Champion of Death (1975) User Reviews

"Biography" of karate legend Mas Oyama

[ChungMo · 7/10 · 24 February 2007]

Mas Oyama was the most successful karate master of the late 20th century. He rejected the "training" of the karate clubs of the time focusing on an intense no holds form of training. He eventually built his system into a huge business empire with hundreds of schools across the world, without compromising his teachings. The testing in the Kyokushin schools are still some of the most physically challenging tests any martial art school requires. One non- physical hardship Oyama faced was prejudice due to his Korean ancestry and he spent time proving that loyalties were to Japan and Japanese Karate. This movie series was part of that effort although anyone who had the chance to meet Oyama (I did) would never question his allegiance to Japan. In this series, Oyama's most famous student, Sonny Chiba, is called upon to portray his master.

Oyama arrives from the countryside where he has been training alone. He challenges and makes short work of the established Karate schools he encounters. Disgusted by the state of karate, Oyama returns to his lone training. He eventually picks up a student, falls in love and gets in the way of gangsters who are allied with the established karate schools. In the middle of this is the legendary bullfight with a mad bull. How much of the film is true is questionable.

That Oyama could kill a bull with his bare hands is true. He was called on to repeat this feat numerous times. There are filmed instances of Oyama actually doing this, although sometimes the bulls seemed to be tethered as Oyama was getting on in years. Sonny Chiba portrays his master with conviction and the karate is quite good. Chiba may not have been the best karate practitioner but, at this point in time, he was certainly above average.

As a whole the movie is good, much better then most martial art films in the drama department. I always wondered why it's not more well known. Possibly it the very realistic depictions of martial arts. People are shown getting tired and hurt unlike 99% of action film where the hero is a limitless fountain of energy and each blow instantly dispatches an opponent to death. Chiba seems so exhausted at one point that it hurts to watch. Perhaps viewers rather not have their entertainment reflect reality so closely.

Recommended especially for martial artists.

Mas Oyama (1923-1994)

[KingM21 · 7/10 · 2 September 2005]

Sonny Chiba, as everyone knows, is the man. In this film, he portrays Mas Oyama (1923-1994), a real martial artist who fought over 50 bulls with his bare hands…and won (interesting guy…look him up). Anyway, Chiba only kills one bull in the film but it's a memorable scene and as the liner notes say, right up there with the zombie vs. shark scene in Zombi! The film also offers up loads of hand-to-hand combat and a decent plot to boot, though I don't believe all of it is true. This film is the first of the Oyama trilogy Chiba made and is recommended for fans of martial arts action. Finally, three neat little tidbits; part of the opening theme was used in Kill Bill Volume 1, Oyama himself appears in the opening sequences, and that is because he trained Chiba in real life for five years!

Very watchable but this CAN'T be a totally true story--especially towards the end of the film

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 25 February 2007]

Oddly enough, the Independent Film Channel showed this film a week AFTER it showed KARATE BEAR FIGHTER--even though the bear film was the second in the trilogy and this film was the first!!! What were they thinking?! While all three of these films are supposedly based on the life of this great Kyokushin Karate master, you can't help but think that they MUST have embellished the story quite a bit--especially in this first film. Sure, the guy evidently DID fight and kill a bull and later a bear (in fact, he fought and killed MANY bulls during his career), but in this film set in the early 50s, at the end of the film, the hero actually fights about 60 guys and kills many of them brutally. I just can't imagine that this really occurred. So I did some checking and found that while many of the details are correct, some of this film is pure bunk! Yes, he DID kill a man in self-defense and YES he did follow the widow and her son and spent a year working for them--trying to get them to forgive him. But the end of the film is great to watch but hogwash. Seeing one of his opponents get a staff thrust through his head and all the other gory details couldn't have happened or else the Japanese government would have locked Oyama up to protect society! The film is entertaining and the fighting is excellent. There are no complaints about the action or acting. The only minor complaint is the camera work--which is a tad sloppy during some of the fight scenes. Despite this minor complaint, this is a most enjoyable film. In many ways, the wandering Karate master theme is pretty reminiscent of the Zatoichi films--which are also lots of fun to watch but many of the exploits are truly impossible.

FYI--There is an Englished dubbed version of this film entitled "Champion of Death" and I just saw it as well. It's not a bad dubbing and it was letter boxed (a big plus), but still I prefer the subtitled version.

Story and characters limit the engagement while the action is only solid

[bob the moo · 12 August 2012]

This film is a biography of Korean karate master Oyama, whose students include the actor that drew me to watch this film, Sonny Chiba. I wasn't sure how I felt about a film about someone who, ignore the one heroic bull fight shown here, he did make a career out of "fighting" and killing tamed and tethered bulls with his bare hands; given my feeling on blood sports generally, this seemed to be a rung down the ladder from even those. That said I thought I'd watch the film to see what Chiba could do. The first thing that hits you is that the film has dated and unfortunately it is well enough made that it has not dated in a cheesy enjoyable way.

