Aside from the absolutely remarkable fight scene involving Gordon Liu near the very beginning of "Executioners from Shaolin", there is little else to recommend in this boring film. Even its greatest asset, Lo Lieh, is given scant few minutes of screen time.

The flaws in this film are numerous. The film is so dominated by scenes of Chen Kuan-Tai's extremely mundane domestic life it almost makes the revenge scenario against Pei Mei feel like an afterthought. What little fight action that does occur is slow and uninspired. Moreover, Chen Kuan-tai is never even remotely Lo Lieh's match, even after 17 years of training. The sheer one-sidedness of the fights makes them more tedious than exciting; I won't even go into the absurdity of Pei Mei's kung fu style. And to make matters worse, the training sequences that occur prior to the Hong Xiguan-Pei Mei showdowns are boring, consisting mostly of Chen Kuan-tai banging away on an immobile bronze dummy, when he isn't busy ripping the bark off trees.

But far and away the biggest flaw of the whole movie is the character of Hong Wending, played by the perpetually annoying Young Wang Yu. Regardless of the film, whenever Liu Chia-liang used Young Wang Yu as his comedy relief, it always produced the same annoying-as-hell slapstick result, and this film is no exception. The fact he is portrayed as an exremely effiminate, almost girlish, buffoon with a pronounced lack of kung fu skill does not help matters. That he is able to beat Lo Lieh at the end, after his father had failed twice at the same task even after two decades of training, is an insult to the intelligence of the viewer. This movie is utterly disappointing and completely forgettable.

I have only seen the old VHS version of this movie. However, the reason that i've decided to post a review is because of the reviews i've read, each one states that the final scene ends abruptly. Unless i'm mistaken, the DVD doesn't show what happens to Bai Mei. Please e-mail me if i'm not correct! What's strange to me about that, from what i remember of the the original movie, is that the final scene does conclude:

The young man finds Bai Mei's weak spot on top of his head! Using the crane's stregth in the legs, the young man latches onto Bai Mei's shoulders and squeezes him so that he does not fall (the way he used to when he was a kid!) Finally, he uses both beak hands to poke out Bai Mei's eyes. Blood gushes everywhere, Bai Mei spins around dramatically, and collapses dead...

Is that not in this DVD??? If not, how disappointing! Perhaps the scene was too gory? (i highly doubt it - i've seen worse).

Strange...