Shaolin Warrior (1980)

Don't watch it dubbed

A movie crying out to be seen in its original language (and widescreen), Carry on Wise Guy is a relatively straightforward and sometimes painfully unfunny martial arts adventure featuring Gordon Liu, one where whenever he's not onscreen becomes borderline intolerable. Even in the cropped and super crummy VHS-level transfer this movie has, you can tell that the choreography of the fight scenes goes hard, the major saving grace of this otherwise relatively low-budget comedy. Unfortunately, the plot is super generic, where things happen with no rhyme or reason. One minute it is a jiāngshī horror comedy scored with Walter Murphy's A Fifth of Beethoven, the next minute it's a serious foot-flying adventure to deliver a map of Japanese movements to Chinese troops. Sadly, the disingenuous dub isn't doing this movie any favours, (I swear one of the voice actors was Eric Idle of all people, sounding like he does in Casper 😭) and as it stands, Carry on Wise Guy is worth a fleeting look mainly for Liu kicking arse.

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