The story told here is interesting enough in its very brisk flit through the early life of Oyama. We see his frustration with the world of karate, his killing in self-defence of a man and his subsequent attempts to make it right in regards the man's widow and young son. There isn't a lot of drama in the telling though and not a great deal of characterisation to gets one teeth into – interesting in the overview to a point but not a gripping story. This leaves the martial arts action to carry the burden and this it does, to a point. The fights are reasonably enjoyable but they are pretty "straight" in their delivery with very little in the way of impressive choreography or design to them. They aren't helped much by the very shaky camera which doesn't look like a deliberate choice since it tends to detract rather than add (those that think the Bourne movies etc just have "shaky cameras" should watch this to see the difference between it working as a device and not working as a device). The actions and tough standoffs are quite good though, but having Chiba in there makes them a bit better.

As a physical presence I didn't see here why he has a big name, since to my amateur eye he is not as good as others I have seen make it into film, but he does have a decent presence as a leading man in this film. Yamaguchi maybe doesn't make this a thrilling martial arts film that I was hoping for, but there are some very good locations that are used well, a rain storm, the long grass of fields etc that I thought looked better than they played out.

Maybe I'll try the rest of this short series of films from Chiba, but on the basis of this one I'm not so sure. It lacked a strong plot and characters to draw me in and the action was solid but not spectacular or thrilling. Still a solid martial arts film, but not a great deal more than that.

Sonny Chiba Kicking Bull's Buttocks

[Witchfinder-General-666 · 7/10 · 20 May 2010]

"Kenka Karate Kyokushinken" aka. "Karate Bullfighter" (1975) is the first film of the Oyama Trilogy, starring Sonny Chiba as the legendary real-life Karate master Mas Oyama (1923-1994). The collaboration of two prolific Japanese Exploitation filmmakers, "Karate Bullfighter" was scripted by Norifumi Suzuki ("Sex and Fury", "Girl Boss Guerilla"...) and directed by Kazuhiko Yamaguchi ("Delinquent Girl Boss - Worthless to Confess"), and, in regard of that it is actually pretty tame. Even though violent, the film is nowhere near as gory as some Chiba highlights (such as "The Street Fighter" or "The Executioner"), and while he often plays anti-heroes, he plays an overall very heroic and moral character here (though some of his deeds lack morality).

After WW2, martial arts were banned in Japan by the Americans for a short time period. At one of the first Karate tournaments after the war, in 1949, a man dressed in dirty rags beats all the well-established masters. The rag-clad champion is Mas Oyama (Sonny Chiba). Since he detests how Karate 'is becoming a dance', conflict is inevitable... While this film is an account of Mas Oyama's life, it is obviously highly fictionalized. As the title already suggests, Chiba fights a Bull in this film - which, to my surprise, the real-life Mas Oyama actually did over 50 times in his life. Other events, such as the scenes in which he fights small armies of armed men, killing many of them, are probably fictitious. The real May Oyama himself appears in the credit sequence, practicing Karate. Sonny Chiba is great as always, both in his incredible martial art skills and his charismatic screen presence. Chiba's younger brother Jirô Chiba plays his disciple, Masashi Ishibashi ("The Steet Fighter") plays the bad guy, and the beautiful Yumi Takigawa ("Graveyard of Honor", "School of the Holy Beast") is lovable and innocent as Oyama's girlfriend.

Overall, I personally still like Chiba best when he plays brutal anti-heroes as in "The Street Fighter", but this is doubtlessly another fantastic Karate flick with the man. I am now eager to watch the two sequels, "Karate Bear Fighter" and "Karate For Life", which are supposedly even better than this one. Highly recommended to my fellow Sonny Chiba fans.

Decent martial arts flick.

[Jeremy_Urquhart · 6/10 · 8 February 2024]

I think what we have with Karate Bullfighter is an Ip Man situation: taking the life of a renowned martial artist and making it more cinematic and action-packed. I'd stand corrected if they were fairly faithful looks at the lives of these figures, but I'd guess they're not; there's just a little too much killing and over-the-top violence for them to feel real (but strange things can and do happen).

I think this film is also known as Champion of Death sometimes, but Karate Bullfighter sounds better to me, and there is a scene where the film does indeed live up to that crazy title. It's one of the more impressive scenes technically, but it also could've been one where a real animal was getting hurt; it's a bit hard to tell. You can compliment it for feeling authentic, but at the same time, the authenticity is quite grisly and potentially upsetting for some.

Besides that, it's fairly standard stuff. Sonny Chiba is good, there's some energetic camerawork, but it also feels a little dull in places, even though the runtime is less than 90 minutes. It's good enough for those who really like down-and-dirty martial arts movies, but I don't think it's for everyone by any means, and isn't quite a highlight for Chiba (even though he is quite good here, considering what he's given).

