Review of Death Duel Of Kung Fu

Introduction

Over the years there has been a gluttony of old films being released on DVD to capture the market share or inspire the odd casual purchase. Even now we see marketing strategies aimed at releasing a one or two disc version of a modern film, only for a super doper Special Ultimate Edition to be released a year or so later.

Sometimes we get a glut of releases that have never seen a DVD release though, and sometimes we get some real gems. Death Duel of Kung Fu is not one of them.

Directed by Sum Cheung in 1979, this chop socky film features Wong Tao as a man who infiltrates the Army of his enemy, has an argument with the top Marshal and then cuts his head off. He then goes on the run with the head in a box, hoping to deliver it to his Commander or something. Tao is chased by an evil bloke in red silk pyjamas who practices a form of kung fu that seems to have inspired robotic dancing, whilst Tao also meets up periodically with a kung fu expert spy and a Japanese girl who is a croupier/con artist with a penchant for baring her snake tattooed breasts.

Oh, and there`s lots of kung fu fights…

Video

Oh my god. I`ve seen better chewed VHS tapes than this. Don`t be fooled by the screenshots on here, they seem to be in a much better condition than the film.

Audio

Oddly most of this soundtrack sounds as if it`s been lifted from a spaghetti western. The dialogue is badly dubbed with really bad sound effects. There are no subtitles and no choice of original soundtracks.

Features

Nothing worth mentioning.

Conclusion

Dear god. What a complete waste of my time. I`m not a huge fan of this genre of film but the combination of the films age and its appearance drag this right to top of my list of bad films that I`ve watched. In its original form it may have been OK, even the bad fashion of the warriors may have seemed acceptable in the late 70`s, but this release is nothing short of embarrassing.

I find it hard to believe that we`re moving back to the start of the DVD age where companies feel that they can just get a quick buck by transferring film or video to DVD without attempting any form of clean up whatsoever. Let`s make a simple statement right here: if you want to release a film but don`t have the budget to make it look presentable, don`t bother releasing it.

What`s worse in this case, as opposed to the recently reviewed My Kung Fu 12 Kicks, is that the film doesn`t appear to have any sort of coherent plot, just a general idea of a bloke wandering round the countryside getting into fights every five minutes.

OK, I wasted enough time watching this, I`m certainly not going to waste more writing about it…