Shaolin Invincible Sticks (1978) Review

Shaolin Invincible Sticks (1978) thematically revolves around various forms of #kungfu pole/stick fighting. As a story, it centers around Don Wong Tao as Chen Ku Yung and his journey where he starts off as an entitled, spoiled son of a legendary martial artist to the proper heir of his family’s legacy. Opposite of him is the white haired villainous Lu Tai Yeh played by Chang Yi who specializes in a weapon called the Xu Wu (sp?) stick, a formidable two sided pole with a blade on one side and a whip on the other. Outside of various Shaw Brothers films, Shaolin Invincible Sticks is perhaps one of my top kung fu movies.

The movie does an introduction to various stick fighting styles that will be used in the movie accompanied by a narrator who describes each of their uses. The demonstration shows a few key moves followed by the wielder beating up some job guys as a piercing music piece plays anytime they score a deadly blow.

Thereafter, we immediately are taken to a martial arts school where students are practicing pole fighting. Lu Tai Yeh’s two assistants, played by Lu Fong and Cliff Ching Ching, barge in through the front door and immediately start beating up the students until the teacher appears. Also, one of his other senior students Tai Li Lei, played by Chin Kang bearing a big fat log, shows up to help out. The teacher briefly gains enough of an upper hand so that Lu Tai Yeh can make his dramatic entrance, flying through the sky, cackling evilly and accompanied by the piercing theme. Lu Tai Yeh calls his two assistants useless since they can’t beat the teacher which gives him the opportunity of fucking this dude up. He basically pokes holes in his chest and face then mercilessly stabs him thoroughly in the chest with the long red pole effortlessly.

Then in another section of the area sit Chen Ku Yung’s uncles, who debate on his legacy as well as the imminent arrival of Lu Tai Yeh. They mentioned how he’s been spoiled and we see that through his activities as a kind of an entitled playboy as he wanders around town. Despite his propensities though, Chen Ku Yung still proves to be a reasonably skilled fighter with his pole as he takes on some demonstrators. Chen Ku Yung is accompanied by a moderately annoying servant played by Peter Chang, who not only is Chen’s assistant but friend and enabler.

When Chen is summoned back to his family’s home, he is forced to undergo a ceremony in challenging two of his uncles to claim his legacy. Naturally at this stage, he fails miserably and is cast out by the senior uncle. Chen becomes bitter, traveling around the countryside without a purpose. When he eats at a restaurant, he doesn’t pay because he’s unused to the concept. He observes a father and his son who does the simple act of explaining the importance of money to his kid. But these scenes offer a small glimpse in how Chen realizes he needs to change his mentality.

Eventually, he ends up in the countryside at some food stalls where various vendors attend. Tai Li Leh has become a fried bean curd seller since his school has shut down. The other vendors dislike him and get into a scrap whereby Chen interjects himself and the two call each other “my friend” until Chen gets Tai to submit. Despite the humiliation, Tai decides to become Chen’s blood brother and asks to be taken in as a student as he lost his own teacher. They go to town, have a drink and talk about their backgrounds, although Chen has no desire to reminisce on his recent past and family name. Meanwhile, Lu Tai Yeh continues to terrorize the zone in destroying more schools and killing their teachers.

Tai takes Chen to town to meet his uncle who also runs a school and can supply a place to stay. Along the way, they see a young a girl with three odd characters tied up that she beats on. Actually, only one guy is odd. Not just odd but annoying as fuck. I call him Fruity Boi because of how he talks like some queer despite his infatuation for the young girl. The young girl herself is Yu Yu played by my favorite female kicker Ha Kwong-Li. Tai tries to break up the fight but gets into it with Yu Yu only for Chen to run interference. Chen’s superior skills embarrass Yu Yu while the three goons escape.

The retreated Fruity Boi abuses his poor servant back at their gym/home. Fruity Boi’s father comes in to stop his son from going too bananas. Fruity Boi tells his father Chang that the servant was bullying him so the father puts the hurt on the poor servant some more until the servant reveals that in fact it was Yu Yu who kicked the three around. Chang is exasperated knowing that Yu Yu is a difficult person.

Tai brings Chen to his uncle’s school where we encounter an ancient fossil who probably has Alzheimer’s by the way he talks (btw what is UP with these super annoying characters?) For whatever reason, the uncle insist on taking in Chen as his student. Back at the Chang school, Fruity Boi gorges himself on cakes while the father tries to talk some sense into him. Instead, Fruity Boi bashes his skull against a column until Chang relents in attempting to appease his spoiled brat of a son. It’s actually the servant who comes up with the best idea in kidnapping Yu Yu to force her to marry Fruity Boi.

Now that Chen has been (forcefully) accepted as a pupil, he encounters another familiar occupant of the household in Yu Yu. Naturally, she gets mad at him and attacks with her short sticks. Tai barely is able to recognize Yu Yu and manages to stop them from fighting as the aunt shows up to defend her daughter. The aunt is equally as hot headed as Yu Yu and more overbearing. Her entire MO is money so she doesn’t like Chen nor Tai as she views them as potential leeches. The uncle comes in to break up the aunt from further beating on Chen, which allows the writers to get in an actual penis joke in relation to the uncle’s old stick.

