Iron Monkey
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(1977)
[DVD Info]
Iron (Kuan Tai Chen) is the son of a rebel leader, who is against the Chings. Although his father is a great leader, Iron prefers to spend his days gambling and boozing. One day, a lieutenant of the Manchus infiltrates his father’s rebel army and holds them all hostage so they can torture the whereabouts of their son out of them. When they refuse to talk, the lieutenant has them all killed and places their bodies in public. Iron comes across these bodies and mourns for his family…but not before he swears revenge. Iron spends many months homeless, stealing food from a Shaolin Temple. One day he is discovered and is asked to join the temple. After many months of training, the temple’s monk gives everyone a chance to choose the fighting style they want. Iron chooses Monkey Fist and goes into training with the Bitter Monk for several years. One day he emerges to ask the monks to let him leave the temple. He then joins the very army that killed his family so he can extract his revenge. Will he succeed? Or will Eagle Claw be too much for his Monkey Fist?
"Monkey boy should do monkey fist! 'Cause he's a monkey! Ahhahaha." ~Student at Shaolin Temple.
If my plot summary seemed strange or muddled…it is because old, dubbed over martial art flicks are really hard to follow. I couldn’t write any notes on it really and I had to bust out the DVD case to help me out. So if you’ve seen it and my plot summary is wrong, feel free to email me. The story itself is a little tedious and long but the old school kung fu makes it every bit worth it. The final showdown between the General and Iron Monkey is awesome. The quality of picture was terrible and at some points the sound drops out completely. The dub is truly horrendous and difficult to understand. And I thought it was sad they pitted a real monkey against a real hawk at one point. That’s kinda mean. So, in all…the cool martial art moves outweighs the slow story and bad dub. It was a good story, just hard to get into with all the distractions. But if you’re into martial arts I’d definitely recommend this one! Because of this, we rate this quickie:
