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Customer Reviews of The Shaolin Invincibles

Revenge, Court Intrigue and... Ape-Men!
"The Shaolin Invincibles" is not the sort of title a casual movie-viewer is likely to buy, so it's safe to assume that any audience it finds is already into martial arts/swordplay movies. As such, the film is an enjoyable 90 minutes, with enough fighting on hand to please fans, as long as those fans don't mind a healthy dose of fantasy mixed in.
The story begins with a despotic emperor ordering the execution of a scholar's family because he had used the imperial name in an essay (an act of blasphemy in the eyes of the emperor). All of the family is eliminated except for one daughter, who is rescued by a Shao Lin monk and trained in martial arts. As a woman (the underrated Chia Ling), she vows revenge on her family's killers and, along with her sister--who apparently comes out of nowhere since everyone else in the family was killed--and a pair of anti-imperial revolutionaries (one played quite well by Carter Wong), they cut through the emperor's array of warriors before battling him.
But this is where the movie takes its turn towards the fantastic. While the first 15 minutes or so of the movie set up a rather traditional, but well-made, revenge story, near the middle the emperor himself is introduced and a certain air of silliness enters in. The emperor is greeted by two wizards (one white, one black, but in face paint and costume only) with enormous protruding tongues. Said characters present the emperor with two apes trained in kung fu, which are invincible except for the tops of their heads. These creatures look like they wandered in off the set of a Three Stooges short: clearly two men in gorilla suits. In addition, a trap-laden dungeon and a mysterious old prisoner, who is not what he appears to be, infuse the otherwise standard story with a goofy, but entertaining, fantasy element. No, this is not the film which will win your kung fu-despising friends over, but it will prove a lot of fun all around. In fact, maybe for that reason they would enjoy it more.
The disc is part of Tai Seng's "Martial Arts Theater" collection, a series of lesser-known martial arts films that were released in lower-quality prints. While this is a far-from-perfect presentation (the film is slightly blurred, scratched, and a video logo appears twice in the corner of the screen, for a few seconds), it's by no means an unwatchable print. The English dubbing is decent, and a trailer for the Martial Arts Theater line is included. Granted this is not the most presitgious film to come out of Hong Kong, but it is certainly not the worst either, and chances are if you've looked it up on here, you're likely to enjoy it a good deal.

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Great Movie, DVD Could Be Better
This is a fantastic movie, that is, if you like cheesy kung fu movies. The basic plot is that an evil Chinese ruler has a family killed (for one reason or another), however, two sisters escape the massacre with the help of a Shaolin monk. They grow up and seek revenge with the help of two of their Shaolin buddies.

The plot is not what's important in this film, the fighting is. Shaolin Invincibles features entertaining kung fu with a strange variety of opponents. The sisters and their pals, aside from fighting hordes of "normal" bad guys, fight GORILLAS! Yeah, you heard me... Gorillas! Kung Fu Fighting Gorillas at that! In addition, they fight two wizards that have extremely long tongues that they use as whips; really cheesy and really entertaining. Finally, the sisters do battle with a mutated/scarred old man who has one gigantic eyeball. Add all this together with a small amount of really fake gore and you've got yourself a winner.

The DVD itself has a few low points. First of all, and most obviously, is that this appears to have been transferred directly from the 1983 video-tape source material. This is apparent as that the "Ocean Shores" distibutor logo appears at the beginning of the film and in the lower left of the screen at one point during the movie. The picture quality is good, not outstanding. I didn't expect this film to be pain-stakingly re-mastered as if it were some film classic and it's not. Also, the trailer is not the Shaolin Invincibles trailer, but merely an advertisment for Tai Seng Entertainment's other kung fu movies.

In closing, this is a DVD worth having...Besides, who doesn't want to see KUNG FU FIGHTING MONKEYS!!! YEAH!!!