Mad Monkey Kung Fu [IVL]: Technical Notes

The transfer quality is superb. Celestial did a great job. The 2 audio tracks are in mono and the sound is clean. The subtitles seem okay too for me since I'm a French person and I'm not perfectly bilingual--but I did clearly understand what was going on.

I did not see the original 197x movie. So I cannot compare this edition with the original in regard of 'true-to-the-original' aspect with no cuts. But, since I know that Celestial are 'cutting' SOME of them a way or another and even drasticaly sometime, I will point out only one things that seem strange to me.

The apprentice is very talentive and behave already like a monkey, but there is no explanation at all about that (his past training).
The apprentice master the fan as good as is master in very short periode of time (you don't see any scene about that like it as been cut) ???

In all, the DVD may or may not be true to the original, but, the movie itself is very entertaining and should be part of your old school kung fu collection.

Picture: Letterboxed print with superb colours (something which Celestial have really perfected) and a clean image throughout. Occassional softness rears its head but other than that, aboslutely no complaints.

Sound: Cantonese and Mandarin soundtracks with removable English, traditional Chinese, Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia subtitles.

Trailers: 'Mad Monkey Kung Fu', 'Eight Diagram Pole Fighters', 'Executioners From Shaolin', 'Disciples Of The 36th Chamber' and 'New Tales Of The Flying Fox'.

Extras: These include a photo gallery, the original poster, production notes and biographies and filmographies for Liu Chia Liang, Lo Lieh, Hui Ying Hung and Hsiao Hou.

Notes: The print is fully restored and looks great. The original Cantonese and Mandarin audio tracks have been remastered and both sound very good. Removable English subtitles are easy to read and contain only minor errors, but the original English dubbing (not available on this version) is definitely more entertaining.