Dragon Lee (who actually receives onscreen credit under both of his names) stars as Lee Wen, a young man preparing for an arranged marriage to Sing. Unfortunately, it seems Sing's father has a rather important list of rebels who are planning to take out baddie Kai. Kai will stop short of nothing to get the list and that includes having henchmen kill Wen's father and shoot Wen with a poisonous dart. Wen is rescued before the poison takes full effect and doctors saving his life by amputating his leg below the knee. In a big plot convenience, Sing's grandfather was a great iron legged warrior and left behind his metal forging work shed and 18 kicks training manual. This inspires Wen, so he hops up, casts himself an iron leg and sets off to kick butt.
To be quite honest, for the first 40 minutes or so, this film is a real bore. It isn't until Dragon Lee gets his new iron leg that the film really takes off. After that, it's great. When Lee kicks someone with his metal leg, they literally skid about 20 feet on the ground! Plus, there are metal clanging sounds similar to hitting a garbage can each time he makes contact with his leg. Add to that the kung fu encounter with four invisible girls and a final conflict where the villain utilizes deadly flaming flowers and you have a martial arts classic. Another amazing aspect to keep note of when watching this is how cold it appears to be when they filmed it. Even in the interior shots, you can easily see the characters breath. Talk about hardcore, guerilla filmmaking.
The biggest question for me is what does that title mean? Who are the champs? What are they the champs of? You would think that any movie where a character gets their leg amputated and then gets a new, metal leg would have a snazzy title. Something like KID WITH THE IRON LEG or FEET OF FURY. Instead we have to settle with the generic CHAMP VS. CHAMP. Oh well, at least the movie still kicks ass.
Reviewed by William