I don't know why I used to pick on Jimmy Wang Yu so much. Anyway, two more (one is a sequel) from the old days...

FURIOUS SLAUGHTER
Although Jimmy Wang Yu does not have one arm in this film, he does get to sport a dapper fedora, so I guess it's not a total loss for him. This film, however, is a fine example of why Jimmy is a better one-armed hero than he is a two-armed one. Having one-arm pretty much excuses his limited on-screen talents. When he's swinging both arms wildly around, as in this film, there's really no excuse at all. He may be a fine fighter in real life, but take the sword out of his hand, or give him both hands, and he's just not very good on screen. It's a shame, really, because the man was spectacular in the Shaw Brothers sword epics of the 1960s. With a few exceptions, however, he simply could not make the transition.

A lot of things refer to this as an Indiana Jones inspired film, which I don't exactly get, seeing as Jimmy isn't searching for treasure or shooting Nazis or hanging out with an Arab who possesses a rich, baritone voice. I guess since Jimmy wears a fedora that makes him an Indiana Jones character.

Jimmy plays a gruff do-gooder rickshaw man who decides to protect a town from the rabble attracted by the local brothel/gambling hall. The only problem with his plan is that no one in the town seems all that interested in his daring-do. In fact, most of them like having the brothel around, and I guess I would, too, and I'd be pretty pissed if Jimmy Wang Yu showed up one day out of the blue and started waving his arms in a threatening manner in everyone's face.

But that doesn't stop Jimmy from crusading against evil in the town's name. Eventually, some bad guys just throw lime powder in his eyes and plant some axes in him. Thus he dies tragically, defending the townspeople from an evil they all seemed to like having around. And the brothel owners and customers weren't even acting evil until Jimmy starting hitting them. What are they supposed to do?

When this stuff isn't happening, Jimmy just pulls around a rickshaw. This movie is not very good on any level except maybe on the level where guys pull rickshaws around. If that's the sort of movie you want to watch, then this one is pretty good, I suppose, though I'm not really an expert on movies about guys pulling rickshaws around for two hours. I'd imagine pulling a rickshaw around can't be that much more excruciating than watching this movie.

The plot wasn't thought out at all, and the result is me having about as much support for and interest in Jimmy's bravery as the rest of the town. But he does get to swing his arms around a lot, and in the end, although he still has both arms, he does get to go blind, so he at least gets to work a disability into the plot. Despite dying, Jimmy reprises his role in the direct sequel, if you can believe that, called Bloody Struggle.


BLOODY STRUGGLE
This equally amusingly titled film is the sequel to Furious Slaughter. I guess it is pretty bloody, and I struggled to get through it, so there is truth to the title. If I was British, I might even say that watching this film was indeed a bloody struggle.

I don't know what it was about Furious Slaughter that made people want to make or see a sequel, but here it is. This one gets a lot more into exploring just how boring a kungfu film can be -- a subject touched on in the first film but not as fully developed as it is here.

The film picks up soon after Jimmy's timely demise at the end of the first film, in which ten axes planted in his body didn't stop him from being a house afire and killing bad guys galore before dropping dead. Now, his sister is in town trying to find out who was responsible for her brother's death.

Only he's not dead, see? Well, he can't see. He went blind last film, before dying, but neither blindness or death is permanent when you are Jimmy Wang Yu. No, he's just been hiding in a barn, hitting bails of hay, and waiting for his eyesight to return so he can take revenge on the guys he was unjustly hassling in the last film.

When his eyesight does return (if only modern blind people would spend more time punching hay bails, maybe they could get their sight back, too), he and sister both go out for revenge. They swing their arms around a lot and Jimmy gets about a dozen more axes stuck in him. He even has one in his head, but he keeps on truckin' until the bad guys are all dead. The he dies, too. I guess. I don't know. It didn't work the first time. But as far as I know, there was never a third film called "Peeved Vengeance" or anything. So maybe he died for good. Suffice to say, my interest in this film died long before Jimmy Wang Yu became an ax cushion for the second time.

I have to conclude that, in these films, Jimmy is not really that good at his job. I mean, in part one, he tries to save a town from the local whorehouse when everyone in the town seemed to like the whorehouse. And then the bad guys threw axes at his head. And now he comes back in part two and can't go ten seconds into a fight without getting more axes in his head. That's a pretty interesting fighting style, but not one you want to try in real life.

This film really sucks. It's boring, seems to last forever, and has little or no point at all. Still, it's pretty funny to watch a guy with a dozen axes stuck in his body still running around shouting and fighting. So I guess it wasn't a total loss.