Dreadnaught is largely unknown these days compared to 1979's 'Magnificent Butcher" (Lin Shi Rong) despite the fact that they have a great deal in common from the director Yuen Woo-ping and writer Wong Jing, to some of the characters and a number of the actors - Yuen Biao, Hark-On Fung, Kwan Tak-Hing, Mei Sheng Fan and Ching Tan. This is a shame since despite Dreadnaught having fewer fight scenes of the quality of its predecessor, it has many things going for it.Kwan Tak-Hing has terrific presence as Chinese folk hero Wong Fei-Hung and he gets far more screen time than in 'Magnificent Butcher' where he had a memorable role, but barely more than a cameo. He even gets more action in this one and though he is clearly doubled for much of these scenes, his manual dexterity for his age (around 76) alone is a great advertisement for the practising of martial arts to promote health.Leung Kar-Yan is dependable as ever as Wong Fei-Hung's headstrong student Leung Foon. Yuen Biao plays the cowardly 'Mousy' who wants to learn to fight, not knowing that he has been learning a special style of kung fu from his sister at the laundry. This means he does little fighting for much of the film which is not as bad as it sounds since he gets to show off his remarkable athleticism more. Yuen Shun-Yee steals the show as the mentally deranged serial killer and his high energy performance adds greatly to the impact and tone of the film.Yuen Woo-ping and his team have done another great job with the choreography, especially the lion dancing which is the clear highlight of the action. The taut fight scenes are very well done also, especially fitting the psychotic personality of the the main villain.Too many different themes have been trying to be built into the running time - horror, comedy, action and romance - for all to be really successful. It is a pity that the cheesy humour could not have been left out as this would have made a improvement to the atmosphere which is great in periods such as the chilling build-up to the final showdown. Also the romantic theme is dropped long before the end of the film with no real resolution.Nevertheless 'Dreadnaught' is well worth watching for the quality of some of the performances, the kung fu and also for anybody interested in the number of films loosely based around the life of Wong Fei-Hung.

In a hotel room in Kunming, China, 2005, four western tourists were getting ready to go out for that day's restaurant round, then this movie was on by accident - and we couldn't stop watching! We actually laughed at the lame slapstick, the "lion dance" was terrific, the energy - as mentioned in another review - was perfect throughout! Excellent work.Now I am at IMDb trying to check out this film, you see, we had to go 15 minutes before the ending to get to the restaurants before they closed, which was surprisingly hard to do with a random Chinese kung fu movie. We made sure to snap up the movie title, I'm going to watch this all the way.Then I see here it's from 1981 - which wasn't expected at all. Very good film, might look like your classic low-quality run of the mill kung-fu, but believe me, this is a notch above the rest!

Even though the movie had stereotype characters like the cross-eye goofy cop or the bad guy with the facial flaw, Dreadnaught also had some way cool scenes. If you can bear sitting through the slow, run of the mill parts, you'll be rewarded with 3 major scenes [in order of awesomeness]: 1) the fighting Dragons 2) the opera theatre fight and 3) the tailor. It's a slapstick comedy too, so you'll have a few laughs, too. I just don't get the title.

"Dreadnaught" is a consistently entertaining flick about Mousy (Yuen Biao), a hapless and clumsy coward who stumbles his way into plenty of trouble. While trying to collect a debt, he inadvertently runs afoul of a homicidal lunatic called White Tiger, and spends the rest of the movie being stalked by this freak. The flick is a very early attempt at a kung-fu/horror hybrid, with White Tiger sporting spooky Chinese opera-style make-up and frighteningly leaping into frame time and again. Of course, once he sneaks up on folks he karate chops them rather than stabs them. Still, the guy who plays White Tiger is genuinely creepy, and you really feel this guy's menacing presence. Yuen Biao is great as the goofy Mousy, tripping and falling his way in and out of danger. The fight scenes are excellent, played about half for laughs and half seriously. Add in Kwan Tak-Hing in his classic role as Wong Fei-Hung, and a couple of gross scenes involving ripping heads off chickens and cockroaches, and you've got the makings of a very intriguing kung-fu flick. If you're a fan of the slap-happy style of fighting perfected by Biao, Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan, and you like old school kung-fu stories, this one should be right up your alley.