REVIEW:
Dragon Lee tries his darnedest to be a champ, but ends up more of a chump under the inept direction of Godfrey Ho in Wu Tang Champ vs. Champ.

The first half of the film plays out in non-linear fashion with a confusingly interspersed flashback before settling on Dragon Lee's lost leg and his subsequent training to get revenge. The story starts out with Lee returning to a village ruled by a villainous martial arts leader named Kai who is trying to squash a conspiracy to overthrown him. Lee beats a number of his men and then the story shifts into the recent past where we meet Tai, the leader of a movement to remove Kai from power. Lee, accompanied by his father comes to visit Tai to arrange a marriage between his daughter and Lee. Kai's men eventually capture Tai and kill Lee's father. The film then shifts to the present and Lee arrives to fight Kai, but he's beaten and his leg is poisoned. Tai's daughter comes to his aid and has a doctor with a southern drawl (dubbed version) remove the leg. Lee miraculously manages to recover, recall a legendary kung fu expert with one leg that turns out to be the girl's deceased grandfather, fashion an artificial leg out of steel, and learn the old man's 18 Kicking styles kung fu. Then he proceeds to fight his way through a number of fighters including four women who disappear at will through the use of bad editing and a man who breathes fire, all in order to take on Kai and save Tai.

This is a dreadfully bad film with little going for it. The only recognizable star is Dragon Lee who was one of several Bruce Lee imitators for most of his career and a regular of Godfrey Ho's Southeast-Asian low budget pics. Even though he's looking more like Phillip Kwok from Chang Cheh's late '70's films, he still vainly attempts to use gestures and facial expressions patterned after Bruce Lee. Although he has the looks of a star, Dragon Lee has virtually zero charisma and his martial arts performance is average, although he does get some decent legwork in.

Everything about the film seems amateurish and a failed attempt to copy Chang Cheh's work is obvious. The choreography is slow and clunky, often relying on gimmicks such as cheap pyrotechnics, film school grade editing, or wirework where the wires are clearly visible. Dialogue between fight scenes are static and painfully dull, made even worse by the horrible voice acting of the English dubbers. Expect to see arguably the most ridiculous villainous laugh scene ever where the actor playing Kai doesn't even crack a smile as the voice actor laughs in monotones. The sets are very cheap, with the villain's hideout in a cave is the worst.

What really sinks Wu Tang Champ vs. Champ is Godfrey Ho's lame direction. This guy may have been responsible for some entertaining, if cheesy films in the '80's, but this one goes straight to the bottom. I can only describe it as sloppy filmmaking that isn't likely to generate much interest from even the most ardent kung fu film fan.