Karate Bulldust?

[seveb-25179 · 7/10 · 31 January 2024]

Abundant martial arts action for fans of Sonny Chiba guaranteed here.

1974 was the year of "The Street Fighter", which made Sonny Chiba an international name in the Martial Arts genre. Chiba made three "Street Fighter" films along with two "The Executioner" comedy action movies as a similar character. 1975 was the year when Sonny said goodbye to "Street Fighter Chiba" and hello to "Karate Master Chiba", who featured in "The Killing Machine" and "The "Oyama Trilogy". "Street Fighter Chiba" was a modern 1970s character, while "Karate Master Chiba" operates in post war, American occupation era Japan 1945-52, even if many of the villains still seem to be wearing 1970s fashion styles (Finally we know who to blame, it was all the fault of the post war Yakuza!). Both characters are still loners with a dubious moral compass, however the Karate Master character shows faint and irregular signs of possible reform.

This is the first of the three Oyama films, based on a Manga series, which in turn was loosely based on the life of Karate master Masutatsu Oyama, although the first two movies in the series mainly seem to borrow plot elements from the classic "Samurai Trilogy", starring Toshiro Mifune, which was based on the life of Samurai Musashi Miyamoto, which I have also watched recently. Or perhaps in both cases they are just universal, recurring themes of the Japanese action tradition?

Sonny makes his entrance in typical fashion, looking like a raggedly dressed vagrant, but displaying a defiant, aggressive attitude, munching negligently on a piece of fruit, a more modern version of Toshiro Mifune's iconic scruffy Ronin from "Yojimbo".

He gate-crashes the solemn and orderly ceremony of the National Karate tournament, proceeds to demonstrate his power by breaking a pile of roof tiles, then defeats the tournament champion. He is offered a position as an instructor but instead insolently disparages the tournaments low contact approach to Karate as "dancing" and leaves with the trophy, which he later throws away down some steps, breaking it into pieces.

Next we come to that moment in every Sonny Chiba movie, where the Western viewer is confronted with some form of heinous behaviour by Sonny's character which makes it very hard, if not impossible, to like him, or root for him, during the rest of the movie.

In this case outcaste Sonny is working as a rick-shaw driver when, while waiting for a fare outside a nightclub, he sees an American officer accompanied by a pretty Japanese girl leaving the premises. He recognises the girl. Cue flashback of the girl about to be attacked and raped by three Japanese thugs, only to be saved by Sonny, who kicks their asses for them instead (all good so far...)

Back in the present, the couple get in the rickshaw and Sonny proceeds to take them to a secluded spot, roughs up the officer and chases him off, then rapes the girl...

Afterwards Sonny tells her he was offended that she repaid his earlier rescue by becoming a prostitute for Americans. She explains that, until Sonny raped her, she was still a virgin and only working as an interpreter for the Americans. Sonny is remorseful and falls to his knees begging forgiveness...

The next day Sonny asks her to marry him, telling her that the real reason he raped her was because he loved her...not surprisingly she turns him down. However later she inexplicably relents and spends the rest of the movie trailing around after him, waiting patiently for him to give up his wandering Karate ways, which never happens. This is also very reminiscent of the Samurai trilogy, where, across the three films, a number of women fall for the sexually repressed Toshiro Mifune character without ever getting any real satisfaction from him. Mifune's character never goes further than trying to steal a kiss (unsuccessfully), but maybe that was all that was allowed to be shown in a 1950s Samurai flick and the rest is implied?

Anyhoo, the uncouth Americans capture him, and as punishment for roughing up one of their officers Sonny is forced to fight a big black American soldier, which he does, before beating up the rest in a mass brawl and escaping, all despite being handcuffed the whole time.

He eventually takes on an enthusiastic student and later is rescued from an uncomfortable romantic encounter by an emergency call to save the village from an angry bull. The discussion involved talk of such excruciating topics as "personal feelings" and "love", which Sonny's character is relieved to have any excuse to abandon, even if it means taking on a rampaging adolescent bull (which he succeeds in killing with only his bare hands)

Publicity leads to notoriety, and some Karate academy students question the veracity of the bull fight story within in earshot of Sonny's loyal student, who takes offense and kicks their doubting asses. A chase ensues and eventually he is shot to death before Sonny can intervene.

Which brings us to the second event where Eastern and Western attitudes may diverge. Sonny retreats to a seedy nightclub to drink himself stupid mourning for of his lost disciple. The sleazy club owner attempts to schmooze him, but Sonny is having none of it. Then a bigger meaner gangster, who has just got out of jail, arrives with his henchmen and tells the club owner they are taking over. A fight ensues and the interlopers win, but unfortunately, in the process, one of them spills Sonny's sake... Mayhem ensues, with Sonny taking them all down, climaxing with the head gangster pulling a knife and trying to kill Sonny and instead getting killed himself. (all good so far...)

It's a case of self-defence, so the Police are ready to release Sonny, but the gangster's widow and son are not so forgiving and complain noisily. Sonny is remorseful and falls to his knees begging forgiveness... Now I'm not suggesting that it isn't sad that the lady has been left a widow and her son without a father but, her husband was a scumbag who would probably have been killed or put back in prison sooner or later anyway, and Sonny killed him in self-defence, so I don't see why Sonny's character should feel any great guilt.

As penance, Sonny goes to find them and toils on their subsistence farm to create a productive field for crops that can support the family. Again this is reminiscent of the Samurai Trilogy, where Mifune's character goes to a village and works in the fields in order to acquire a better appreciation of ordinary peasant life. He learns to understand that there is more of value in life, and worthy of respect, other than purely Samurai sword skills. Part of the process which sees him become a truly worthy and honourable Samurai by the third film. Not sure what Sonny learns, based on the carnage he continues to create during the rest of the movie. True there is one scene where Sonny refuses to fight the former Karate Champion who is seeking a revenge rematch, a sign of moral progress, but thereafter he is soon drawn back into the cycle of violence by his old adversaries.

He encounters a mysterious assassin, who calls himself "Kenki - the Messenger from Hell", and despatches him, then answers the challenge of the boss of the Karate school he offended, kills him, plus his top henchman, and then battles their massed followers to escape from an ambush, and finally grants the Karate Champion his "to the death" rematch and defeats him again, before ignoring the pleading of the woman he raped to stay and walking off into the sunset...

Again these are all plot elements lifted from the "Samurai Trilogy", not the life of Oyama. Toshiro Mifune's Samurai is drawn into an ambush and fights his way out, the final duel with the Karate Master reaches its climax at the edge of a body of water, reminiscent of the final duel on the beach in the Samurai Trilogy, and Sonny leaves alone, as Mifune does in various ways at the end of each movie in the Samurai Trilogy. So apart from his being a proponent of full contact Karate and the dubious legend about fighting bulls (wrestling adolescent bulls to the ground, yes, chopping a horn off with karate blows, not so much) none of the "Oyama Trilogy" films contains much that reflects any actual events of Oyama's life.

The internet says "Oyama greatly credited his reading of The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi (a famous Japanese swordsman) for changing his life completely. He recounts this book as being his only reading material during his mountain training years."

Interestingly Sonny Chiba was a student of Oyama, and Oyama himself actually appears in the first two films of the trilogy.

Dynamic portrayal of Martial arts legend Mas Oyama

[cjrock1 · 8/10 · 27 June 2000]

In the 2nd of his Historical Martial Arts films, Chiba portrays his real life sensei Mas Oyama. The film even recreates Oyama's incredible feat of killing a raging bull with his bare hands (Oyama did this feat over 50 times in real life). Dynamic fight choreography featuring authentic Kyokushinkai techniques. Ironically this is one of the rare Sonny Chiba films in which he DOESN'T tear out or rip off body parts of opponents. A must see for Sonny Chiba fans definitely one of his top 5 films

Hits some points hard to find in the martial arts world, stays right on line with others

[whos_your_buddy · 4/10 · 5 April 2008]

This movie would receive a much higher vote from me in general and I will talk about why, but first and foremost it receives four stars and should stay at four stars because of the directors ridiculously tasteless portrayal of rape and sexual assault. Not far into the movie Oyama sexually assaults a woman he rescued earlier, and while she briefly becomes somewhat miffed by his actions this attitude only lasts about five minutes before loving adoration sets in and carries her character through the rest of the film. I know many will argue that it's not that important in a kung fu beat-em-up, and as a fan of the genera I can't say that it's all that unusual, but that doesn't stop it from being completely tasteless every time I see it.

What I will say in this movie's defence however is that it's somewhat refreshing to see a martial arts, or even action movie of any sort, that offers no actual hero for the viewer to get behind. Oyama is portrayed as a rapist and murderer; a societal outcast whose only student becomes completely mentally unbalanced before being gunned down by the police. The final shots of the movie leave one with the feeling that Oyama himself is poised for a major breakdown and no longer seems to care for the woman he earlier assaulted into loving him and has since followed him with puppy-dog like devotion.

Whether this was truly the intended message of the movie or not, one can't help but feel a little hopeful that Oyama might be on the brink of suicide by the time the movie is over. This is a rare emotional treatment from the martial arts genre and its interesting to see a film that leaves you with a sense that its violence is not to be celebrated. If only Karate Bullfighter had treated the subject of sexual violence better, either by creating more emotional depth and recognition between the two characters involved, or by leaving it out all together, this would have been a much more interesting film.