Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, guys, I'm gonna be checking out a martial arts film from 1972. That movie is "The Bloody Fists", which is the second film that's apart of the "Martial Arts Classic Double Feature" that I'm gonna be reviewing tonight.
Now, earlier this month, I reviewed the other film from that 2 pack, which was "Moonlight Sword and Jade Lion". And to give you guys a summarization of my thoughts on it, the film wasn't very good. It had a *lot* of problems, such as the story not making any sense, the dub being atrocious, half of the movie's title being a lie, and the technical stuff was also an issue, too, mostly in regards to the picture quality and sound-mixing. That said, I was still kinda able to recommend it mainly for the fight choreography alone, because that was honestly one of the only highlights I could praise about the movie. Just don't expect much of anything else if you ever plan to watch it.
So with that said, let's move on to the other film from this 2 pack, which is "The Bloody Fists". And much like with "Moonlight Sword and Jade Lion", I don't really know much about the film itself. And even the description that's written on the back of the DVD case for it doesn't really tell me much either. The best I could get out of it is that there's some lone fugitive that is defending villagers from some intruders. Why? I don't know. I'm hoping that there's more context to it, but I really won't know unless I quit stalling and I actually watch this thing.
Now I'm really hoping for this movie to be better than "Moonlight Sword and Jade Lion". That said, I'm kinda lowering my expectations with this one, because this movie could honestly suffer the same problems as that other film did. But hey, who knows? This movie could surprise me somehow, and could actually wind up being halfway decent. But there's really only one way for me to find out. And the only way I am gonna know as to whether or not this movie is any good at all, is if I shut up, and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "The Bloody Fists".
3 minutes later
OK, I have a really dumb question here. So our main character has just stolen money, and is on the run from the police. And while he's doing that, he's also crossing a river while holding the money inside the brown bag that he has on his back. And I should mention that the bag itself has gotten wet from being in the water. Wouldn't that damage the money as well? Because all the money he's taken is paper money and I'm pretty sure that if you kept it underwater, even if it's inside a bag, then there's a *strong* chance that the money's gonna be useless to him by this point. Granted, I understand that it probably has nothing to do with the movie itself, but it's the logic behind our main character's thought process that I'm sorta questioning right now.
14 minutes later
Well, guys, I am able to say this so far. The fight choreography is just as good as it was in "Moonlight Sword and Jade Lion". I really wish I could tell you anything about the film's plot, but, so far, I haven't been able to find much of anything, outside of them mentioning something about Dragon Herbs and the Japanese wanting to build a gymnasium. I'm hoping, maybe, that there's more to this, but I guess I'll just have to wait and see, now won't I?
20 minutes later
You know, guys, I mentioned before that I'm not the biggest fan of martial arts films...but I don't remember a lot of them being this fucking boring. I honestly have been struggling to stay the fuck awake, but this movie is somehow putting me to sleep. I never thought I'd say that about a martial arts film, but this movie is actually proving that to me in spades! I'm hoping the next hour or so is gonna do something interesting and soon, but I don't really know if it will or not.
11 minutes later
OK, I have a bit of a stupid question here, but I want to ask it anyway. Now, I am not an expert on the art of torturing people, but is raising someone's tied up feet on a pair of brick rocks suppose to be torture? I admit, there might be some sort of method to that effect, but I honestly don't see it. It just looks more like an inconvenience to me, you know?
2 minutes later
All right, this is starting to annoy me now, but this is the 4th time that they've used this fucking song and I'm getting sick of it! I really wish this movie would stop playing this stupid song because it just sounds incredibly unnecessary when they're trying to build some sort of dramatic tension. It wasn't working then and it's not working now, so can we *please* move on from this song? Please?! Oh, and now they're bringing in the annoying piano music, too...great. I'm thankful you guys can't hear it for obvious reasons, but for me, I still have more of this shit to listen to. Yippie...
15 minutes later
Guys, do you happen to remember earlier when I was talking about the description that was written on the back of this film's DVD case? About how a lone fugitive was defending villagers from some sort of intruders? Well, guess what? That still hasn't fucking happened yet! I've been waiting for him to recover from this "plague* that he's been suffering from since getting the Dragon Herb medicine from a couple of the villagers, but that still hasn't happened yet. This movie better have some sort of payoff to his absence, otherwise, I'm probably gonna be very disappointed.
