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 The master of the Poison Clan is about to die so he sends his final student out
on a "crucial mission." He is concerned that the stuff he taught some former
students is going to be used for evil so he has Yah Tieh find a "retired
colleague" to warn him that his fortune may be at risk from five of these
ex-students. Each student is "an expert in his own lethal combat style" and
they all have names like Lizard, Toad, and Scorpion. Yan has to find out where
these guys are and determine whether any of them can be trusted. This is a
"blindingly choreographed blend of intrigue and violence[.]" 1978, 96 minutes, Widescreen, DVD
There are people out there that think that kung fu movies are a little slice of
heaven. I didn't believe it myself either until I trawled the internet and
found web sites devoted to this dubious genre of films. It seems to me that
once you've seen some dude with bad hair in silk pajamas standing around
playing patty cake with another dude in silk pajamas with equally bad, but
somehow different hair, you've pretty much run the gamut of kung fu stories.
However, like old time westerns in America, there seemed to be a billion of
these films out there and I felt it was my duty to check out at least one of
them.
I had seen some kung fu fighting in Inframan and tried to watch a few Jet Li movies, and actually made it through
twenty-minutes of the glacier-paced Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (the only time in my life that I wished I had gotten the dubbed version of
anything), so I considered myself to be something of an expert in these chop
socky flicks. In fact, I'm so knowledgeable about kung fu movies, I even know
that Five Deadly Venomsis an "Old School" kung fu movie. Unless, it was one of those Shaw Brothers
films in which case I know that this is a "Shaw Bros." kung
fu flick. In any event, I picked this one out because on all the message
boards I secretly frequent, amidst the debating about whatever happened to Bolo
Yeung
and wondering where to find a movie named Female Ninja Magic Chronicles, these freaks would list their top ten kung fu flicks and Five Deadly Venoms was consistently mentioned among the rest (the rest usually had names
including Tiger,
Shaolin, and Wu Tang in the title). I also noted that Return of the Five Deadly Venoms (or
whatever it was called) was also listed, so I figured that these Venom guys
must have really good kung fu. Once I realized it was a Shaw Brothers movie,
that just made my selection academic. After all, these Shaw characters were
behind The Legend Of The Seven Golden Vampires and I seem to recall a certain Run Run Shaw flushing a bunch of Hong Kong
dollars down the commode on a stinky floater named Horror Planet .  Having never really seen a kung fu movie, I nonetheless knew there were certain
things to expect from one of them. First of all you need to have a master.
This seems a bit obvious because all the young studs that go around kicking the
crap out of each other need some training and reason to do all that. So there
is a
master and he gets the plot going, usually by making some kind of dying
declaration like, "you lazy punks need to go out and avenge me" or "please go
beat up some of my former students - even though I taught them well, they may
have gone bad." That latter request is the crux of this movie. Also, the old
master should have a long stringy beard and generally look like that guy in theVirtua Fighter video game series that drinks a lot of booze and rolls around on
the floor after winning a match. Old Master, as I call him, is almost ready to
croak. It doesn't really matter because his kung fu school only has one
student. That's another thing about these movies. China must have kung fu
schools run by mysterious old geezers about like the United States has Subways
run by cranky, pimply-faced kids. Anyway, this one student looks a bit like a
girl and has long black hair. He spends his time filling up Old Master's bath
(it looks like a big stew pot) with boiling water and listening to the oldster
drone on and on about the really cool students he used to have. This is our
introduction to the five deadly Venoms. Each Venom has been trained in a
specific school of kung fu. They all have catchy insect and animal inspired
names. You've got centipede, snake, scorpion, lizard, and toad. Can you
imagine being saddled with the toad gimmick? Old Master tells us about each
Venom's specific skills and some of it makes sense (the snake guy tries to grab
you with his fang-like grip) and some of it doesn't (the toad has invulnerable
skin - I would've just thought it would have been real bumpy or something).
