Acensbart
Excellent but underrated film
Kien Navarro
Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.
Bob
This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.
InjunNose
In the wake of Jackie Chan's success in "Snake in the Eagle's Shadow" and "Drunken Master" came movies like this one. But while it prominently features three kung-fu styles (drunken style, monkey style, and snake style) popularized by Chan in his breakthrough films, "Snake in the Monkey's Shadow" does not adhere to the comedy kung-fu formula. There's some clowning, but it's kept to a minimum--and it ends abruptly as the tone of the film becomes deadly serious halfway through. John Chang stars as Lung, a hapless young man who works at a fish shop. When he arrives late at the home of the wealthy Yan family with a delivery of fish, he is humiliated by Mr. Yan's sons. A drunken-style sifu takes pity on Lung and soon he is the teacher's prize pupil--but Lung gets cocky, beating up Mr. Yan's sons and dishonoring his teacher. In retaliation, Yan sends a couple of hired killers (Wilson Tong and Charlie Chan), both experts in the snake style, after Lung's sifu. The sifu and all of his students--except for Lung--are murdered. Seriously wounded, Lung takes refuge with his friend, a master of the monkey style. Unfortunately, the hired killers are after Lung's friend, too, because he bested one of them in a fight three years earlier. After the villains kill the monkey stylist, Lung trains rigorously for revenge, developing a new technique by combining the drunken and monkey styles. (For the record, there is a real drunken monkey form! Dr. Leung Ting has even authored an instructional book on it.) The final fight is sensational and, at its conclusion, delightfully brutal. In my book, "Snake in the Monkey's Shadow" outshines the Jackie Chan films from which it is derived because it isn't just for laughs. Chan has some dazzling moves, but the comedy wears thin pretty quickly. Like all the best kung-fu films, "...Monkey's Shadow" is full of tragedy and righteous rage. And great fighting!
jaibo
I haven't seen many Hong Kong kung-fu classics, but watching this somewhat demented zero-to-hero pic has certainly perked my curiosity about a genre I know little about but which, on this evidence, offers delirious pleasures.After an abstract credits sequence showing human bodies in mortal combat, the film begins with a kind of prologue in which a master practitioner of the snake style of kung-fu is beaten by a master of the monkey-style. The snake-master begs his vanquisher to kill him, but the monkey-master spares his life. Snake tells monkey that he will regret this...Years later, a rube of a fishmonger's assistant yearns to study the drunken-style of kung-fu at a local school. After being beaten up by a couple of arrogant sons of a local feudal lord, the fishmonger begs the drunken-master to teach him, but instead is taken on as a skivvy. He clandestinely practises the moves he sees being taught, and soon proves himself more adept that the official students. He gets his revenge by beating the sons, and drags his master into the fray when their father seeks redress. The rich man hires two snake experts to teach the drunken-master a deadly lesson, and one of the snake experts is the master from the prologue.The monkey-master is also involved, as he is now living in the same village as a hermit who befriends the hero. When the snake-assassins have killed both drunken-master and monkey-master, the novice learns to combine the monkey-style and drunken-style in a way which proves fatal to his foes.The film is basically a string of fight sequences, linked by this flimsy story-line. In their way, the fights are equivalent to musical numbers in musicals and sex sequences in pornography - in fact, the careful choreography of the fights and the eroticism of the young male flesh in Snake in the Monkey's Shadow makes the comparison to these two genres very apt. Yet the most striking sequence doesn't involve human combat - there's a truly nail-biting fight between a tethered monkey and a hissing snake which is prolonged, vicious and chilling, not least when you think of how the animals in question must have suffered to get it on screen.Animal cruelty, campy dialogue, paper-thin & polarised characterisation, unfunny slapstick and eye-popping set pieces strung together in a flimsy storyline - Snake in the Monkey's Shadow is classic exploitation fare. It's kinetic displays of human and animal flesh contorted into extraordinary shapes and stretched to the limits of endurance, all with kinetic fury, makes the film a text-book example of what popular cinema is all about, for better or worse.
tomroman
first saw this movie when i was about 5 or 6 when my uncle gave me the VHS.this was the uncut version, all the DVD's of this film to be released that i know of have the most important scene taken out of it for animal rights reasons - there is a 2-3 minute long clip of a monkey killing a snake in an actual fight between the 2 animals (who knows how many animals they went through to get the shot of a monkey crushing the snakes head with his mouth?!?). this is the scene where the title character finally understands the power of the monkey style, and its effectiveness against the snake style - the style it was designed to combat.anyway, at that age i was easily impressed, but this was just ridiculous. i don't think i have EVER been so impressed by anything in my entire life. i must have watched this film 5 times a day for a good 4 months over the summer (note, maybe a slight exaggeration).i didn't then see it for the best part of 10 years until i finally unearthed the gem again and sat down to watch it - AND OH DEAR, if its possible i think i was more impressed this time round. probably due to sentimental reasons, but still, i was blown away by the acrobatics and greatly accurate portrayal of both the fighting styles and ancient china.if you dare to call yourself a martial arts fan, or, well - even a SLIGHT fan of films - then i would challenge your integrity if you were to say you hadnt seen this movie, this 'shrine to everything good about life'! THATS how much i rate this film.
MNA
This is a pretty decent flick. Classic Kung Fu at its best (or worst, depends on how you look at it). The great Mobus would approve.
