FIVE DEADLY VENOMS - I need no antidote!

While I remember Shaw Brothers kung fu flicks from my childhood on the local UHF station on Sunday afternoons, I was never really well versed in their flicks. Oh, sure - I know the name and I've seen some of the Big Name Flicks, but generally I couldn’t pick Run-Run or Rumie Shaw out of a lineup if my life depended on it. Fortunately Dragon Dynasty has my back, with a constant flow of Shaw flicks on DVD! This time, 1978's Wu du - otherwise known as the Five Deadly Venoms.

We open with a dying Kung Fu Master - who, shockingly was not assassinated by a rival clan - who tells Yang Tieh, his last remaining student, to seek out his five previous disciples, who are currently converging on a nearby city to find the clan's lost treasure. The Master fears that their Kung Fu - inspired by a different venomous animal - might be used for evil.

Unfortunately for Yang Tieh, there are two problems. 1) While he knows all five martial arts styles, he is master of none - each of these disciples are more than a match for him, and B) each of the venoms trained in masks, so he has no descriptions of the other disciples other than their fighting styles. And so much Kung Fu ensues as Yang Tieh uncovers that some of the students have indeed turned to evil. Can Yang Tieh combine the styles of all five Kung Fu disciplines to stop these thugs and to bring honor to his late master?

Lets be perfectly honest here - the story in a Kung Fu flick is much like a story in a porn flick, the most basic of frameworks to get from one Money Shot to another (or in this case, from one Kung Fu battle to another). We don't buy these things for the in-depth character development, the acting or the historically accurate settings. That said, Five Deadly Venoms must be praised for avoiding the whole "You killed my master, now I must take revenge on you after this training montage" chestnut. Sure the story is kind of goofy if you apply any thought to it, but at least its new territory!

The characters are pretty well done too - well, relatively speaking. They actually have personality beyond their designated Kung Fu styles. The villain of the piece, well he's not deep, but there's a bit more to him than just a mustache twirling heavy. The leads seem to have good chemistry and energy.

Yeah, yeah - who cares about all that? I'm just here for the Godzilla!

If all you care about are people kicking each other's ass, then good news! You're in luck - director Cheh Chang, mastermind behind a dozen of Kung Fu flicks like The Flag of Iron, Five Element Ninja, Invincible Shaolin, and Crippled Avengers - brings the goods in spades! There's blood a plenty, the setup for the individual styles pay off at the five-way battle at the end when it's a clusterfunk of arms and legs, the choreography doesn’t look staged at all and the fighters are silky smooth. While it's not Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan, it's still very good, very entertaining stuff.

THE DVD -
While Hong Kong flicks are notoriously diabolical in their A/V quality, we get none of that here. It looks like Celestial Pictures either restored the heck out of the print or they found a pristine print in their basement - because this thing looks great. We get a widescreen anamorphic print where the colors are rich, the blacks are strong and there's little print damage that I could see. As far as audio goes, we get two mono tracks, the original Chinese (mandarin, I think) and the English dub that you'd remember from the UHF days. Cheesy? Sure - but nostalgically fun too.

THE EXTRAS -
All we get is a couple of trailers before the front end menus (you can't even access them from the main screen? What’s up with that!) and an audio commentary from long running martial arts movie expert Bey Logan. Bey’s commentary is up to his typically high standard - informative, entertaining and full of Kung Fu trivia. In short, he's always a pleasure to listen to.

THE BOTTOM LINE -
While the Shaw Brothers may not be the best Kung Fu studio in hong kong, their chopsockie is still some first rate stuff. While I think that Chinese Super Ninja is still their best work, Five Deadly Venoms is still some outstanding, first rate schlock!