For the first hour the plot is developed nicely and there are plenty of fights peppered about. An early standout moment sees Gordon Liu using butterfly knives to fight a criminal armed with a spear. Another entertaining sequence comes where Liu Chia Yung and Lee Hoi San find themselves stranded on an island used as a leper colony; unusually all of the lepers seem to know kung fu.

This is all dwarfed however by the last 15 minutes where Gordon Liu assumes his familiar avenging monk role and uses a steel whip against Lo Lieh's broadsword. It doesn't stop there though as next the due are battling in a room filled with sandbags suspended from ceiling. This takes the '36th Chamber' training to its ultimate conclusion as the two use head butts to aim the sandbags at one another.

This is as good a Gordon Liu film as any I've seen and features high class choreography worthy of any Shaw Brothers production.

This movie is like one of those matches. You can't say a whole lot about the plot. The direction is good, but it's not inventive or earth-shattering. But the performance of the two combatants in the ring -- or in this case, on the screen -- is so astounding, so superb, that the movie is elevated to the ranks of near godhood by "workrate freaks" like me, people who appreciate the athletic skill and martial arts talent of the people involved.

Though he doesn't ever get the credit he deserves and seems to have been forced into the shadow of his two brothers, Liu Chia-yung proves in this film that he is a solid kungfu director and actor. Liu's brother, Liu (Chia-hui) plays a Shaolin monk (of course) who is battling it out with a Tibetan Lama (Lo Lieh) over some lost sacred treasure.

The simple plot lends itself to tons of exciting confrontations between the two respectful rivals, including a classic fight in which they must both remain completely silent while fighting, going through insanely amazing spots to avoid smashing furniture and decorations in a fancy, cluttered room. There is quite a bit of comedy thrown in to make the moments between fights enjoyable, and the whole thing is just simply one of the best kungfu movies around.

Of course, those "moments between the fights" don't come very often. If he does nothign else, Liu Chia-yung crams more kungfu into each of his films than any ten other films, yet he has the wisdom to temper it with good acting and plenty of wit and charm. Ninety minutes of nonstop kungfu sounds fun, but it would get pretty boring after a while. Liu makes his characters interesting enough to carry the film from one breath-taking action sequence to the next.

It helps that the man is working with two of the great legends of martial arts films. His little brother, Liu Chia-hui has a name synonymous with stellar kungfu films. Working as part of the team that included Liu Chia-yung and his other brother, Liu Chia-liang, Liu Chia-hui starred in many of the most respected, excited kungfu classics ever made. His foil and foe (in wrestling terms, it's a classic face versus face match here, two good guys going at it), is played by Lo Lieh, one of the true veterans of kungfu films. Lo cut his teeth in the Shaw Brothers swordsman films of the 1960s usually alongside Jimmy Wang Yu. They were two men who would later go on to be known as "being sorta ugly." Lo also starred in the classic pioneering kungfu film Five Fingers of Death.

It's a damn shame that, like many others, this film gets almost completely ignored by the new generation of fans. They are definitely missing out. If you like your kungfu fast and plentiful, pure and exciting, then this is the film for you. It gets our highest old school recommendation.