

Most of the monks in this film have insane eyebrows. The scene with the Shaolin monk fighting while eating a chicken is great although the "bad foot" technique he uses is quite disgusting. This temple also shows up in the raucous film "Ninja, the Final Duel". It seems that the film was actually shot in a real Buddhist temple and there are actual monks as extras. Second, there's quite a bit of Buddhist philosophy in the script and that really lifts the whole film up.

There are times that it seems the actors are missing movements but it keeps moving along at such a fast pace, the mistakes are soon forgotten. The choreography is very complex and ambitious. The beautiful girl is the weakest in the cast. The actors are almost all excellent martial artists and acrobats. what's great about this film and lifts it above the hundreds of others? First of all the fights are frequent, long and very well done considering the low budget. The comedic monk is a stock rascal and the villain is exactly what you would expect from this kind of film. The Shaolin monk is a stock eccentric you've seen in HK films like Shaolin Drunkard. We never learn much about the hero besides his search for a teacher. There's little in the way of character development at all. The Lama monk returns and attacks the temple for sheltering a beautiful girl he's trying to kill or marry.
#Sholin vs lama manual
The student gets embroiled in the Temple's fight with an ex-disciple, a covert Lama monk, who stole the secret Shaolin fighting manual 12 years earlier. Wandering kung fu student, searching for a teacher who he can't beat up, hooks up with an eccentric Shaolin Temple monk who is an alcoholic and meat eater. While Hong Kong could boast higher production values, the Taiwanese often countered with more action and this film is a great example. Lee is a delight as always and is well matched by the talents of John Liu and Don Wong.While Hong Kong created most of the kung fu films people think about when the genre is discussed, Taiwan had a lively industry churning out cheaper but frequently entertaining kung fu movies. There are some fun training sequences with a larger-than-life dummy and an Ennio Morricone score borrowed from an old spaghetti western. Thus the fight choreography isn't quite as top notch as it would get to be later on in the decade and in the early 1980s, although the fights here are still pretty good and have a tendency to get better towards the end. One thing I did notice about this film is that it was made in the middle period between the success of the Bruce Lee and Shaw Brothers movies but before Jackie Chan came along and revitalised the decade at the end of the 1970s.
#Sholin vs lama movie
The movie was directed by Ng See-Yuen, who has made some of the better entries in the martial arts genre, and is never less than entertaining. The film is set in ancient Korea and features a couple of kung fu fighters teaming up to bring down the Silver Fox, a wily master who has some high-kicking talent. THE SECRET RIVALS is a lively and solid kung fu film that helped launch the screen career of master villain Hwang Jang Lee.
