What's good, good people?!! Hai!Karate returns with a burning classic in the genre of martial arts films, The Blazing Temple!! The 1976 flick is a cavalcade of stars including Chang Yi, Carter Wong, Judy Lee and Kam Kong, and is directed by the noted Joseph Kuo!
The Blazing Temple starts out with a slight bit of confusion;
we see the film open on the emperor(Yee Yuen) and his entourage.
He's just been informed that the 8 Swordsmen, along with other
members of the Shaolin Temple, are training heavily to take down
the Manchu Empire. This of course enrages his highness, who all of
a sudden gets ambushed by Miss Yu(Lee) who swears to take his head
in response to his decree to eliminate her entire family for
conspiring with the rebels. Cue throwdown. We then jump to the
Shaolin Temple and find the rebels joking with each other and
discussing how they came there during a lull in training. Of
course, this gets interrupted by the Manchu forces surging to
attack. And what an attack it is; the entire temple is assaulted,
and we see various disciples trying to save precious Buddhist
texts. Word gets to the chief abbots, and they press the remaining
disciples deep in the catacombs to train harder. The supreme abbot,
even though there is a secret tunnel to freedom, demands that the
only way out for them is through...the Bronzemen!!!
The disciples begin the process of trying to break through the
Bronzemen and the rest of the trials, but the supreme abbot is
chastised by others for being so stubborn to stick to tradition
in a dire time. He relents, and goes to the tunnel only to find
it blocked by a massive boulder. He makes the supreme sacrifice,
and the 8 Swordsmen leave to go find the emperor and assasinate
him. But the fight won't be easy - twists and turns beset them,
especially the fact that there could be a traitor in their midst.
Can they succeed against the cunning of Emperor Yungzheng and the
Manchu forces?
To be real, The Blazing Temple is good, not great. It stands out
because it's one of the few films if not the only one, to actually
make the destruction of the Shaolin Temple a central setting within
the film. Others, you see a glimpse of the chaos or it's spoken of
and not really drawn out with the exception of Shaolin Abbot three
years later. Kuo, who would go on to helm other classics like The
Mystery Of Chessboxing, does okay here. The action scenes are crisp
and increase in brutal effect as the film goes on.(Side note - cats
catch severe bad ones starting with the Bronzemen sequence.) What
had me flip was Judy Lee basically being at the start of the picture
and then she makes no real appearance UNTIL THE FINAL FIVE MINUTES.
I wasn't overly mad at her entrance though, that wire-fu was serious.
Chang Yi puts in good work here, displaying a lot of emotion. If you've
read this blog from jump, there's times where I've called him too
damn stoic. Not here though, you get tears and everything from him.
Carter Wong as Siu is the hidden gem of the picture. This was the
beginning of Carter's prime in Hong Kong cinema, where he could be
counted on to deliver solid performances that caught the audience's
eye. And here he makes sure not to oversell his acting, and to also
be thoroughly acrobatic with his fighting. Which is probably why he
got the prominent spot on most DVD covers of the film. I do believe
that this is one of those flicks that anyone who's a martial arts
film fan will want to see if they haven't already just to add to their
knowledge. The Blazing Temple is available on DVD, and online if you
don't want to pay the freight.
RATING: 3 OF 5 DRAGON PUNCHES
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