Shao Lin shi san gun seng

WAR OF THE SHAOLIN TEMPLE is a lousy, no budget kung fu film made in Taiwan to cash in on the success of the SHAOLIN TEMPLE series with Jet Li. It's a cheap-as-chips production let down by poor storytelling and a generally annoying execution that sees drunkenness and drunken behaviour play a big part in the proceedings (seemingly every '80s kung fu film had to have a drunken master in it somewhere).

The villains are once again the Manchus who wage war on the Shaolin temple for no good reason. Their costumes are more imposing than they are. Some monks are killed, others rebel and fight back, and there's plentiful cheap action which is fairly bland and repetitive, it has to be said. At one point, the film's hero ventures into a cave and is trained by a drunken master. It's at this point it becomes apparently just how bad the mugging, over the top acting is, while the hideous dubbing just makes it even more annoying. WAR OF THE SHAOLIN TEMPLE is definitely a film I won't be coming back to...