We learn that these trainees are three Japanese brothers, and their squat and sturdy auntie is teaching them tough killer kung-fu to avenge the death of their parents. Their father committed suicide from the shame of losing a war prisoner during a prison break. Now the auntie (Tse Gam Guk) works to poison the boys with hatred and revenge.

Cut to Taiwan, where Jimmy Wang Yu is working as a taxi driver who lives with his father, little brother, and blind sister. It turns out that Jimmy's old man helped sneak a war hero out of the Japanese prison and now the Japanese brothers have come to town to put the old hurt on Jimmy.

I found this film to be a lot of fun, some of the action scenes are great. The brawl at the logging mill is worth a look, and the final showdown between Jimmy and the auntie in the abandoned warehouse is pure over the top bliss. The film also serves as a time capsule of the sights and smells of 70's Taiwan.

Note: If you're a fan of funk/blaxploitation soundtracks, you'll love the way Jimmy Wang Yu (who also directed) uses Curtis Mayfield's "Junkie Chase" and "Gimme Your Love" from the "Superfly" soundtrack.

The film is set sometime during the Chinese civil war, though a timeframe is never specified. It stars David Chiang and Ti Lung as two hustlers out to make a buck and raise hell whenever they can. Think along the lines of a poor man's "Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid" and you have the right idea.

David Chiang becomes friends with a revolutionary, Wan Tai (Ku Feng) who recruits the pair to steal 3000 rifles and a heap of ammunition from an army outpost and transport it by train to the south, where the rebels are hiding.

The film has quite a lighthearted tone that veers off into "Naked Gun" territory, with our pair of heroes trashing their own shanty house, Leslie Nielsen style. The scene is played for laughs and works, but the rest of the film doesn't.

The two heroes spend the rest off the film kicking, punching, jumping through windows, and stabbing baddies with bayonets. During the fight scenes, everyone has rifles, but instead of shooting each other, they decide to club each other about the face. This could have been really entertaining if the director had cooked up some inventive choreography like Jackie and company did during the golden age of Hong Kong cinema, but sadly it plods along in a pedestrian manner.

The train chase, which is supposed to be an action highlight, is shocking. A jarringly obvious model, it tumbles into a puddle that is supposed to be a lake.

Avoid unless you are a kung fu enthusiast.

Jeannie Bell shines in the small bit part that she has to offer. One particularly memorable sequence has her dishing out a nice one-liner when her and an Asian bird come to heads over her legitimacy into the gang.

Unfortunately, a lot of reviews say the action scenes are particularly brutal for the time. This is an absolute crock of sh**t, as the action scenes are more akin to a poor man's "Charlie Angels", with obvious close-ups to cover the actresses' poor kung fu chops.

If you're a fan of '70s tough girl flicks, check it out. Otherwise approach with subdued caution.

Professor Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) gives a lecture in 1904 at a Chongqing (Chungking) university on Chinese vampire legend. He speaks of an unknown rural village that has been terrorized by vampires for many years. After the lecture, a student (David Chiang) informs him that the legend is true and that it is in fact his ancestral village. He then asks Professor Van Helsing if he would be willing to travel to the village and destroy the vampire menace.

Van Helsing agrees and embarks with his son, the student and his six kung-fu trained siblings on a dangerous journey funded by a wealthy widow (Julie Ege). The seven golden vampires, however, are acting under the guidance of Count Dracula himself, masquerading as a mad Taoist monk.

All the ingredients are there for a good mix between the two, but it misses. The fight scenes are hampered with poor camera angles that expose the fact that none of the blows are connecting, which is disappointing since Lau Kar-Leung handled the fight choreography.

The horror effects handled by Hammer Studios are mediocre even for the time. The bats flying around in Dracula’s tomb look like puppets on a string, something you’d expect from the 40’s, not the 70’s.

Peter Cushing works well with the simplistic story, as does David Chiang. Chiang and the rest of the Chinese actors aren’t dubbed, which is surprising for the time. The romantic subplots between David Chiang and Julie Ege, as well as Robin Stewart and Szu Shih, have an old fashioned charm about them that you don’t see often these days.

The plot is a rehash of the western archetype. A drifter wanders into a town, run by two gangs, vying for control of the town. The stranger (Sonny Chiba) pits the gangs against each other in an all out war, but the gangsters get wise to his plan and the scene is set for a bloody showdown on a beach.

Although "Karate Warriors" has a runtime of 89 minutes, it felt a lot longer, more like 2 hours. My interest kept lagging due to the complete lack of plot cohesion and relatively short fight sequences. Don't get me wrong, the action in this is great, but because it is so sporadically spread across the film, it draws attention to the weak characterization. There is a nice poignant moment at the end between Chiba and the small boy he is protecting, but it's too little too late.

Putting those detractors aside, actions do speak louder than words, as the saying goes, when the fists start flying. Kazuhiko Yamaguchi (the director) pretty much writes the rule book on the slick, "slow-down for bone crunching impact, speed up to the next movement" technique that now litters most of Hollywood's output. The beauty in these sequences is that they haven't aged a day, the man was clearly ahead of his time.

It was difficult not to imagine that a young Guy Ritchie and the Wachowski brothers watching this same film while growing up and thinking, "Hmmm, I might use that one day." So if you love spotting who influences whom in action cinema, look no further. If you need a tighter plot, or demand more interesting villains out of your kung fu films like this reviewer, you may find yourself a little uninspired.