Saw this as HAMMER OF GOD @ Loew's DELANCEY with Mario Bava's HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON-- -one of the *best* twin-bills I ever saw and I saw hundreds from the mid-1950s till the *end of the double-bill*, as a movie-going fact-of-life, mid-late 1970s.The DELANCEY was a huge old "movie palace"-style theater, with humongous screen, super sound system, balcony, full-service concession stand in a big-BIG lobby, *the works*.The big screen is absolutely *vital* to the peak enjoyment of the rich color, speed-of-light action of HAMMER.The impact of HATCHET on a small home screen must be terribly attenuated, the atmosphere sharply reduced, surely.BOTH these films were made with *big screens* in mind. The film-makers of that bygone era could not have foreseen today's cracker-box 'plex "theaters" (*hawk-ptooi*) which generally seat >500, in malls built in the ever-popular Birkenau style of architecture.I'm High Church about the big-theater films of that era ---I simply won't see them again: My *memory* serves me well enough.It is simply too depressing, too degrading to see the scratched and pitted prints with their bleached-out "colors" and raggedy soundtracks on a tiny home screen. I wouldn't accept THE LAST SUPPER or LA PRIMAVERA as thumbnails, and that's what watching vintage movies of happy memory is to me today.Cheers !

The Chinese Boxer is typical of Chinese propaganda about the Japanese. Chinese boxing is for sport, Karate is for killing, and boy do they kill. Eye gouging and rape in an action-packed fist-fest. A chinese man returns to challenge the kung fu master who threw him out of town with his new found Judo skills. His defeat leads to calling on Japanese Karate experts, and on it goes from there. Our hero's entire school is wiped out, leaving him to seek revenge by learning new techniques.... you get the idea. The town becomes an excuse for the local gambling den. The final fight seen involves some nice sword play. An ok flick, could have done without the rape scene, which isn't too explicit, but still...

For fans of Lo Lieh (Five Fingers of Death) this is a chance to see him as the evil Japanese karate master. In the US, advertising hyped this as "the most blood-spurting" martial arts film. It's hardly that; but the fight scenes are wild.

The Chinese Boxer, unsurprisingly bears some similarity to Jimmy Wang Yu's other popular franchises- The One Armed Swordsman and the One Armed Boxer. This time Jimmy takes on the baddies with both arms. It's a simple morality play, he's good, they're bad and after inflicting pain upon him, his family and his village, they're going to have to pay. What makes it so damn entertaining, is the style, and dare I say it, the passion that has gone into it. Ignore the bad dubbing (the Australian version has an atrocious British accented soundtrack) the panning and acanning, and sit back and enjoy a true classic of HK cinema. You'll also enjoy learning traditional Chinese medicine and philospohy in the manner with which it was intended. Take note of the traditional themes of Chinese cinema- Honour, family values, retribution. Listen for the quick sample of one of John Barry's Bond themes in some of the action sequences.