The Lost Kung Fu Secrets (1979) User Reviews (3)

No hook and sparse action

[ckormos1 · 4/10 · 15 December 2016]

It starts with a war and something about Christianity. Hsu Feng wants revenge. The victors celebrate and a spy reports to the general. David Chiang challenges the beggar spy as his enemy. Beach mats are used as weapons. David Chiang cannot prove the officer is a traitor. There is a lot of talking.

The story fails to have any kind of a hook. The fights are few and substandard. The fast forward button is mandatory for watching this poor excuse for a martial arts movie.

My copy was the common Ocean Shores video release, a VHS dubbed in English and since converted to a digital file. I watched it once to write a review. I doubt I will ever watch it again. The secrets mentioned in the title shall remain lost forever.

Awful

[JohnSeal · 2/10 · 2 August 2005]

This wretched martial arts feature revolves around a threatened group of Christians in the Chinese countryside. That's about the only spark of originality displayed by this inept film, which features some very boring fight sequences filmed at a snail's pace so the actors can hit their spots. A few of the sword fights are somewhat elegant, but the vast bulk of the choreography is quite poor, even resorting at one point to the old silent movie trick of speeding up the film for one particularly tricky shot. The denouement is almost passable--there's some fun to be had with some rather bizarre spiked gloves--but by and large, you won't be missing much if you pass on learning this secret (which on the print I saw is actually plural).

A big step down for David Chiang

[Leofwine_draca · 3/10 · 15 January 2017]

THE LOST KUNG FU SECRETS is a Taiwanese martial arts film starring Shaw star David Chiang once he'd parted ways with the famous studio and resorted to making lesser fare in a cheaper film-making country. And certainly THE LOST KUNG FU SECRETS is a big comedown after the many highs of Chiang's Shaw career; there's absolutely nothing memorable in this film at all, it's just a movie that screams familiarity from beginning to end.

Things open with a evil general who poses as a Christian in order to bring about a totalitarian regime. He has a network of soldiers and spies dotted throughout the countryside, so it takes a handful of loyalists to stand up for him and Chiang is the foremost of these. What follows is a talky, badly dubbed adventure in which the fight scenes invariably disappoint. Where the film does hold interest is in a few bizarre elements (Chiang vs. the rolling logs, a brief bit of 'flag fu', the enemy's outlandish suit of armour at the climax) but generally it's a big step down for one of the greatest kung fu stars ever on screen.