Chang then busts in with his students and challenges Tai, who threatens to give them “a taste of his big iron rod” (yet another penis joke). Also, there’s a moment of grossness where Chang chews “betel nut”, which is almost like a tobacco. Anytime, he chews this betel nut, he spits out some nasty brownish substance which makes everyone think he’s spitting blood. But this fight serves as a distraction so Fruity Boi can abduct Yu Yu and tie up the aunt. Chang decides to cut the fight short so Fruity Boi can have his way with the feisty Yu Yu.

It doesn’t take long until the others learn of Yu Yu’s abduction by Chang and decide to challenge Chang on his own turf. This time Chen takes up the cause and barely beats Chang after a flashback from when he was beaten by one of his uncles. That causes Chang to be humiliated and he walks away from the school as the students decide to join Tai’s uncle’s school. Perhaps, the epiphany made Chen realize the importance of practice because he starts training himself again. He tells Yu Yu that he would’ve lost if Chang wasn’t unprepared, which is why he needs to constantly improve himself.

Chen’s man servant shows up and causes a raucous where Tai chases him around a bit. Essentially, he’s run away but pleads for Chen to return home. Chen decides it’s time for him to leave Tai’s family as they’re doing better with the uptick in business. But he feels he still can’t return until he’s worthy.

With Chang’s school closed, Chang decides to change cities to try and start again. He brings his worthless son along but encounter Lu Tai Yeh with his assistants. The assistants actually manage to slay Chang while the son sobs over the loss of his father. My main comment here is that I realized on this recent watching how Fruity Boi was the other extreme of Chen in how he was pampered too much to the point where he became utterly useless. My only wish was that he got killed off here too just because it would’ve been a nice karmic ending to his otherwise worthless subplot.

At any rate, Chen and his servant leave Tai’s home and end up working at an inn/restaurant. Neither are used to real labor and are relegated to the kitchen and serving customers for no wages. But hey they get a place to sleep. At night, an official shows up with Lu Tai Yeh’s servants, which causes the boss of the inn to order Chen and his servant to cook something. Neither are capable of cooking but the boss is desperate and they end up making something foul. The official slaps the servant around for his arrogance and the inn boss decides to wake up the proper cook. But this moment gives Chen and his servant the chance to observe Lu Tai Yeh and his assistants.

Later, Lu Tai Yeh goes to assault Tai’s uncle’s school. The uncle gets easily beaten while the servant informs Chen. The aunt also meets her maker here while Yu Yu and Tai attempt to fight back. Once Chen shows up, Lu Tai Yeh challenges him to a dismal outcome. Instead, Tai valiantly sacrifices himself so his blood brother can escape.

The three mourn in the wilderness where Chen tells his servant the real reason for his family forcing him out. Besides learning to fend for himself, Chen’s uncles wanted to ensure his survival because of Lu Tai Yeh’s murderous intent on destroying all rival schools. The servant believes that their family can still prevail but Chen thinks otherwise after meeting Lu Tai Yeh first hand.

He starts training harder while Lu Tai Yeh attacks the family school a day earlier than anticipated. Two of the three uncles are killed off (one death wasn’t shown along with the other assistant). When Chen, Yu Yu and the servant arrive, they find their home battered with his remaining uncle giving Chen the meeting place and time.

Chen uses his remaining time to formulate a plan and train but he’s not confident that he can beat Lu Tai Yeh. But he does meet Lu Tai Yeh alone in a bamboo grove where Lu Tai Yeh brings Chen’s family heirloom as the prize. The fight isn’t bad just long and Lu Tai Yeh gets impaled on his own staff against a tree. That allows Chen to reclaim his family heirloom, which in effect was his final test.

So this wasn’t a bad film for the most part with a straight forward story of growth, some training and an interesting premise around Chinese stick fighting. There were some memorable characters (at least one of whom which was an unfortunate circumstance) along with reasonably interesting fights. I think some of the weapons were made up specifically for this movie like Chang’s cane but I’m no expert. If anything it added character and a dynamic to his fights.

The dialog itself though was pretty muddled and occasionally indiscernible where the dubbers might stumble through quickly, leaving one baffled at what they just said. Sometimes I think parts of the dubs were intentionally made bad like the “big iron rod”. In other cases, the dialog made no sense whatsoever like Yu Yu telling Tai “Oh, you don’t know me but I know you.” Even if Tai brought that line back up later, it made no sense when Yu Yu stated it.

The pace of the movie is decent though where you’re not really bored at any given time. However, my main complaint is Fruity Boi, who is too over-the-top in portraying this playboy character. The dubbing went the extra step of turning his voice into a high pitched, whiny, almost gay character that you wanted to abuse because he’s so infuriatingly stupid. He makes Chen’s servant somewhat tolerable by comparison.

With regards to the villains, Chang Li proves that he’s once again a top notch bad guy here. Give him a mustache/beard and long white hair, and you can convince me he’s pure evil. He just has a mean disposition to him and he fits the evil old master stereotype perfectly. Lung Fong isn’t a bad secondary villain here with his wicker shield and mini spear. Unfortunately for him he barely gets any lines, although he does score a lot of kills here.

Besides the various pole weapons in the movie, the real highlight once again is Ha Kwong-Li. Not only is she very pretty here, she energizes every scene she’s in because of her magnetic personality and kung fu capabilities. I was a little mad that her story ended once Chen and Lu Tai Yeh got into their fight. She and the servant pretty much disappeared never to be seen again.

Definitely worth checking out if you want to see something different with a reasonable plot, interesting (and annoying) characters, love stick/pole fighting and manage to get through all the Shaw Brother’s stuff.