The Dragon's Vengeance (1972) User Reviews

The Dragon's Vengeance 1972

[jddog130 · 5/10 · 24 March 2015]

The Japs are here and they're taking over (go figure). I saw this film many years ago but never could find it, until now.

In a nutshell... When our hero (Barry Chan) comes home from working, he finds his father and wife murdered, and a message written in blood. Its vengeance time... He goes in search of those who killed his family and runs into a spoiled bitch (Doris Lung Chun-Erh) and later her brother (David Tong Wai) which are the other two stars of the film.

In the long run our hero ends up getting caught and tortured but Doris ends up helping him escape. Many villagers pay the price and its time for our hero to go back for revenge.

The thing that stands out in this movie (that I remembered from long ago) is when Barry uses bricks in his hands as weapons. Some may not like this one too much and could say its a rip from a Bruce Lee movie.

I enjoyed seeing it again.

Also... The films original title from '72 is "Chinese". "The Dragon's Vengeance" is the USA dubbed version released in '74 and "The Dragon's Executioner" is supposedly a USA re-issue although when I search for it I can only find a poster, and its an exact copy of "Bamboo Brotherhood" poster with "The Dragon's Executioner" title on it.

Maybe they did release this (I've never seen it) but its a little confusing.

An average beginning for some actors

[ckormos1 · 5/10 · 28 April 2019]

This movie's original Taiwan release title is "Chinese" or "Chinese people" and the USA dubbed release was titled "The Dragon's Vengeance". HKMDB also lists "Dragon's Executioner" as an alternate title. I always begin my reviews with a description of the opening scenes to ensure the readers and viewers are dealing with the same movie.

It opens at the fishing village. Barry Chan is at work when the evil Japanese pass by on their way to a meeting. Rape and two deaths result from talking to an old bookkeeper. Barry discovers the crime. Doris rides in on a horse and has a brief tussle with Barry. She arrives home to find the Japanese are after her family treasure.

Doris Lung Chun-Erh by all accounts was born in 1957. Pardon my math but that makes here a tender fifteen years old when she appeared in this movie. She does not look fifteen years old and her role does not fit that age either. I have only found scant information about her life. She had a reputation as a "wild and crazy girl" on the movie set which cannot be confirmed. In the few interviews she gave she either refused to talk about her movies or dismissed them as "trash". Hong Kong Cinemagic notes she had three suicide attempts but I cannot confirm this either.

This is Barry Chan's first lead role. He had been in supporting roles in dramas and comedies for about three years. I can only guess why he was chosen for the lead in martial arts movie. My guess is dumb luck.

The fights in this movie vary from pretty good to awful. There are a lot of fights but that is not a good thing because they started to look alike by the middle. There is only so much an actor with no martial arts experience can do. The stunt men in this movie were the bottom of the barrel. Some looked awkward and off balance doing the moves. My biggest problem with the movie was guns. At first there are no guns then one gun appears and kills the brother. The guns disappear then one gun comes out again and kills Barry.

Barry Chan's best

[Leofwine_draca · 6/10 · 23 August 2017]

THE DRAGON'S VENGEANCE is a fun little Taiwanese movie chock-full to the brim with martial arts action. The lean, pared-down story sees hero Barry Chan returning to his village to find that a massacre has taken place and his family members destroyed by a gang of cruel Japanese thugs. He subsequently takes it upon himself to rid the world of these evildoers, but given the size of their gang it takes a while, and there's a lot of collateral damage too in the form of local villagers getting in the way.

Chan is one of those kung fu stars who has long faded from memory even for fans of this particular genre of film-making. Compare him to Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, Jimmy Wang Yu or one of his contemporaneous Shaw stars like David Chiang and Ti Lung, and he feels insignificant, a mere footnote in history. Still, this is the best role I've seen him in, and he does his furious slaughter stuff pretty well, stripped to the waist and imitating Bruce Lee in FIST OF FURY. The action really hits home when Chan gets himself a samurai sword and wreaks havoc, and the surprise (for a Taiwanese movie) is that the choreography isn't too shabby either.