Then we see in flashback each person doing a demonstration of their particular
brand of kung fu. All the while they do this, they are wearing their special
animal or insect mask. Old Master explains that number 1 and 2 were trained
together and that three, four and five came afterwards. The last three don't
know the first two, but no one knows the third and they never used real names
so the Old Master doesn't know what they look like or who they are and I began
to break out into a cold sweat because I was sure that this was the problem
solving question on the ACT that kept me out of Yale.  With all these clues, Old Master tells this guy (call him Girly Hair) that he
must go to the city and find all the Venoms. Why? Because even though Old
Master taught them well, they have left the Poison Clan (it was at this point
that I begin to get lost) and they may be trying to steal money from another
Old Master that used to teach at Kung Fu Community College, before the
curriculum was changed from learning martial arts to bathing old men. This
seems to be an iffy set up for the rest of the story and full of holes (Why
does Old Master think they are going to be stealing this money now? How do we
know the Venoms are there? Did he only ever have a grand total of six students
in his life?), but if it means I get to see a guy named Centipede beat on a guy
named Toad, I'm all for it and willing to make allowances in the story
department. Once in the city, Girly Hair doesn't seem to do much but hang
around trying to listen in to other people's conversations (maybe he'll hear a
guy refer to someone else as Lizard). The five Venoms are of course in the
city, and some of them are after Old Master, Jr.'s money. Oh and what is Girly
Hair supposed to do once he figures out who the Venoms are and which are good
and bad? He must defeat the bad ones, but since he is trained in all the
schools of kung fu, he knowledge is an mile wide and an inch deep and he can
only defeat the Venoms by teaming up with another Venom. Thanks for that,
teach! Two
of the Venoms are working together and go to Old Master, Jr's house to steal
his money. There's a bit of a misunderstanding (Oh, you want to steal all my
secret money!) and Old Master, Jr. and his whole family end up dead! Snake is
pissed off at Centipede for losing his temper like that and they bicker a
little, but fail to find any hint as to where the treasure or money or secret
recipe is hidden. They leave and some informer sees Centipede leaving the
house. After Centipede and Snake leave, Scorpion strolls in through the front
door, finds the secret map hidden in a candle near the Old Master, Jr.'s body
and leaves. If you're hoping for a bunch of scenes where the Venoms beat on
each other in the cute little masks, you'll be mightily disappointed because
only Scorpion wears his throughout the movie and when he finally fights
someone, it is without the mask.  Word gets out that a whole family has been killed and the authorities show up
to investigate. The kung fu equivalent of CSIarrives and checks out Old Master, Jr. and determines that because of the
type of injuries he suffered, this death was the work of the Centipede. The
local judge tells the police force that they need to solve this case in a week
or they get whipped (with an extra stroke for each day the don't solve it
added). This motivates the cops and they manage to turn up this informant who
identifies Centipede as the culprit. It wouldn't be too hard to get a positive
I.D. on this guy since he waltzes around town in this very flashy red plastic
vest, but Centipede doesn't take kindly to being hauled into court and there's
some fighting with Toad before he's captured. Toad is a friend of one of the
cops who is actually Lizard. It turns out that Snake has a lot of stroke in
this town and bribes the judge to let Centipede go. Centipede and Snake are
still trying to figure out where the money is, but now they have to worry about
pinning these murder charges onto some other person, preferably a fellow Venom
if at all possible. The movie manages to become quite involving at this point
as you're drawn into the web of intrigue with the frame up of Toad. The bad
guys get the informer to change his mind and say that it was Toad he saw at the
house and so Toad is hauled into court. His cop buddy, Lizard is a bit peeved,
but tells Toad to work within the system to prove his innocence. There is
another cop that acts like he is Toad's friend while he is custody, but he has
his own agenda. The judge says that Toad must confess before they can close
the case, so Snake sets about building some torture devices to force Toad to
admit he done it. Weren't Snake and Centipede supposed to be working on
getting some money or something? This guy now has time to draw up blue prints
for an iron maiden? They also use some kind of thing called an iron coat on
Toad, but Toad's tough hide made it difficult to get anything done (plus
he's always fainting from the pain, the pansy!). Eventually Toad is killed and
Lizard joins up with Girly Hair in an effort to defeat the other Venoms. No
one knows who Scorpion is yet or what his role is in things. Lizard and Girly Hair figure out that they will need to work together to defeat
the remaining Venoms and what follows is a prolonged fight sequence that keeps
you entertained. The movie was
probably better than I expected in some ways and not as wonderfully bad as I
was hoping in other ways. The dubbing is of course atrocious, which is good,
but the English is hardly mangled at all and there aren't any of the classically
mistranslated lines you would be hoping for, which is bad. I did like it when
they talked
about being able to "break" someone's kung fu. You can be sure I'll be using
that next time I get into a confrontation in the parking lot of the convenience
store down the street. It turns out to be a good idea that these people never
wore their masks, because every time Scorpion talked with his on, I couldn't
understand a word he said. You know, since this was dubbed, you could have
gone ahead and made what he was saying intelligible instead of trying to
recreate that muffled mask-voice you used. The fighting here is pretty good (I
can't claim to be the biggest fan of kung fu fights in these Old School movies
- too much standing around with your arms outstretched while the other guy
tries to slap you around) and they even work in some wire work, with people
bending over way too far and walking on walls and hanging up in the corners of
ceilings. I was surprised by the depth of the story once everyone was in the
city and looking for each other. It became one of these movies about the
corruption of the ruling class as well as one of those "who do you trust" type
affairs. The real weak part of the movie was Girly Hair. This guy had no
personality, unlike all the Venoms, who were easily memorable and believable
(well as believable as anyone can be when they do centipede kung fu) and he
didn't do much in the movie. He sort of hung around, periodically appearing in
scenes for no real reason, other than to eat something or flip his hair around.
Did I also mention that he was really ugly? It doesn't matter much, but I
didn't want to give you the impression that this is one of those times when a
guy flipping his long, silky hair is a good thing. The other cool thing about
the movie was that they actually tried to have the guys fight in their
particular style of kung fu and have that actually matter in the outcome of
things.
This variety of techniques kept the fight scenes from being the
monotonous bore that you suspect can occur in these types of movies. So
you had Snake
trying to kill Toad, but couldn't penetrate the skin until Scorpion sliced him
with some thrown blades. You kept watching to see how Centipede and Snake
would fare against Lizard and Girly Hair and also to see what Scorpion's role
would be. A good way to keep the audience intrigued for the final battles. In
the end, I don't imagine that kung fu fans have to be told to see this movie,
but for the
rest of us, this is as good an entry into 70s kung fu as
you're likely to find.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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