed. The bottom line is that there are a lot of ultra-crappy martial arts films out there and this is NOT one of them.
Additionally, I loved that the DVD had both the dubbed version (yuck) and the original Chinese version with subtitles (yeah!). To make this even better, the print was pristine and made viewing the film a delight--something that cannot be said of most martial arts films. Too often, they are poorly dubbed, nonsensical and laughably bad--technically this one is among the best.