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Post by dbutler69 on May 19, 2021 10:44:59 GMT -5
I'm just gonna finish this off... Master of Kung Fu #6Chi vs Moving Shadow. Thoughts: Been there, done that, bought the red pajamas, wore them out and bought a leather trench coat. Just felt like Doug & Paul were going through the motions, for a new generation. Nothing really new, nothing particularly mature, and the pacing was off to pad it out to 6 issues. Compared to what was on the stands, it's pretty good; but, compared to the past, it pales. And here endeth the Master of Kung Fu, as nothing else is worthy. Chi made some guest appearances in the team-up books and was usually ill-used. He would turn up in Secret Avengers, which is a massive mistake as he doesn't mix well with superheroes (as the team-ups demonstrated). The movie has been in the works for well over a decade and I do not have high hopes for anything like the masterpieces of old and suspect, at best, it might be something like this; but, is more likely to be something like Secret Avengers, with Chi running into superheroes. Just do it as Bruce Lee meets James Bond, have a funky henchman, keep the chop socky to James Bond gunplay at the right mix, and blow up a lot of stuff in the third act and you can't go far wrong. Personally, I'd look to Mordillo and the Cat storylines, for at least two films of a trilogy, with a running subplot that leads to the third, with the epic battle with Fu, or whatever you call him (Fred Manchu). Yeah, this was a kinda weak conclusion. Not bad, but nothing too special or memorable. Fu (or Moving Shadow, I don't remember) said that he fathered Moving Shadow with a different mother after failing with Shang-Chi. That would imply about a 20 year age gap between Shang and Shadow, and that seems a bit ridiculous to me. Also, that device that was supposed to destroy London didn't really seem to do that much damage to this small island base. I mean yeah, it was totalled, but I find it hard to believe that that same blast would have destroyed London. That's a nit, though.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 19, 2021 13:56:32 GMT -5
So, just how many spare sons-raised-to-be-an-assassin is Fu Manchu supposed to have? Here it's Moving Shadow; a few months earlier it was the Shang-Chi clone with the scar...
Perhaps he offed M.S. in such a casual way just because he's got twenty-two more sons where that one came from!
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Post by codystarbuck on May 19, 2021 14:14:52 GMT -5
So, just how many spare sons-raised-to-be-an-assassin is Fu Manchu supposed to have? Here it's Moving Shadow; a few months earlier it was the Shang-Chi clone with the scar... Perhaps he offed M.S. in such a casual way just because he's got twenty-two more sons where that one came from! Probably sired a bunch of them with the ladies in this one.... The first Christopher Lee Fu Manchu, The Face of Fu Manchu, is pretty darn good (if you can forgive the yellowface and inherent racism built into the whole property), and this one is decent. They pretty much go downhill steadily, with each successive one, but the first 3 are great to watchable, then it gets pretty bad, with Jess Franco directing them (on a shoestring budget, too).
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Post by dbutler69 on May 19, 2021 15:54:25 GMT -5
So, just how many spare sons-raised-to-be-an-assassin is Fu Manchu supposed to have? Here it's Moving Shadow; a few months earlier it was the Shang-Chi clone with the scar... Perhaps he offed M.S. in such a casual way just because he's got twenty-two more sons where that one came from! Probably sired a bunch of them with the ladies in this one.... The first Christopher Lee Fu Manchu, The Face of Fu Manchu, is pretty darn good (if you can forgive the yellowface and inherent racism built into the whole property), and this one is decent. They pretty much go downhill steadily, with each successive one, but the first 3 are great to watchable, then it gets pretty bad, with Jess Franco directing them (on a shoestring budget, too). I just checked, and The Brides and The Face appear to both be on YouTube. I'll have to check them out at some point. If nothing else, it's got Christopher Lee.
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Post by codystarbuck on May 19, 2021 16:26:51 GMT -5
Probably sired a bunch of them with the ladies in this one.... The first Christopher Lee Fu Manchu, The Face of Fu Manchu, is pretty darn good (if you can forgive the yellowface and inherent racism built into the whole property), and this one is decent. They pretty much go downhill steadily, with each successive one, but the first 3 are great to watchable, then it gets pretty bad, with Jess Franco directing them (on a shoestring budget, too). I just checked, and The Brides and The Face appear to both be on YouTube. I'll have to check them out at some point. If nothing else, it's got Christopher Lee. Face is excellent, with Nigel green as Nayland Smith and Tsai Chin as the sexy daughter of Fu, Lin Tang (instead of Fah Lo Suee). Fu is believed dead, yet his spectre is across a series of crimes that leads Smith & Petrie to learn that Fu pulled a switch and a double was killed and he has kidnapped a scientist to weaponize a poppy into a poisonous gas. Fu operates from a secret base, under the River Thames, and, at one point tests the poison on an English village. It culminates in a battle against Fu, in his own Hunan fortress. Howard Marion-Crawford is Petrie and the only other stable cast member, apart from Christopher Lee and Tsai Chin, across the series, as Green only did this first film, with Douglas Wilmer taking over as Smith, in Brides and Vengeance, and Richard Green in Blood and Castle. Face has the biggest budget and the most period detail (it is set in the 20s, though the women's fashions are all from the 60s). It also has some good action and nastiness. From there, they went cheaper with the budgets, more convoluted in the plots, and more skin, as a selling point. Franco's films are pretty much drive-in movie fare, for those who went to just make out, in the car (or get stoned and watch some cheap exploitation film).
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