Bullet Points: Five Deadly Venoms
Anyone who read my review of Five Element Ninjas knows that I enjoyed the hell out of that movie. It’s existence is partly because of the success of Five Deadly Venoms so I was bound by my own personal code to watch and review FDV. I can tell you without spoiling the rest of this post that it was not as enjoyable as FEN but that could either be because of my affinity for ninjas or possibly the amount of alcohol I had in my system. Either way, Five Deadly Venoms did not leave me with the same feelings of excitement, bliss, and child-like enthusiasm for ninjas that Five Element Ninjas did. Check it out…
The Gist: A Master from the Poison Clan has taught five men different styles: the Centipede, the Snake, the Scorpion, the Lizard, and the Toad. Each man had gone their separate way and before the Master had died he had passed on some skills from each form into the hands of a young man. On his death bed, he sends the young man out to find each Deadly Venom to ensure they are not using their skills for evil and if so, to gain the trust of one of them and kill those who are evil.
The Cast: The only cast member that I recognized was Philip Kwok who played the Lizard. He also played “Mad Dog” in Hard Boiled, which is one of the greatest action movies of all time! I liked his character here in FDV. He played the hero next to the young guy but Kwok actually did stuff and didn’t just pretend to be a homeless guy the entire time. Meng Lo played the Toad and was also in Hard Boiled. He can be seen in the recent Ip Man feature titled The Grandmaster as well. I believe that baby is on Netflix so go out there and get you some.
Kung Fu movies loved to color coat everything and name people based on one attribute.
The Villain: There were five members of the Poison Clan who were taught by the Master and it turns out that a few of them are real assholes. They hide out in a small town until a rich buddy of the Master’s appears and they go after his cash. It’s not too surprising that of the Deadly Venom’s that turn bad are the Centipede, Snake, and Scorpion. Think about it, can you imagine an evil Toad? Other than having cool names and distinctive styles based on those names, they villains are all kind of one dimensional. They want that money and won’t let anybody get in their way. I didn’t really care about their whole deal; I just wanted to see some fights.
I feel like some of their training rooms took hours to create, but only seconds to destroy.
The Action: The movie amused me a few times with the way that it was dubbed but I can’t blame that on the product as it could have just been a poor interpretation of the source material but the script is still shitty. The action is cool when it happens but the first 30 minutes are so are pretty dull save for a short fight scene or two. I couldn’t believe I was watching a movie called Five Deadly Venoms since we spend most of the movie not knowing who all of them are or seeing them fight. It was a bit strange. Even the young guy spend 90% of the movie pretending to be some street rat until he finally found a Deadly Venom dude he could trust. The opening scene where the Master is talking about all of their different styles and whatnot was probably my favorite but that’s only cause the fight scenes were mediocre.
I call these guys “Bangs”, “Stubble”, and “Unibrow”.
Take it Home:
- Favorite Quotes: “Poison Clan rocks the world!”
- Favorite Quotes: “They used torture to break his kung fu.”
- That’s just smart: The two remaining members of the Poison Clan chose a very financially smart way to spend the rich dude’s money. I think that any good financial planner would agree that paying off their debts is just an intelligent way to spend a new found fortune.
- Stylish Kills: Centipede and Snake have some pretty cool methods of killing without being detected but just cause you wipe off the blood from their face doesn’t mean more won’t pool from the open wound. Just sayin’.
THSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!
Rating: 2/5
