I'm going to be writing about lesser-known martial arts movies for work soon, and though I've seen enough to talk about, I thought it gave me a good excuse to catch up on a few lesser-known ones I've yet to see. I've been pretty happy with the whole run so far, seeing a couple of cool Jackie Chan films, King Hu's The Fate of Lee Khan, and now a couple of Shaw Brothers movies tonight: Human Lantern and then Opium and the Kung Fu Master.

The latter was particularly good. Not perfect, and not quite top-tier Shaw Brothers, but quite good, and I'm glad to say it qualifies as under-appreciated. It has a little bit of an odd tone at first, feeling like a goofy comedy with some occasional martial arts, having more laughs than your average "competing martial arts schools" plotline.

But then opium works its way into the plot, one school wants to corrupt the town of another school by making them all addicts, and the drug is shown to start ruining lives. It doesn't handle addiction with care or in a particularly believable way, but maybe points for effort? It does end up pushing the film into more serious territory, and while that was jarring, I think it was for the best. The action - while good before - started to get even more exciting once the stakes were raised.

And it's always cool to see two well-known Shaw Brothers lead actors - Ti Lung and Chen Kuan-Tai, who were also both in Human Lanterns - face off against each other. I always forget how good of a bad guy the latter made, and when they go head-to-head, things get awesome.

It's a bit of a messy film, and some wild tonal shifts are contained within, but I generally liked what it was going for, mostly liked what the story ended up being, and found the action very entertaining.

Although it was released just a year before the Shaw Brothers studio closed, OPIUM AND THE KUNG FU MASTER proves to be just as strong a piece of film-making as their earlier classics. I'm constantly astounded at the way Shaw continued to innovate and provide fresh-feeling movies even having produced literally hundreds of similar efforts over the preceding decades.

This film's a vehicle for martial arts legend Ti Lung, who takes on a role that requires acting as well as fighting ability. You see, OPIUM AND THE KUNG FU MASTER is the ultimate Shaw anti-drug film, detailing the horrendous effects of opium addiction among the working class population. Lung himself is the usual kung fu expert but an opium addict to boot, so conflict comes both internally and eternally in this story.

The scenario is fast-paced and inventive, ably mixing together the usual comedy hijinks (the cross-eyed guy is hilarious), furious action scenes, training, and dense plotting. Chia Tang's direction is outstanding and makes this a fine-looking film and the action never disappoints, although the final bout is a little brief for my liking and the film's true dramatic climax comes earlier. The triumvirate of villainy comes in the form of Chen Kuan Tai, Lee Hoi San, and Phillip Ko, all of whom are excellent.

In what has to be one of the more interesting turns for a character in a martial arts movie, Ti Lung (as Tie) oversees the day-to-day activities of his students (including a Lion Dance, which they win before belittling and then belaboring their opponents). Tie is a strict disciplinarian- at first. Enter Rong Feng (Chen Kuan-Ti), who decides to open an opium den. Rong learns of Tie's addiction and promptly offers him a jar of opium. Before you can say "uh, gimme a second to think this one over," Tie's all but comatose, sucking on a pipe day after day (and, one presumes, night after night). As one might well expect, when it comes time for Tie to step up and man the barricades against the evil opium dealers, he's barely able to stand: in a surprising sequence, he's knocked around by Rong in front of the whole village. Will he go Cold Turkey fu and bounce back, or will the mighty Ti Lung succumb to The Pipe...? There's a bit of high-flying, Old School wirework on display here (as one might well expect in a kung fu movie about opium addiction), but it's kept to a minimum. Not a bad movie, but definitely one with at least one foot planted just a bit too squarely in The Real World.