Dirty Ho

Produced towards the end of the golden age of 70's kung-fu films Dirty Ho, along with 5 Deadly Venoms and Last Hurah For Chivalry, represents the apogee of the Shaw Brothers tradition. Whilst it can't match Last Hurrah's visual style (surely an inspiration for Yimou Zhangs recent epics) or the taught plotting of 5 Deadly Venom, it does offer some of the tightest and most imaginatively choreographed fight scenes this side of Jackie Chan's hey day, all of which take place on sumptuously dressed sets (seeing it on the big screen was great). One thing that really impressed me that's often overlooked is the sound design for the film, the impact noises and incidental synth drones are brilliant giving the final fight in particular a really musical feel, a great sense of rhythm and crescendo.

The plot is nonsense and finishes abruptly after the last fight scene (though it's not as apparently arbitrary as some Shaw Brothers films), not helped by the fact that the print I saw had subtitles which could most charitably be described as functional, but really that's not what these films are for.

[the two guys with moustaches, are having a fight but trying not to let the guy in white know what's going on]

IMDB