A Man Called Tiger/Review
From The Grindhouse Cinema Database
< A Man Called Tiger
Originally a Bruce Lee vehicle, but after a falling out with director Lo Wei, who made Bruce’s first two movies, The Big Boss and Fist of Fury, the two men went their separate ways. With Bruce out Jimmy Wang Yu, The One Armed Swordsman stepped in.
Stepped in he did, Wang Yu never looked more 70’s pimp than in this 1973 flick. Multi-colored suits, fly sunglasses definitely a BMF! His Japanese co-star Maria Yi also looks amazing in her yellow Japanese style dress.
A Man Called Tiger’s plot is a timeless one of revenge. Jimmy Wang Yu plays the role of Chin Fu, suspecting his father’s suicide was actually a murder plot committed by gangsters. Chin Fu an expert in martial arts is hired as a strong man by rival gangsters of whom he suspects murdered his father. With his new found connections to the underworld, Chin Fu has the opportunity to uncover the truth about his father’s death.
If you're into kung-fu films check out A Man Called Tiger, I did at a video store called Movie World back in 1995 then bought it in ’96 when the store went out of business. Thanks Blockbuster! Karma came back at you. Ha-ha!
The action sequences are amazing. This movie has a scene which predates James Bond’s Moonraker by 6 years. In it, there’s a cable car fight sequence in which Wang Yu leaps from the cable car. It doesn’t stop there, all the fight sequences are well done by the performers. Don’t miss the bloody conclusion, as Wang Yu takes on a gambling hall filled with axe-wielding gangsters!
Jimmy Wang Yu deserves to this day to be a greater cult icon than he is. His kung fu films are awesome, his personal life even more so. Such as torrid accounts of his high profile affairs as well as drunken bar brawls. If that alone doesn’t place you as a cult icon in the grindhouse world I don’t know what does!
A Man Called Tiger is a interesting look inside the world of Golden Harvest kung-fu productions in the early 1970’s. It’s got the good, the bad, and the ugly of these era productions wrapped into one.
Reviewed by Greg Smith
