Another Taiwanese cheapie from director Joseph Kuo, and a follow-up to his 18 BRONZEMEN movies; this might as well be called 18 STONE MEN for all it has to do with the number '28', which must have been a mistake made when translating the title into English. Indeed it plays out almost exactly as a BRONZEMEN sequel, with a youthful and flexible hero forced to undergo some intense training in a temple packed with traps and tasks.The plot is perfunctory at best and features the stoic Meng Fei as the hero. His character starts out as a kid, witnessing the massacre of his family, before growing up under the tutelage of a wise master played by Jack Long (of BORN INVINCIBLE fame). Long sees fit to instruct him in the ways of the aforementioned brutal temple test in which Fei battles ridiculous-looking stone men in a series of highly amusing moments.At times this film feels very much like a kid's cartoon with lots of inconsequential and silly stuff padding out the narrative. There's a random interlude involving an effeminate man trapped in a well who turns out to be the master of the rat and snake style. Later Fei gets hold of an ancient text which teaches him more styles and some mad climbing skills. Eventually he battles Mark Long, who played the infamous 'Ghost Faced Killer' in MYSTERY OF CHESS BOXING, in a hilariously overblown fight that sees Fei cheating, a flying hat which doubles as a boomerang, and random inserts of toads. It's completely random and oddly entertaining in a completely trashy way.

I have a hard time believing this film was made by Joseph kuo. Clearly made towards the end of his career, this film is the least representative of his work i can think of. There are bits and pieces of film swept off the cutting room floor from kuo's magnificent '18 bronze men'. And some of the actors from that film have been hired for this, and some of the costumes have also been salvaged, to maintain the illusion of continuity. But the beauty, scope, and intrinsic dignity of that far superior film are completely missing here. The story is silly, and even allowing the bad dubbing, the dialog is silly, too. The kung-fu is mediocre. the camera-work and editing show neither taste nor skill; fortunately, the film moves along quickly enough to let the matter pass.The film stars meng fei, and allowing that i have never been a fan of his, his performance here is perfunctory at best by any standards. And he was apparently at the end of his career, as well, because his face is puffy, he's out of shape, and on top of all this, he looks way too old to play the role he was given.Really, i suggest that this is not a film by Joseph kuo, but a patch-job put together by a Taiwanese studio to cash in on the cult-status kuo had among 'fu film fans at the time.Okay as a filler, but otherwise useless.And, until further research proves otherwise, don't credit this - or blame this - on Joseph kuo.

Wu Shao Tung is raised to be the leader of the Wu Tang clan, who previously have been defeated by the evil Yen Chan tin and his clan. He is taught roughly and is shown how to defeat the Unbeaten 18, a cave of treacherous traps. (a bad translation I feel), though we are only shown 11, including iron and stone men and a cross-dressing boy with some of the strangest animal styles ever (Ox, Rat and Chicken) who is shown to be 80 years old (!) Some great fight scenes make this a very fun, if goofy film. It's no Shaw Brothers epic, but it's certainly worth the $4 I paid, or even the $10 to $15 you may pay for a DVD. Just a fun film. Get this one or you're seriously missing out.

(Some spoilers)A film that simultaneously demonstrates why kung fu films inspire derision as well as cult following, The Unbeaten 28 is a rough and ready affair that, never the less, proves surprisingly entertaining along the way. Fei Meng plays Tiger, the child brought up on strict martial training (and 'a special diet of tiger's milk and wild herbs', hence his nickname) to restore the honour of his clan and win access to a special kung fu manual. His archenemy, Yin (Yan Nan See), head of the Kun Chung clan, had previously ordered the murder of his Wu Chan clan folk, and Tiger was forced to hide out and be raised by the kindly Pu Chien in Lin Wan Mountain. If such a welter of names and titles is confusing, then that's not a problem, as characters in this sort of drama are largely interchangeable stereotypes, and the fighting is the thing. Reared in his mountain hideaway, Tiger undergoes a rigorous training programme from his earliest years. It includes such kung fu standards as plunging his hands 'into hot sand until his fingers were the strength of tensile steel' (as the slightly portentous narrator describes), balancing and posing neatly on the rims of rice baskets, and having large weights thrown at his chest. The film suffers from the kind of dubbing painfully familiar to those who watch much of this genre. Voices sound like they were done by a drunken uncle shouting in auntie's spare bedroom, while the enthusiasm of common sound effects (fists crunching against faces, rice sticks flailing air, and so forth) is betrayed by unusual inaccuracy in execution when the pace hots up. Fortunately, the film gives little weight to the dialogue in the course of the plot, apart from carrying broad points so the ugliness of the dubbing can be ignored. Atrocious voicing apart, a lot of the film's weaknesses can presumably be laid at the door of the writer-director-producer Joseph Kuo, an obscure figure who directed a number of such chop-socky fests until he disappeared from view in the 1980s. (The Unbeaten 28 is the penultimate film out of his 15 listed). Character development is peremptory, and there is no attempt to suggest that Tiger is anything more than a primed fighting machine, and he's offered no moments of quiet reflection or to prime the love interest part of the tale. Kuo is much more interested in the mechanics of training, and it is this fascination that produces the series of set pieces in the centre third of his film which make it so memorable.The representation of martial ordeal is common in kung fu cinema, as it is only through such structured dedication and suffering that the adept find true enlightenment and triumph. By extension of this process, some films draw out this process to great, almost surreal, lengths where - as in 36th Chamber Of Shaolin (aka: Shao Lin san shih liu fang, 1978) for instance - the process of testing becomes, in effect, the point of the film itself. Kuo's film offers a sustained low budget variant on this theme. The now fully grown, and trained, Tiger sets off to T'ai Ching Temple to face an 18-strong martial obstacle course and gain possession of the prized kung fu manual.What follows is worth the price of admission alone. Poor Tiger (who has to return to the Temple three times to complete his tour of the gruelling test circuit) faces by turn challenges such as heavy bronze doors; a one-armed giggling stone man; fighting statues; nunchuka attack; missile firing foil men; breath control; jumping skills; a fearsome '36 blows' ordeal from two monks and, (most amusingly) a 60-year-old fey fighter lurking down a well. In the single most impressive sequence, Tiger battles a clutch of faceless stone men in a tight corridor, then a 'room of illusion' fluttering with red sheets - scenes of some flair, showing the imagination which Kuo was capable of.After such struggles the final conflict is something of anticlimax. Tiger and his girl (Lisa Chang) naturally get to fight Yin in an outrageous battle, which involves flying hats, then him hanging upside down to fight from tree trunks. Although punched definitively in his weak spot, Yin finally retreats to his secret lair and, recalling the baroque travails of Tiger's obstacle course, employs a giant Buddha and a fire breathing stone dragon to try and subdue his pursuer.Its technical shortcomings aside the vigorous naïveté of Kuo's film, ultimately, has an appeal that belays the harshly staged opening scenes. Once Tiger grows, and faces a succession of challenges, matters come alive. The result is great, undemanding fun, if no masterpiece. For elegance and fine cinematography, you'd be best directed to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; for a film in which the hero gets mugged by a statue, this is the one worth considering...