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生死門 (1979)
Life Gamble


Reviewed by: Sydneyguy
Date: 10/20/2007
Summary: Tries to do too much

The plot involves 4 villians who steal a valuable jade and goto a gambling house to gamble to see which one of them will own the precious jade. A retired blacksmith who is famous for making weapons but also for trading weapons for kung fu skill is found and he is asked to recover the jade.


Lo Meng, famous for his flying daggers has lost his daggers to a thief and finds Phillip Kwok, who pretends not be the blacksmith. This is how the movie begins.

This feels like it is a chinese mini series squeezed into movie length time.
Because of this, there is barely any character development for any character.Then it becomes a little confusing, who is going to double cross who!!Who is the good guy? Also there are many characters involved, there are the 5 venoms, Fu Sheng and a few more, thats a lot of people!!

I felt disappointed at the end, it was too much to handle in 1.5 hours. It was interesting to see how a person gets defeat in different ways. The movie should of stretch another half an hour so the audience gets a better feel for the plot and chracters, it just feels a little rushed!!

Reviewer Score: 5

Reviewed by: barrst
Date: 09/16/2007
Summary: Excellent Chang Cheh/Chor Yuen hybrid

Clearly Chang Cheh was asleep when this was ghost-directed by Chu Yuan. :-) Valuable jade has been stolen and the film covers the twists and twists and twists as man, woman, and cyborg try to get it for themselves. Lust, betrayal, secret weapons, and more secret weapons all collide in mid-air making for one of the most enjoyable Chang Cheh films I've seen. Highly recommended.

Reviewer Score: 8

Reviewed by: pjshimmer
Date: 09/09/2001
Summary: Intriguing

You will most likely be as confused as an owl flying in the day (?) during the first 30 minutes of the film. The Flash Leg release starts out with Lo Meng and a girl talking, which obviously is not how the movie originally starts. The plot is super complex with tons of characters and background information, which served as an attraction to me. Fu Sheng appears for only 10 minutes during the first 60 minutes or so. I thought the film would have ended when Wang Lung Wei acquired the jade, but the movie continued on for another good 20 minutes. This is a good one. It focuses on plot rather than action, which also results in less fights, which doesn't really hurt either. At the end, of all major characters, heroes and villains, there is only one left standing, and having watched until the last 30 minutes, you will never guess who that last standing person is.

[7/10]


Reviewed by: sirrunrunshaw
Date: 03/13/2001
Summary: kung fu masters gamble their lives for a priceless jade horse

Chang Cheh put a good cast together for an action packed confusing film. All the tapes I saw have 10 or 15 minutes from the beginging. If you have the full version your very lucky! There is also some bad editing at the end of the movie when they are fighting over the jade horse. 3 1/2 out five stars