12 minutes later
You know, guys, out of all the things I was expecting to see from a martial arts film, a scumbag raping a dead woman's corpse was not one of them. Yeah...that was...totally what I needed to see in my martial arts films. I mean...it's kinda different, and totally fucking disgusting. But still, I wasn't really expecting that of all things to happen in this movie.
The Review
Well, guys, that was "The Bloody Fists". And thank god, this movie is finally over. Let me shut this horrendous thing off now...OK. I'm thankful now because, not only do I ever have to watch this movie ever again, but I can also rejoice that I never have to listen this movie's horrible music ever again! Holy shit...
You know what? Since I'm just on this subject, let's start with the biggest problem that this movie suffers from the most, which would be it's music. And the reason why it's so bad is because, one, it's incredibly repetitive. You're gonna hear 3 different types of music in this movie that's gonna stand out to you. One of them sounds like you're prepping up to go to war. The second one has this annoying piano music that, I swear, almost rivals the god-awful piano music that I heard when I watched "Deathday". Which is really fucking sad, especially considering how awful the music was for that movie in general. And then the third piece of music that plays a quite a bit is this choir-esque music that basically plays in scenes that are completely unnecessary. The biggest example is when during the beginning of the movie, you have two of our characters playfully splashing each other in the water, and then this particular music plays and it sounds *incredibly* dramatic. Now, when I first heard that music, I honestly thought that something tragic was about to happen to either one of those characters. But instead, the music suddenly *stops*, because some other character comes running towards them to warn them about something. And you're gonna hear that kind of thing for most of the movie, because it's just so poorly utilized.
And on that note, there's another thing I want to mention about this movie's awfully repetitive score. I didn't notice this, up until I complained about that choir music playing for the 4th time in this movie. And I can confirm this to you guys, because it's something that honestly shocked me. See, the movie's score that I've been complaining about to you guys is *not* the original score that this movie had. It was almost completely dubbed over, with a couple of exceptions in which I could hear a bit of the original movie's score, and I have a couple of theories as to why that is. One of them could be simply because of licensing issues. I could totally see that happening, though I obviously have no proof of it. Another theory is because some of the original audio for this movie has somehow been damaged and that it couldn't be recovered, thus is the reason why we got this dubbed over music. Which is actually justifiable, if that is the case. And I would be fine with this if, one, it didn't overlap a lot of the dialogue in this movie. I'll talk about that later when talking about sound-mixing. And the other thing would obviously have to be if the music was actually good, which it wasn't. So yeah, again, I have no proof of this whatsoever, however, it just surprises me that I would actually get to encounter this sort of thing when watching a movie, so it's just something that you have to take for what it's worth.
So anyway, let's move on with the rest of the review and talk about the writing. And really, guys, the best way I can summarize this movie's story is that it feels really plotless. Which is in stark contrast when compared to "Moonlight Sword and Jade Lion", because that movie's plot was confusing as hell and was all over the place. This movie barely has any fucking plot, outside of what little I garnered out of it. Apparently, this gang of Japanese martial artists want to obtain these Dragon Herbs for themselves from the Chinese people, since they're the ones who made it. Why? Well, it's never really properly explained. It might be because these herbs contain a cure that is known to cure the plague, which is what our main character comes down with later on in the movie. And also, the Japanese want to build a gymnasium. Why? Again, I don't really know. Probably because they want to keep up with their training so that they can become superior to the Chinese. Mind you, I'm just spit-balling there because the movie never properly explained it.
Now since we have a really plotless story, we would also naturally have no characters that are worth caring about. And, what do you know, we have exactly just that. There are no characters that have any shred of depth or personality to themselves. Our main character is out of the movie for almost half of it, despite the fact that's he suppose to be the hero in all this. And when he comes down with the plague, I find myself with no reason to care about him because the movie didn't take the time to develop his character. OK yes, he's a fugitive, but is there anything else beyond that? Well...sometimes, he combs his hair before getting into a fight. Granted, that's not really saying much, but I guess that's something. However, you don't learn anything about him or why exactly he ended up becoming a fugitive. You also don't know anything else about any of the other characters because they honestly have nothing resembling an interesting personality or backstory to them.
