SOUL BROTHERS OF KUNG FU (movie review)

SOUL BROTHERS OF KUNG FU (1977)
aka The Tiger Strikes Again, Kung Fu Avengers, The Last Strike
Starring: Bruce Li(credited as Ho Chung Tao), Lo Meng, Carl R. Scott, Ku Feng, Kong Do, Lee Hoi San
Directed by: Hwa I Hung
Run Time: 91 minutes

Wong Wei Lung(Li), his girlfriend, and Shaosan(Meng) illegally immigrate to Hong Kong via a raft and end up working crummy small time jobs.  On day working at the port they save Tommy(Scott) from being beaten up by some goons who work for crime boss, Chien, which then gets Wei Lung and Shaosan get fired from their jobs.  Shaosan is tired of being poor and is always gambling, while Wei Lung becomes a competitive fighter and wins the championship.  Chien won't have anymore interference from wei Lung and sends his three goons to work him over which ends up with Wei Lung's girlfriend getting killed and Wei Lung put in the hospital.  The doctor tells Wei Lung that he won't be able fight anymore, but he is not having any of that and goes to his friend's country home to train.  In the meantime Shaosan meets girl who actually works for Chien and she turns Shaosan against Wei Lung.  Fully recovered Wei Lung sets out to take out the fighters who killed his girl, his ex-best friend and big boss Chien.

I had been putting off watching this one for a while, but was pleasantly surprised because I really enjoyed.  In fact I say this is now one of my favorite Bruce Li movies.  The story wasn't anything ground breaking, but it moves along a good pace with lots of good fights.  The fighting is fast and brutal, but unfortunately marred by some heavy editing.  I thought I bought the "uncut" version, but I was suckered, you can read my DVD review here.  Bruce Li is pretty good here too with some nice hand and feet work and some cool nunchuk scenes.  He totally destroys a watermelon!  There is only a little bit of comedy, but not the usually goofball stuff we are used to with some of the flicks.  The movie is mostly played serious with all Bruce Li's friends not even surviving to the end credits.

They even pay "tribute" to Bruce Lee a few times.  Wei Lung and Shaosan's apartment has Bruce Lee posters all over the walls and while Wei Lungs read a Bruce Lee book, I mean magazine, his girlfriend points out, "He went too high, too quickly and that's why he died so early in life."  Luckily, we won't have to worry about that happening to Bruce Li.  Then later on in the movie when Wei Lung wins the championship a reporter calls him the "second Bruce Lee", but then he says that Bruce Lee "is the Chinese I most admire".

Although, the movie is called SOUL BROTHERS OF KUNG FU there is only one "brother" in the movie and that would be a very young looking Carl Scott.  But I guess they were brothers in spirit right?  What little comedy there is usually stems from Scott's antics and his t-shirts.  In fact there are lots of funny t-shirts on display here, my hats off to the wardrobe department.  Carl Scott mostly gets beaten up and thrown around and in the end strung up.  The only black guy in the movie and you hang him?  Not very PC.  Scott does has a very nice looking sparring session with Bruce Li on a rooftop, one of the best fights of the entire movie.

An intentionally funny scene happens after Lo Meng meets a girl in a club and outside they are jumped by some thugs.  Lo Meng beats them up all and one guy ends up with his pants split up the ass.  I didn't even notice it at the time, but when I was doing some screen captures I saw and it's pretty funny.  Keep your eyes peeled if you watch this, it is classic!

A good movie, entertaining, lots of wacky 70's t-shirts to laugh at and you don't fall asleep between fight scenes.  This one has got it all!  I also counted five ball shots and it should've been more, but my "uncut" version had them cut out.  What the hell?! Don't cut out my ball shots!

SOUL BROTHERS OF KUNG FU (DVD review)

Distributor: Bonzai Media
Region: ALL NTSC
 
I bought this disc because it was billed as being "UNCUT", but unfortunately that is completely false.  The back of the case says that when the movie was originally released in 1978 it was rated X and parts had to be cut for a theatrical release.  It then goes on to describe where the cuts were made and what was cut out.  I don't why they did this because now we know exactly what we are missing as most of these cut scenes aren't even in the "uncut version."  So why is it called "uncut" then?  Just watching the fights the edits are pretty obvious which really sucks.

Picture Quality: 
The video is wide-screen 2.35:1 and looks not to bad.  Definitely better than VHS, but not up to grade with regular DVDs, but I don't think we are going to get much better than this.  The picture is solid, so you won't have to worry about static or running picture like some old kung fu movie converted over from VHS.

Sound Quality: 
Stereo, as in dual mono!  I didn't notice any audio dropouts or fuzzy audio, it is clear and I didn't have any problems hearing the dialog.

Extras: 
Following the end of the movie there is the uncut version of the ending, but unfortunately it is full screen and the video is a bit faded.  The uncut ending shows a gorier end to Ku Feng when Bruce Li literally uses his Iron Finger to perforate his heart.  We actually get an internal view of the heart with the finger in it and when the finger is removed blood seeps from the wound. In the uncut ending Carl Scott's character Tommy lives, but in the edited theatrical version, he dies.  Visit the Bruceploitation YouTube Channel to watch the uncut ending.

There is a also quite a long trailer for the Chinese Bruce Lee TV series, Legend of Bruce Lee.  The trailer was obviously just taken from the internet as it has the Sina watermark embedded on it and even though it's only a few years old the video quality is worse  than the feature film which is 30 years older, it suffers from lots of compression looks very blocky.

Other: 
Menus are awful as there in only one main menu where you can either play the movie or play the Legend of Bruce Lee trailer.  Not even having a menu for chapter selections is pretty lazy. Also, having the option to play the alternate uncut ending would be nice instead of having to go to the end of the movie.

The artwork is fairly uninspired with pictures of the three main heroes against a funky multi-colored background.  The back is most text with some screen shots on the side.  The movie is released under their "the fake bruce lee series...BRUCEPLOITATION" banner and for some reason I bet it's the only one.

Wrap up:  
I was pretty disappointed that I bought this "uncut" edition only to discover that it is indeed edited, in fact make that heavily edited, but what do you expect from a bootleg.  I still enjoyed the movie though(read my review), but if you are looking for the definitive uncut version then keep looking.  If I ever find it then I will immediately be disposing of this DVD.

BRUCEPLOITATION Fights Back From the Grave!

Kind of...sorta...not really...maybe...I don't know.  I first started the Bruceploitation website years ago, so many years ago it was back when Geocities was still kind of neat.  Geocities pretty much got left in the online dust and eventually was taken over by Yahoo which recently shut it down completely.  After nearly 10 years online Bruceploitation was history.  I'd really like to get the website back up, but that would require a lot of know-how of which I have none and a lot of work of which I dislike.  This blog is just a test to see if I can manage to get stuff up and online on somewhat regular schedule, unlike the one update per year Bruceploitation was getting.  If I can pull this off some how maybe I'll get the original website back and running because I know the fans really miss it, all five of you.  Thanks guys.

As for content I still have several movies to review that never quite made it up on Bruceploitation as well as some DVD reviews, toy reviews, and nonsensical rants in general.  Hope you enjoy them.