The Hot, The Cool And The Vicious: Viewer Comments

Another Lee Tso Nam Taiwanese flick, sporting relativly high production value and decent action choreography by Tommy Lee. Don Wong Tao and Tan Tao Liang make a good team, but they are not exactly the strongest leading men in kung fu movie history, if you ask me. Still, they get the job done. They also deliver actionwise--to a point. Wong Tao's southern fist is good, but not spectacular. And Tan Tao's northern leg, although technically perfect, never really looks that powerful. No doubt he's got the kicking skills down. But it looks more like an exhibition than actual combat most of the time. Maybe this is the fault of choreographer Lee, maybe not. Lee however, has the coolest part in the movie, as the ghostly blond hunchback with the echoing voice. And when all three face off in the final fight it is still great to watch. I actually feel that the story and characters are stronger than the action. Which is pretty rare for a kung fu flick of this era. You also have to bear in mind that this movie was made in 1976. Two years before one of the benchmark years in HK action choreography, that being 1978. Where Jackie and Yuen Woo Ping put their heads together for SNAKE IN THE EAGLES SHADOW and DRUNKEN MASTER. Sammo came out with WARRIORS TWO. Lau Kar Leung made his brother Gordon shine in classics like 36th CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN and HEROES OF THE EAST. And Chang Cheh put together his deadly venoms team, for some of their greatest efforts. So considering that this is a mid 70's Taiwanese flick, the action is certainly passable. And it has more going for it than that.

Straight from the Tai Seng DVD package:

"Flashy leg combats highlight this superb action adventure, considered to be one of the best made films in leg fighting! To determine which one of them possesses the best leg fighting technique, three kung fu experts embark on a series of competitions to see who's the ultimate kung fu master. THE HOT, THE COOL, AND THE VICIOUS is oriental combat at its finest!"

Whoever wrote that should be fired.

The Hot, the Cool and the Vicious (with or without a second comma) is REALLY about a struggle between Bai Yu Ching (Don Wong), a notorious wandering killer in the employ of a small town's crooked mayor, and Lu Tung Chun (Tan Tao-Liang), the security chief of that same town, who is hunting down the mayor's son because he killed his soon-to-be mother-in-law (in a western society, he'd more likely thank him for his trouble). The mayor of this town is a real asshole who runs a counterfeiting operation with a guy named Mr. Lung (Tommy Lee, who also choreographed the fights). Mr. Lung looks like an extremely primitive attempt by a blind makeup artist to pass a Chinese man off as a Caucasian. Three notable female characters who complicate the matter are Lu Tung Chun's fiancee, a shady innkeeper, and some woman who craves revenge on Lu Tung Chun for a perceived past injustice and enlists Bai Yu Chung's aid.

With this ambitious setup, there's considerable potential here. But with these restrained fight scenes and that even-worse-than-usual English dubbing, the film is only moderately enjoyable. In combat, Bai Yu Chung relies almost exclusively on his hands while Lu Tung Chun mostly uses an impressive array of kicks; this isn't turned into a lame gimmick but, at the same time, I think the fights could have been a little bit better off if the choreography had made a little bit more of a point of illustrating each man's specialty.

As you have no doubt deduced by now, I have very little to say about this film. It is by no means a bad kung fu movie, but there's no shortage of better ones out there.