“Death Ring” Tai Seng DVD Cover
Director: Chang Cheh
Co-director: Lu Feng
Cast: Chen Kuan Tai, Lee Chung Yat, Ti Lung, Chan Sing, Lu Feng, Lau Fong Sai, Keung Hon
Running Time: 90 min.
By Paul Bramhall
Director Chang Cheh was rightfully known as the Godfather of Hong Kong action cinema, and after the Shaw Brothers studio wound down its movie production, he still managed to crank out a further 11 in Taiwan and Mainland China. Starting with 1983’s Attack of the Joyful Goddess and ending with 1993’s Ninja in Ancient China, Cheh’s post-Shaw Brothers work makes for eclectic viewing. Health issues resulted in a multi-generation cast of talent that Cheh had helped nurture coming together for his 1984 movie Shanghai Thirteen, a production which was intended to generate enough profit to allow the director to retire comfortably. But with an ambition to helm 100 movies, Cheh ended up using the funds to continue to direct. While 1986’s Great Shanghai 1937 and 1988’s Cross the River have remained elusive, I’d be willing to safely wager that Death Ring is the rotten tomato in Cheh’s post Shaw Brothers output.
Considering it came out the same year as The Shanghai Thirteen and the underlying reasons for that movie’s existence, it’s perhaps little wonder that Death Ring ends up as an incomprehensibly plodding mess. Most sources state Cheh was only in the directors’ chair for the opening third, with the rest of the movie being picked up by Venoms alumni Lu Feng to attempt to complete on his own in Thailand. This would make sense, since the first 30 minutes almost seem to come from a different movie altogether, with a loosely held together narrative that recalls the similar stop-start approach that was taken with Cheh’s own Ten Tigers of Kwantung.
On paper, the plot should read something like this – a young fighter played by Lee Chung-Yat (The Nine Demons, Lucky Seven 2) is in love with Chen Kuan-Tai’s (Boxer from Shantung, Heroes Two) daughter, however there’s a problem – she’s from the Shaolin clan and he’s from the Pai Mei clan. Instead she’s being forced to marry the arrogant Cheung Tai-Lun (The Big Rascal, Yellow Rain), whose negative attributes seem to be compensated by the fact he’s from the same clan. After a confrontation in Kuan-Tai’s family home sees Tai-Lun end up dead, Chung-Yat is given an ultimatum – the matter won’t go any further, but he’s never to let himself be seen again. Cue the perfect opportunity for a return trip to Thailand after Chang Cheh’s last visit in 1971 (for the iron triangle flick Duel of Fists), as Chung-Yat heads to Bangkok to cheerily take part in the Songkran water festival and generally look like he’s having a good time.
As it turns out though inside he’s miserable, so after 3 years he sneaks back to meet Kuan-Tai’s daughter. When he asks her what she’s been doing for all this time, she explains that she’s just been sitting in her room missing him, and that she wants to bear his child so that she’s not lonely. 3 years is a long time to just be sat in a room, so being a stand-up guy Chung-Yat duly obliges, then in one of Death Ring’s more hilarious moments, after the deed is done he confesses he’s also got a woman in Thailand! All of this takes place in the first half hour, and already any realistic concept of time has gone completely out of the window. The legendary Chan Sing (Black Panther, The Iron Fisted Monk) plays Tai-Lun’s father, and when Chung-Yat first makes his escape we see Sing and his clan stomping through the woodland looking for him. 3 years on, and they’re still stomping through the woodland, clearly believing that persistence is the key.
Despite the shoddy filmmaking on display, Chung-Yat’s return does mark the best scene in Death Ring, where the restaurant he’s eating in is accosted by Ti Lung’s (Vengeance!, Four Riders) pimped out gangster and his polite lackeys. I never knew I needed to see Ti Lung decked out in an all-white suite featuring a trendy black cape, a feathered hat, stud earrings, and a pair of accompanying floozies, but I now know that I did, and you will too. When I say polite, Lung and his gang demand $50 from everyone in the restaurant, but with the caveat that if they have less than $50 they don’t need to give anything. I’m not sure how long his character is supposed to have been a gangster for, but I’m sure it’s not a schtick that would last too long with such an amiable approach. However when Chung-Yat throws down against Lung’s lackeys to stop them extorting other customers, Lung expresses him admiration for his fighting talents.