So yeah, guys, the writing in this movie is really poor at best. Now yes, it could be possible that this movie might've suffered from a mis-translation, but I honestly don't know if that's the case or not. I'm only working with what we got for this movie's English dub. And speaking of which, let's get into the acting. Specifically, I have to talk about it's English dub. And much like with "Moonlight Sword and Jade Lion", the dub here is just as atrocious as that thing was. I'd probably say it's worse here, and that mostly ties into the sound-mixing. However, I'll get to that in a second. But sticking with the acting for a bit longer, everybody sounds about as wooden and jaded as possible. Nobody here put in any actual effort, which is probably not surprising, considering how these sorts of movies were made back then. And unfortunately, similar to "Moonlight Sword and Jade Lion", there is no option for you to switch it over to the subtitled version on this combo pack. You are stuck with an over 50 year old dub that has aged about as well as moldy bread has. So...yeah, don't expect any real quality with this dub if you ever plan on watching this movie. You could probably find the subtitled version of the movie online, though I don't know if it will make the movie a better viewing experience for you or not.
I will say, though, that if there is one thing both this and "Moonlight Sword and Jade Lion" have in common, is that they both have amazing fight choreography. This movie definitely makes the fight scenes much more grounded and intense, though admittedly, it's not as overly cartoony as it was in "Moonlight Sword and Jade Lion". That said, I'm not gonna take anything away from how well choreographed the fights were in this movie. And I can also say the title lives up to it's name, because there is quite a bit of blood in this movie. So I can at least add the blood effects as another positive for this thing.
Camerawork here is OK. The lighting is decent, except for one scene where the filtering on the camera makes one of the fight scenes look dark as shit, and at times, makes the fight scene almost unwatchable. But aside from that, the lighting is OK. Sound-mixing, though, is pretty awful. Both in the fights where the foley artists kinda took liberties with how a punch and a kick would sound like on impact, but it's also an issue with this film's English dub. See, earlier, I mentioned about the possibility of this movie's score being dubbed over due to various circumstances, whether it's because of licensing issues or the original score being lost due to the film being possibly damaged. Well, I probably would've given some of this awful dubbed-over music some slack *if* it didn't overlap a good portion of the dialogue. I swear to God, guys, the music in this movie sounds *way* too fucking loud. And I thought maybe it was because I had my TV's volume up pretty high, but no, that's how it naturally sounds. And because of that, there are some scenes in this movie where the dialogue is drowned out by the loud music. So if there was any important dialogue that might've been said, then I couldn't make heads or tails of it because the audio was just too fucking loud. Now granted, like I said, it only happens for *some* scenes, but it's still a really big issue, and it could've definitely used some fine tuning, if given the proper care.
So yeah, guys, when all is said and done, can I recommend "The Bloody Fists"? Um...no. I honestly can't really recommend this thing, even if you are a fan of martial arts films. Because while the fight choreography is really well done, it just doesn't feel as creative as "Moonlight Sword and Jade Lion" was. Yeah sure, that film wasn't really good either, however, I could still see a couple of positives in that thing that could be worth a single viewing experience. This thing, though, I just don't see a whole lot of positives out of. And considering this movie has a lot of problems, both storywise and technical issues, I can't find much of a reason for me to recommend this thing at all. *Maybe* if you wanted to watch it with friends on a bad movie night, but personally, I just don't see a whole lot of riffing material out of this thing. And I wanted to like this movie, too, because I wanted to see if it would be better than the other movie that I watched from this 2-pack. But unfortunately, it was kinda worse. And because of that, I'm most definitely not going to be holding onto this DVD combo pack, because both movies were just not really that good. So...yeah, I think I'm gonna go and do something else. Maybe I'll pop in my copy of Smash Ultimate and play a few online matches or something, I don't know. I'm just gonna find something better to do after spending time dealing with both of these movies.
But anyway, guys, with that, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.
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