Come Drink with Me (Dai zui xia) (1966)

Yay! It's time to watch a kung fu movie and today's will be Come Drink with Me!  This is a fun film that is full of a lot of action.  And it stars a woman!

So the bad guys kidnap the governor's son and hold him for ransom.  The price will be the release of their leader.  The governor sends his best constable to rescue him.  She also happens to be the governor's daughter.

The constable, Golden Swallow, at first wears her hair up in a bun and men's clothes.  Everyone calls her a young man, but it's clearly obvious she's a woman.  This proves a point we learned by watching Mulan: All you have to do is put your hair in a bun and everyone will believe you are a man, no matter how feminine you look.

Golden Swallow is helped by a drunken singing beggar called Drunken Cat.  He is funny and always tries to help her.  She arrives at the temple to fight everyone and rescue her brother.  There are some great fight scenes here.  However, she is hit by a poison dart and runs off.

She is rescued by Drunken Cat, who really is a kung fu master in secret!!  The bad guys are being helped by an evil monk, who is also a kung fu master!  So many kung fu masters, more than you can shake a stick at!!

The bad guy monk wants Drunken Cat's staff for reasons, but he's like NOPE.  And they have awesome kung fu battles.  Meanwhile, Golden Swallow manages to save her brother without having to give up the bad guy leader.  Golden Swallow and her band of female fighters battle with the bad guys.  Then, Drunken Cat and evil monk guy have a battle of the staff.

This movie was exciting and had excellently choreographed fight scenes.  Also, it had decent female characters without being patronizing.   I will give it an 8/10.

Enter the Dragon (1973)

Today's film is Enter the Dragon.  I was so excited to be able to see Bruce Lee kick Chuck Norris' ass, but this isn't even the right movie.  The movie I was thinking of is The Way of the Dragon.  What is it with all these fighting movies and the name Dragon?  But fear not, Bruce Lee will still fight and still destroy another large white person, by the name of Bob Wall.

In this film, Bruce Lee plays Lee (of course) of the Shaolin Temple.  He was sent by his teacher and some British officer guy to an island owned by a former student of the Temple.  Soon, he is joined by two Americans, and they all enter a fighting tournament held on the island.  The former student's name is Han, and he uses the island to prepare opium for selling.  He is an evil drug lord. oooo.


My favorite character was Williams.  He had a great fighting style, or maybe lack of style, but it was effective.  Plus he had a very relaxed attitude and sported quite the fro.  I knew that he could win, but Han has dirty tricks and defeated him.  Sadly, the actor playing Williams, Jim Kelly, recently passed away on June 29th of cancer.

So, this movie is more of a crime caper with our heroes defeating the evil drug lords (because drugs are bad, mmmkay) with some kung fu fighting thrown in there.  However, there are a lot of opportunities to kung fu fight!  I love all the fighting sequences, especially when Lee in down in the drug-making basement fighting the guards.  Lee moved so fast they had to film him at 32 fps (frames per second) and then slow the film down to the usual 24 fps so we can actually see his moves.

What I really didn't understand was Han's fake hand. Is it his left or right hand?  When he's fighting Lee, the fake hand switches several times.  When he takes the hot white guy (I was too distracted by his chest hair to learn his name) on a tour, he shows off all of the hand weapons, which are all left.  But when they reach the skeleton hand, that's a right hand! When he slashes at Lee with his knife hand, that's his right hand, but he kills Williams with his left hand! If only one of his hands is supposed to be fake, why is it so hard to keep using the same hand in every take? Why?

Overall, I liked this movie because it's full of action, and will later be alluded to in many other films.  I mean a lot.  I will give this film a 6/10.