Return of Red Tiger (1977) Review

“Return of Red Tiger” Theatrical Poster

AKA: The Return of Bul-bom
Director: Nam Gi-Nam
Cast: Bruce Le (Huang Kin Long), Eagle Han Ying, An Tae-seop, Lee Kang-jo, Kim Jin-hui
Running Time: 94 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

As a kung fu movie fan, have you ever asked yourself if there’s a kung fu flick out there that’s so bad, it could put you off the genre for good? I have, and I’ve kept my fingers crossed that it’s a movie I’ll never find. However all that changed when I watched Return of Red Tiger. The tragic part is that I brought this dire situation upon myself. I have one rule when it comes to Bruce Le movies, and that’s not to watch anything pre-1980. In the world of Bruceploitaiton, Le’s 70’s output is like staring into an abyss from which you can’t return, like Ken Watanabe at the end of Inception. I had my own Watanabe moment when I sat through 1977’s Return of Bruce many years ago, a Philippines shot travesty that put my love of kung fu flicks on life support for longer than I care to recall. I made it back though, and it wasn’t until 2020 that I had a relapse.

While unassumingly browsing the contents of one of those many 50-DVD kung fu packs that have been gathering dust on a shelf, I came across Return of Red Tiger. I should have known better, but my defences were down, perhaps thanks to the good will I’d garnered towards Bruce Le’s latter day output in the years passed since that fateful day. So it was, I began the mind-altering journey that would rattle my love of the kung fu genre to its very core.

Just a year earlier in 1976, Huang Kin-Lung debuted in Bruce’s Deadly Fingers under the new name of Bruce Le, after supporting roles in a handful of Shaw Brothers productions. While this particular outing was shot in Hong Kong, he’d spend the majority of the 70’s starring in either Filipino or Korean productions (or co-productions in some cases). 1977 appears to be a year that Le spent mostly in Korea, as apart from Return of Red Tiger, he’d also star in Bruce and Dragon Fist and Bruce and Shaolin Kung Fu (and its sequel). While none of them are particularly memorable, Return of Red Tiger takes the cake when it comes to the sheer amount of will power required to get to the end.

The biggest problem with Return of Red Tiger, and one which may have made it entirely more enjoyable if removed all together, is Le himself. His role here has nothing to do with Bruce Lee, and instead he plays a mute beggar, clocking in a performance that’ll make you want to gauge your eyes out and ram chopsticks into your ears within 10 seconds of him being onscreen. Due to a childhood trauma he’s devolved to take on the persona of a feral cat, and spends the whole movie communicating via high pitched meowing and wild yowls. It’s infuriating.

His behaviour makes no sense. In one scene we see him hyperactively running down the street, the happiest mute in the world with his bottle of milk, then in the next scene he sinks into a corner and starts traumatically yowling at the sky. When he runs out of milk, he visits a café where the owner gives him a bowl full, which he proceeds to down while half of it spills all over himself. I know its kind of a kung fu movie trope for characters to have some kind of mental impairment (who can forget Casanova Wong’s mute character in Magnificent Wonderman from Shaolin!?), but this way too extreme even for me. Preceding Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow by a year, even his fighting style is based on a cat, but we’ll get to that later. Needless to say his performance here makes even his most bombastic of Bruce Lee impersonations seem like a subtle masterclass in method acting.

The actual plot involves a singer whose boyfriend is in possession of a microfilm (the most sought after item in 70’s cinema?) and is on the run from the mafia. Played by Kim Jin-hui (Osaka Godfather – which was released by IFD films as Ninja Operation 5 – Godfather the Master) and An Tae-seop (Secret Agents II), while it’s never precisely clear what’s on the microfilm, the main crux of the plot is that Le has the hots for Jin-hui, and has since they were childhood friends. In one cringe inducing sequence, we see Le imagining himself and Jin-hui running towards each other in a field in slow motion. Well, Jin-hui is running, Le skips. I kid you not. Anyway, so blind is his love that he ends up giving up Tae-seop to the mafia out of jealousy, which doesn’t sit well with Jin-hui. After more cat like yowling and crying, Le realises the error of his ways, and the trio team up to take on the dastardly gangsters in a horrendous final fight.

What can be said is that the plot in the English dub has been drastically altered from the original version, not only with the dubbing, but it’s also clear whole scenes have been removed (and added – a random scene from the James Nam 1974 actioner The Fierce One is inserted at one point, adding nothing). Not that I expect it’d make it any better, but the actual story is a classic tale of Korea vs Japanese, with Tae-seop playing an independence fighter who comes to Seoul to receive funding he’ll take back to Manchuria. Le plays an orphan whose parents were killed by the Japanese, and cut his tongue out. The unrequited love angle remains the same, with the main differences being the mafia are the occupying Japanese, and in the Korean version Jin-hui dies after successfully rescuing Tae-seop, allowing him to complete his mission.

At least that version sounds better on paper. Even with the bastardized story and dubbing (which makes everyone sound like they’ve just stepped out of the wild west) though, its clear that Return of Red Tiger is an unsuccessful attempt to mix the popular Korean ’dajjimawa’ genre, which basically translates to tough guy action flick, with the equally popular kung fu genre. Tae-seop delivers powerful punches and can throw a mean kick with the best of the dajjimawa guys, but the genre was far apart from the more choreographed exchanges of the kung fu world. Quite how importing a Bruce Lee clone, and having him play a mute beggar who acts like a deranged cat, was supposed to be a recipe for success is beyond my comprehension.

Which brings us to the fight action. If nothing else, it’s like nothing which has ever been seen before, and thankfully ever been seen since. In what I’d loosely call choreography at best, it mostly comprises of Le (with the obligatory high pitched meowing) scampering around on the ground on all fours, pausing to scratch at it with his hands, before ’attacking’. Said attacks mainly comprise of scratching peoples faces, which seems to immediately kill them. It’s horrible, and one of the greatest example of car crash fighting I’ve ever seen, as no matter how horrendous it gets, the sheer bizarreness of it makes it impossible to look away from. Return of Red Tiger was the debut of Eagle Han Ying, in a small role as an one of the mafia lackeys, and his charisma comes off the screen even buried under the horrendous dubbing. It’s an undignified first screen appearance, as he dies from Le giving him a cat hug. Yes, a cat hug.

Directed by Nam Gi-Nam, a journey man director who helmed many genres over his almost 40 year career (other kung fu flicks include Leopard Fist Ninja and Evil Hits Evil), Return of Red Tiger was his sophomore feature after the 1972 drama Don’t Cry My Daughter, and frankly it’s surprising he ever worked again. However somehow everyone involved with this travesty did go on to work again, and in many cases it was on to bigger and better things, although that’s mainly because the bar couldn’t be set any lower.

We do get a final fight which pits Le against the mafia boss played by Lee Kang-jo (Fury in Shaolin Temple), and after he does the honours proceedings end in ear drum splitting fashion, as Le proceeds to yowl at the sky for a disproportionate amount of time. The yowling is juxtaposed with Tae-sop and Jin-hui having a romantic exchange at the river bank, in which they muse on how they’re now free to go anywhere together, and even during these scenes they can still hear Le’s endless yowling in the distance. To be honest, several hours after watching the movie I can still hear it too, and I was hoping that writing this review would make it stop. It hasn’t.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 0/10

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