Duel of the Dragon / Infernal Street: Taking another stab at getting something off the backlog isn't always easy when the stuff you want to see is on double feature discs. Ah well ?

Duel of the Dragon comes from 1980 when Jackie Chan was just coming into his own as a star. Of course this film doesn't have Chan but it has the next best thing (or so they want us to believe) in the form of Jackie Chen. Like Bruce Lee, Jackie was bound to have his copycats I suppose and as far as the style of the film goes, it is much like a early Chan comedy, though not quite as good.

The film is your typical film with a mischievous pupil learning kung fu from his master, in this case his grandfather, and at first doesn't take it seriously and instead goes out having fun. This, of course, gets him into trouble but when confronted with a serious enemy he trains hard and uses his kung fu to get his revenge and justice is served.

It's all been done a million times before but here but at least it's fun. There are a couple notes about the film I should mention. First, Wu Ma makes a cameo early on in the film and he gets second billing on the disc and secondly, and this is not unusual, but music was ripped off of a couple spaghetti westerns for part of the soundtrack. The only cue I could recognize was the main theme from "Once Upon a Time in the West."

Finishing up the disc was the snoozefest, Infernal Street. The plot of this film was basically about some Japanese people who sell opium to Chinese people and how bad they were and stuff. Basically this film managed to be boring and potentially offensive to viewers. The kung fu is pretty good, so maybe people will ignore the plot and just watch the action.

Labels: Dollar DVD, Hong Kong