I mean, this movie has such lazy plotting that when our protagonists get tied-up we have a previously unheralded flashback to when he learned by accident how to undo such a move! The dramatic underpinning in his early stuff like One-Armed Swordsman, Five Deadly Venom or Golden Swallow made those movies so much better than his later stuff when he really just ran headlong to the punch-y, kick-y. I know that it's almost a joke at this point about how 'the plot doesn't matter in Kung Fu movies', but this movie just made me wish Chang still gave a damn about the story.
I think it's easiest to talk about this movie squarely in relation to other martial arts movies (and especially in relation to Chang Cheh's own oeuvre).
but it was definitively on the lower end of all Chang Cheh movies I've seen.
