Well, I can honestly say It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a film quite like “Crazy Guy with Super Kung-fu” (Also known as “Yu tou dai lao ben tu di” in its original language) The closest film I can compare this to would be “The Dragon lives again” and I first watched that film in 2009. So it was a very welcome change to watch a martial arts film that didnt take itself seriously, played more for comedy than it did the action pieces, and didnt fall flat on its face in the way “Descendants of wing chun” did…
But this film isnt all prat-falls and bad jokes. Theres actually some really well choreographed fight scenes thrown into the mix and it appears that the same company who dubbed “Wing chun” also dubbed this film as several voices and styles of delivery are painfully present here…in particular theres one voice actor in many of these films who sounds to me like a spot on “Carry on” era Kenneth Williams…
This voice acting cant be serious. I know it cant be serious. because if they genuinely thought that giving these films the voice styles they did would make the movie look and sound cool then they’re viewing a different version of reality to my own.
There are moments in this film that are just downright surreal. See the scene in my review with the homless person dancing around the restraunt singing about how the buildings condemned. its not completely out of place with the rest of the film tonally, but I do have to wonder what on earth was going on in the film makers minds when they stitched this one together.
Though weird and suffering from the effects of combining two genres that shouldnt go together (Super serious kung fu action and Campy “Carry on” comedy) I actually quite enjoyed this one. So much so that it actually earned a place on my “Do not chuck” shelf. Which is home to my blu-rays, DVD’s and tapes and contains all the classics and rarities that I simply will never even consider throwing away. I think this would be a good b-picture to “The Dragon lives again” in many ways…something to warm the audience up and give them a good kicking into the kind of mindset that would get on with the likes of “Dracula vs Popeye” It’s dirt cheap on amazon and I’d say go and check it out if you can. I dont recall it being groundbreaking, but its still an enjoyable picture.
As a final note. This is another review I wasnt 100% happy with. I had to record it in a different place to where I normally record my audio, it was the middle of the night, and I had to be quiet; So I dont really feel like I got the best out of the recording that I could have…equally there are a few structuring issues with this one that I feel had I given it a bit more time I’d probably have been able to rectify…Still, you live and learn! I still pretty much say everything about the film that I wanted to in this, but I may come back to it some day just to tidy it up a bit…
TYTD Reviews 