This is a typical Joseph Kuo produced "old school" kung fu film with Carter Wong playing a bad guy not unlike "Born Invincible", where he is virtually indestructible. Incrediblely, there is no mention of any "Armour" in the movie. The early cinematography is pretty good with a good use of the widescreen cinemascope. There is even a Busby Burkley homage with some Chinese girls early in the film. Kuo also throws in some comic kung fu characters, for some cheap laughs. However, the editing is horrible. Maybe it was this particular copy of the film, but action sequences were often cut before they could end properly. Much of the decent choreography is ruined by the chop happy editing and the quality of camera work also goes downhill in the second half of the film, especially in a horrible forest battle sequence that was basically shot in the dark with crappy film stock. In fact, it looks like Kuo spent the entire film's budget in the first 15 minutes... after that we get crap.
Kuo got a large cast of extras here as Ming soldiers. However they act more like blind lemmings, marching into each other and marching off a cliff into the river. A big problem here is that many characters are introduced and then abandoned mid way through the "plot". Other than Wong as the evil kung fu warlord, we can't identitfy who the other people are. There is also a "hopping corpses" sequence complete with a Taoist and his hunchbacked "Igor" that doesn't really fit in the movie either. Lots of guys killed early in the movie come back to fight in the last battle. Eventually the "hero" who was killed in the first ten minutes of the film returns to fight Wong. My recommendation with this film is "just say no" to this bad "Buddha Bless You" mess of a film.
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