FISTS AND GUTS is a great little vehicle for action star Gordon Liu, just reaching fame thanks to his starring roles in the likes of THE 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN. It's a knockabout action comedy that has some of the grace and finesse of a rival Shaw Brothers product, even thought it was clearly made on the cheap. Liu plays an undercover monk (with a hat and long hair!) who's investigating the attempted theft of a Buddha statue and with the aid of a couple of goofy guys must seek to prevent an undercover bad guy from putting his plans into action.The film features direction and action choreography from Liu Chia Yung, who also plays one of the accomplices. He delivers action in spaces and much of it is very good thanks to the talents of the main actors. Liu is on fire as a martial artist and he never disappoints here. My main surprise - and delight - was seeing an almost unrecognisable Lee Hoi San cast as one of the heroes for a change. This bald actor is usually the guest villain but here he plays a totally different buffoonish part - and he has hair too! - and nonetheless excels in the action stakes.Lo Lieh is on hand and contributes one of his stock villain parts although he's sorely underutilised. FISTS AND GUTS follows the action comedy template well, building to a climax of sorts in which Liu enters one of those booby-trapped temples you always see in these films and has to contend with all manner of crazy and dangerous implements and rooms which are designed to skewer him. Music is ripped off from the PSYCHO soundtrack quite liberally. The ending of the film is brief but satisfying.

FISTS AND GUTS has a lot to offer, but it also lacks a lot. The opening sequence, in which we see Ah San (Gordon Liu, in yet another wig) arrive in town searching for "a housekeeper who made off with some family heirlooms," is interesting: he carries with him a book showing this alleged housekeeper wearing various disguises. But then we are introduced to Ah Yung (Liu Chia-rong) and his pal Pang (Lee Hoi San). Ah Yung, it seems, makes money by taking the place of condemned villagers about to be executed by the local authorities (we see him slip into a work gang and,the next day, wearing bandages to hide his true identity and wearing a bulletproof metal vest, get shot by a firing squad). What we never see or are told is HOW he trades places with the condemned man once inside the jail, nor what happens to the man to be executed. The three characters meet and when they split up to track down the mysterious housekeeper, Ah Yung and Pang meet a fortune teller called "Mr. Faerie" (Lo Lieh, whose disguises help showcase his range as an actor throughout the movie). Yung and Pang are told to go to a nearby island, where they'll find the desired riches. Unfortunately, the island is inhabited by lepers and it's here that we have one of the least tasteful sequences in the movie, as the two must battle their way through the lepers (they wrap their hands with their shirts, but things do get quite nasty...). Ah San, meanwhile, sneaks into the local General's quarters to retrieve what he believes to be the heirlooms. In an interesting sequence, he must battle a turncoat Lieutenant who has also come to steal the box: their combat must be kept quiet so they don't rouse the General or his men and it's a genuinely intense, low key struggle. Yung and Pang, disguised as sanitation workers, find themselves at one point dumping the buckets of bodily waste excreted by the prisoners in the jail. As one might expect, it's a less than enjoyable sequence (for the characters as well as the viewer). The finale, which pits Liu against Lo Lieh in an underground temple, is great; but, again, some of the aforementioned scenes detract from what might've been a much better movie (and the noted omissions hurt as well).

FISTS AND GUTS (1980) is a vaguely comedic kung fu tale in the mode of such similar items as HE HAS NOTHING BUT KUNG FU, DIRTY HO, RETURN OF THE MASTER KILLER and MASTER OF DISASTER, all of which also starred Gordon Liu, as this film does, and two of which were also directed by Lau Kar Wing, brother of Lau Kar Leung (who directed the other two). However, FISTS AND GUTS isn't terribly funny and, despite four top-of-the-line kung fu performers, it's saddled with a plot that shrouds its main characters in such mystery that the viewer learns very little about them until the final scene. By that time, it's too late to supply the dramatic tension needed to make viewers care about what happens. Gordon plays a mysterious traveler who enlists two hapless con men in a plan to get back what he claims are family heirlooms stolen by an errant housekeeper (Lo Lieh) operating in various disguises. The people he targets keep turning out to be the wrong ones. The con men (Lau Kar Wing and Lee Hoi San) are first seen participating in a ridiculously dangerous con game, in which Lau takes the place of a prisoner on death row and gets `killed' in their place, surviving the firing squad thanks to hidden metal sheets which block the bullets. He then collects money from the real inmate's family. How the real inmate gets out of the prison is never explained. None of this makes any sense. That the two grifters agree so readily to help Gordon in exchange for a cut of the treasure is increasingly hard to accept as Gordon keeps making mistakes and the venture proves increasingly unprofitable. The final bout between Gordon and Lo Lieh includes a belated revelation of the actual cause of their dispute. Until then, the fight scenes are all somewhat gimmicky and more stunt- and prop-oriented than actual combat. The scenes would be much more clever if the characters made sense and the story had some urgency. Instead it all gets tiresome quickly. The poor English dubbing doesn't help. It's a poor use of four superb actor-fighters and an inadequate showcase of Lau's otherwise expert directing skills, as seen in HE HAS NOTHING BUT KUNG FU and ODD COUPLE.

The action is fairly standard, not super, not bad, definitely watchable. The broad plot is a standard one, involving finding stolen goods. However the details of the plot wander around the movie, mostly as vehicles for showing some action scene. They have the required comedic characters, as well as the Shaolin monk whose kung fu is so good that he can beat people with one hand tied behind his back. Overall it is a decent flick, although it doesn't have the attention grabbing action that usually makes these movies so memorable. The shots are fairly long, so at least you know that the action scenes are "real". The fighting style is not quite the "punch-pause" style, but it definitely isn't Jackie Chan speed.Still, a fun and watchable "Samurai Sunday" style movie.