Masked Avengers
1981; directed by Chang Cheh

Moving into the 1980's, Chang Cheh -- widely recognized as one of the greatest directors of kung fu films -- continued to be fairly prolific, perhaps not to the level of his prime during the 1970's, when he would bring out several releases per year, but was still working quite hard, especially for someone in their sixties. Chang's films during this period were marked by a sense of inventiveness, as might be expected from someone who had directed literally dozens of kung fu movies and was yearning to stretch his cinematic wings a bit -- and The Masked Avengers is a prime example of this.

The plot here is actually pretty simple. Basically, there's a group -- the somewhat wonky subtitles on Celestial's remastered print purport them as the not-so-inventively named Masked Gang -- who is going around looting and pillaging. They're also doing more vicious actions like rape and human sacrifice -- and when humans aren't available, the gang partakes of animal blood, which is shown in graphic detail, which may be off-putting to some. Anyway, a rival group that includes a former member of the gang sets out to right their wrongs.

One really tends to get the sense that Chang was on auto-pilot when it came to the exposition, to the point where he might have been napping on the set, as we get several throwaway scenes featuring characters that literally come out only for one or two lines to move the story forward a bit before disappearing forever. This lethargy extends towards the actors as well, as most of them come off as they're just getting through their dialogue as quickly as possible so they can head off to get dim sum.

But when things come together, Masked Avengers is quite a fun movie, being a fine mix of classic martial arts action marked by spurts of grisly violence with a hefty dash of overall strangeness. While Masked Avengers this isn't as strong as some of Chang's other works, the inventive production design and the panache in which Chang pull things off manages to set this release apart from a sea of stagnant kung fu revenge flicks and comes recommended to even more casual fans of the genre.

RATING: 7.5