Five Deadly Venoms (1978)

There’s more plot here than you might expect after the familiar Shaw Brothers logo at the beginning, but this is good stuff when you get into it. Pay attention to this one. It’s almost like a kung fu noir, full of precarious loyalties and dirty money. The nitty gritty: a young martial arts upstart, whose training is far from complete, has a mission tossed on his lap from his dying master to check up on five former students gone rogue. Each one of these guys is a total master-level Double Cheeseburger with Jalapenos in a unique fighting style and each one is a killer. They’ve all rebelled, formed their own alliances among each other and are in hot pursuit of the hidden fortune of a discreet crime lord who benefited from their earlier criminal exploits. What results from this mess are a few old school Chinese torture techniques, more kicks and chops than I’d care to count, a couple of long needles shoved up guys’ noses and a whole house full of people massacred. Co-writer/director/Shaw go-to man Chang Cheh delivers the goods, making time in his busy schedule for a beautiful first ten minutes that set up the five Deadly Venoms with style before he starts weaving the spider web. The common restored version is eye-filling in its color, which only gives you more to watch in this film’s busy 98 minutes.