| A famously troubled production between Britain's Hammer Films and Shaw Brothers (their two picture deal also included The Legend Of The 7 Golden Vampires), original director Monte Hellman (Beast From Haunted Cave, Cockfighter) was fired 3 weeks into production due to slow production speed. According to Hellman, the Shaw Brothers crew couldn't commit more than half a day daily to his production though so co-producer Michael Carerras stepped in to finish this rather stale modern day action/kung-fu spectacle. Released 2 years later (but not until 1980 in Hong Kong), the film is also known as Call Him Mr. Shatter. Stuart Whitman plays Shatter, a for hire assassin whose latest job on an African leader leads to international attention from a large drug syndicate. Supposed to claim his money in Hong Kong, Shatter becomes the hunted and takes refuge with two locals: kung-fu expert Tai Pah (Ti Lung) and his friend Mai Mee (Lily Li)...
This far into their history, Hammer tried out different routes, hence this second collaboration with Shaw's not being their second collaboration with Shaw's on the vampire/kung-fu theme. Admirable but the stale pace to the chase scenario is further harmed by ridiculous scripting and performing (the romance between Whitman and Li being the prime sinner). While the martial arts is tacked on and not shot at quite the standard you'd expect from a Shaw's vehicle, Ti Lung is impressively physical despite the production clearly wanting a Bruce Lee aura to surround him. The way Ti Lung escapes this is notable. Also with Anton Diffing, Peter Cushing, Lee Hoi-Sang, Lau Kar-Wing and Fung Hak-On. Censor cuts were required at the time in America so for a completely uncut version of Shatter, look no further than the German dvd release under its local title of Ti-Lung - Der tödliche Schatten des Mr. Shatter. |
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