Lee Won(Dragon Lee) and his father go to meet Tai and his daughter to which Lee Won is arranged to marry. Tai is the leader of the resistance against Kai. Tai holds a name list of all the rebels and Kai wants to get to wipe them out. Kai captures Tai and kills Lee Won's father, and in a fight Lee Won is hit in the leg with a poison dart. Tai's daughter finds the wounded Lee Won and takes him in. Unfortunately the doctor has to amputate his leg in order to save him. Lee Won feels sorry for himself until he learns of a famous kung fu fighter who lost his leg, but made a new steel one and learned the 18 Kicks style. Turns out the famous fighter is the grandfather of the girl and they are staying at his country retreat, what a coinincidence! Lee Won studies the manuals and builds himself a new steel leg. With his new leg Lee Won sets out to free Tai and get revenge for his father.
A decent kung fu film made better by the addition of wacky effects like baddies breathing fire, invisible girls, flying flowers, flying bodies, and some guy's bare ass. Well okay, I could've done without the bare ass. I forgot the usual cheesy dialogue which includes the line, "You long haired son of a she-goat!". Ouch, that hurts. The movie starts out like so many other kung fu movies, the bad guy is after the rebel name list. It doesn't start to get good until Dragon Lee gets his steel leg. They didn't have too many scenes of him without his leg, which is amputated below the knee. It's so obvious that he just bent his leg up so that his heel was touching his butt. If you watch closely you can catch a glimpse of his leg that's supposed to be hidden. With his new 18 Kicks style that doesn't look all that special, he still fights the same, except when he kicks guys they go flying through the air and skid on the ground. The effect actually looks surprisingly cool, I wish they had used it a few more times. One time he gives the boot to this one guy as they are fighting on the beach and they guy skids across the sand and out into the water. The end fight in a cave has Dragon Lee kicking apart the cave and rocks and stuff are flying and eventually the cave collapses. I should have paid atttention to see if all the power kicks were from the new steel leg and not the old regular leg. This technique would've have been hilarious had he been using his kicking power to kick guys in the nuts. He could kick them in the crotch and they'd go flying upwards. Hahahaha. Another funny part is when he fights Tai's invisible girls. First they are all clowns, male clowns, then they turn into chicks. Then they all start posing and turn invisible. Once invisible they start beating the hell out of Dragon Lee. Then for some stupid reason they "re-materialize" so Dragon Lee can beat them and tie them up. What?! Why didn't they just stay invisible and beat the stuffing out of Dragon Lee? Guess that would be a rather anti-climatic ending the movie. I'm pretty sure there was a couple other things I was gonna write about, but I watched the movie like three weeks ago and I can't remember what happened. If it comes back to me I'll write an update.
"Reviewed" by Keith