It’s then that Chan Sing’s 3-year forest hike comes to an end, and he finally arrives at the restaurant to find Chung-Yat right before him. For reasons never clearly explained, Lung offers to fight Sing on Chung-Yat’s behalf, which offers up the 2nd chance to see the pair of kung fu cinema legends go at it within the same year (they also face off in The Shanghai Thirteen). Hilariously, in fitting with his character, Lung takes the time to put on a pair of black gloves before he starts the fight, I’m guessing to ensure his manicure doesn’t get damaged. With action choreographed by both Lu Feng and baby venom Chiu Gwok (Five Element Ninjas, The Weird Man), there’s something joyous about watching a Ti Lung versus Chang Sing face-off under a more snappy mid-80’s choreography style than we’re used to seeing from much of their 70’s work, and their fight is a stand-out.
Sadly that’s where the fun ends, and seems to be the limit of Chang Cheh’s involvement. It’s debatable why filming never went any further, and equally so if we’d get to see anymore of Chen Kuan-Tai, Ti Lung, or Chan Sing, but for the remaining hour things become particularly torturous. The narrative jumps back to Thailand, only now we’re in contemporary 1984, as we follow the now grown-up son of Chung-Yat who’s travelled there to find his father. Chung-Yat’s son is played by, wait for it – Chung Yat – and his mission to find his father is derailed when he befriends a Thai boxer played by local actor Chatchai Plengpanich (Bangkok Robbery, Bang Rajan 2). It’s not too much of a spoiler to say that the pair turn out to be half-brothers, with Plengpanich being the son of Chung-Yat’s Thai woman (who we never actually see).
The plot from here becomes an almost incessant flow of dull Thai boxing matches. The curse of many a Hong Kong movie shot in Thailand (see also Kickboxer’s Tears and Dreaming the Reality), while the art of kung fu was heavily modified and refined for the screen fighting aesthetic over several decades, Muay Thai never really got the same treatment until 2003’s Ong Bak. As a result, most Hong Kong action movies shot in Thailand tend to suffer from overly long Muay Thai matches full of repetitive and basic choreography, and Death Ring (a direct reference to the matches in question) is guilty on all counts. The plot about finding the father is all but forgotten about, and instead becomes focused on defeating a vicious Muay Thai boxer called Leopard (of whom doesn’t seem to be credited anywhere, much like a lot of the cast).
To Lu Feng’s credit, he does at some point seem to remember that the movie needs to end, so should attempt to wrap things up. To this end he quickly casts himself as Chan Sing’s other son, which allows Sing to play out an impossible to take seriously overwrought death bed scene, where he tells Feng to take the revenge he never could. This cross-generational pursuit of revenge should be at the heart of the narrative, with Feng in the role of the main protagonist that Chung-Yat has to face off against, but in reality Feng’s character barely gets 5 minutes screen time. He turns up with 2 lackeys at the end of the penultimate match against Leopard, and we at least get to see the venoms legend throw down against Chung-Yat in an enjoyable fight. It even includes an early version of the move Tony Jaa would popularise, wherein an opponent staddles the others shoulders like a piggyback, and delivers a barrage of elbows to the head.
However even this brief moment of enjoyment is ruined by a bizarre final freeze frame that not only signals the end of the fight (which I honestly thought was just getting started), but also the end of the movie altogether. A consistently confounding experience, one that feels like 2 separate movies have been thrown together with little regard for where the focus of the actual plot should be, in the end I daresay Death Ring barely even qualifies as a movie.
Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 3.5/10
Beware of spoilers in the following clip from Death Ring:
I have had this Tai Seng dvd sitting around for God knows how many years and never got past the first few minutes. Dubbed and in full screen and crappy quality. That clip look a little better.
The Tai Seng DVD is actually what this review is based on. 🙂 In fairness, you have to give Tai Seng credit – I was wondering what could be done to make this movie any worse than it already is, and they delivered by including an audio commentary by Ric Meyers.
This must have been the era of when Tai Seng released horrid DVDs with awful picture quality and dub only soundtracks. Although I’m guessing if you watched Death Ring with better picture and sound, you wouldn’t have liked it much more.
There was a time when I enjoyed Ric Myers commentaries until I looked up sources that contradicted them. It’s a shame they’re not so fondly remembered anymore. Did you torture yourself with this one?
The Tai Seng DVD era may be known for its “awful picture quality and dub only soundtracks” old-school kung-fu releases, but I still have a soft spot for them. In fact some of their titles are still the only releases available on physical media even 20 years later (‘Death Ring’ being one such example)!
I haven’t breached the Ric Meyers commentary yet, I have to be in a certain kind of mood to tolerate his pronunciation of “Louis Kar Leung”, and this being a Chang Cheh flick I’m sure it’s going to make an appearance!