Very bloody, very sadistic...but also worthy of its classic status.

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	• Five Deadly Venoms [VHS] Sheng Chiang, Philip Kwok ENTERTAINMENT PROGRAMS INC., 2000 average customer review:based on 132 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Very bloody, very sadistic...but also worthy of its classic status.

This review pertains to Celestial Pictures' release of this film.

It is important to note that many of the one-star reviews of this film refer to earlier editions of this film. The current item entry you could be looking at is by Dragon Dynasty. I haven't seen this latter, exact edition, but Dragon Dynasty has done quite an excellent job on a number of other Hong Kong films I've seen (John Woo's Hard Boiled, King Hu's Come Drink with Me, Chang Cheh's The Heroic Ones), so I suspect some of those one-star reviews' critique of the transfer and audio quality may not apply to the Dragon Dynasty edition.

I had also been utterly disgusted when I'd first tried to watch this film around 2002. The DVD I'd rented was horrible, with only a badly dubbed English audio track; I couldn't even get through the first 10 minutes of the film. But I decided to give this film another chance this past week, in a different edition, and I'm glad I did.

The Five Venoms is Chang Cheh's most famous film in the West only because his earlier films are harder to find. But The Five Venoms is surprisingly robust by late Chang Cheh standards. It has a script by I Kuang and Chang that harkens back to their best collaborations in the '70s, and Chang even does a pretty good job with the acting, which was a serious thorn in his side when it comes to his later output.

I was surprised to see actor Chiang Sheng, usually a bad clown looking for cheap laughs, perform somewhat acceptably in this film. It probably helps that he disappears for a long time in the middle of the film, so his horrible comedic shenanigans (which Chang usually indulges in films like Crippled Avengers) are curbed. He returns in the final act of the film after the tone has turned deadly serious, and Chiang does just fine. Philip Kwok Chui (One-Eyed Dog in John Woo's Hard Boiled) fares pretty well as fourth Venom Lizard, the conscience of the film, but the greatest star turns in this film are Lo Meng and Wei Pai. Lo (playing fifth Venom, Toad) provides that favourite Chang Cheh character, the righteous hero who gets mortally wounded but keeps fighting in a bloody mess. That character usually provides Chang's films with the stakes and emotional thrust of the final act, and Lo is quite good in that role. As an actor Wei Pai, only around 21 when he did this role, is on a higher level than everybody else, demonstrating the same star quality that also propelled him to the lead role in John Woo's Last Hurrah for Chivalry. Wei's character Snake (second Venom) is that kung-fu-film rarity, a vicious, detestable villain who actually has a human side. You love to hate him. The Five Venoms actually manages to explore why this character became as evil as he did, and it's refreshing and surprising to see a villain who isn't a cardboard cutout.

The script even manages to explore the angle of government corruption and injustice in a satisfying way -- "We constables no longer defeat the strong and protect the weak; we defeat the weak and protect the strong." The ending even goes back to its theme in a much more intelligent way than I've ever seen in any Chang Cheh film since The Heroic Ones. A kung-fu film that manages not to forget greater moral and story themes gets extra kudos in my books, helping to dissolve the perception that these movies are only about a bunch of half-naked, blood-covered guys beating one another to a pulp.

The fight choreography is very nice, with typical Chang Cheh attention to details like unique moves for each character. The camera work is some of the best in Chang Cheh's canon, for once not looking rushed. The film is not for the squeamish because it is filled with sadistic torture scenes -- the iron maiden scene ("Ten-Thousand-Needle Suit"), the "Red Saddle", the "Throat Hook" and "Brain Pin" are all very disgusting and disturbing -- but at least those scenes serve a story purpose, although you do get the feeling that the good guys fall asleep and do nothing for about 25 minutes in the middle.

This film also has that edge of weird, occult-inflected flavour that informs many of the greatest Chinese martial-arts films. No wonder that the concept of the Five Venoms clan would spawn a slew of sequels. Many ideas in this script aren't new -- "Five Venoms" is a stock Chinese phrase frequently used in Jin Yong's classic Wu Xia novels, which had also originated the concept of "Toad Force" as a formidable kung-fu move. But Chang Cheh managed to produce an enjoyable, weird, and engaging film using these familiar elements.

I am glad I paid this film a belated second visit. It deserves its cult status, and is essential viewing for any fan of martial-arts cinema. Do try to find a good edition, though. The Celestial Pictures edition I saw is good, with original language tracks intact and fairly good subtitles. This film made an extra effort to be more meaningful and so it pays for us to understand what it's trying to say beyond flying fists and feet.

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Good film, bad audio

This is a good movie, but the audio is lousy. I had to crank it up on my TV. Normally I watch TV at volume level 18. For this movie I had to crank it up to 60. The movie deserves 5 stars, but the lousy audio brings it down some.

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Best Kung Fu Film Ever

Best kung fu flim ever.

You might want to get the film from a Hong Kong Web site.

5 Deadly, 5 Stars

This is the movie that got me into Kung Fu movies. When I was young I was flipping through the channels and Martial Arts Theater, a weekly Kung Fu movie showcase, was airing 5 Deadly Venoms. I was enthralled with the various styles and how they matched up against each other, the masks, and of course the great fight scenes. I have watched the movie numerous times since then (most recently earlier this week)and it continues to be one of the greatest kung fu flix of all time. Classic.

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Childhood Memories

This movie brings back memories of my youth. Every Saturday morning my cousins and I would rush through chores at my grandmother's house so that we could watch "Saturday Morning Kung Fu Theatre". This is one of our favorites. I hope they put more of these movie on DVD I would love to add them all to my collection. I was so excited when I found this classic on Amazon.com. Thank you Amazon for having this available for purchase; this is a must have for all martial arts fans.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

One of the loopiest kung-fu movies ever made, a garish masterpiece of martial kitsch by the hard-boiled master of the genre, Chang Cheh. The five muscle-bound paragons of the title have fighting skills so hyperdeveloped that they border upon the occult, each modeled on the behavior of a different venomous beast: centipede, snake, lizard, toad, and scorpion. This "poison clan" is embroiled in a complex plot to lay claim to an ill-gotten fortune, but the story line feels like an afterthought. The nonstop wall-crawling action sequences, which match up the cast members in every conceivable combination, are the be all and end all here. This is late, decadent Chang Cheh, without the poise and sweep of earlier epics like Blood Brothers and Vengeance (the noble David Chiang-Ti Lung team ups that inspired John Woo), but it's great fun on its own terms. The painted masks worn by the Venoms, which make them look like berserk extras in a wrestling film, are based upon the belligerent warrior face paint of Chinese opera. --David Chute

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