Connection To THE VICTIM - Sammo Hung who worked on the film and can be seen briefly.
Strictly (UK) speaking from my point of view here - The amount of Hong Kong cinema on DVD compared to what's potentially released is quite low, true a lot of the work from the HK superstars is available - but alas sadly it seems, a lot of the company that release these titles, end up going bust sooner or later including the awesome Hong Kong Legends, and even though it would be nice to have DVDs of many of the films, places online like YouTube have end up being awesome featuring stuff that is not necessarily the easiest to come by and best of all they can often come in the original language.
Which brings me to The Invincible Eight, an early film from Golden Harvest, at one point the homes for Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan among others, which I got the chance to watch online - this did get a release on the Legendary Collection in Hong Kong itself which all of sudden out of nowhere all went out of print - which is directed by Lo Wei who did go onto direct the first two Bruce Lee Hong Kong films and Jackie Chan (which wasn't a creative partnership), actually this was made the same year as The Big Boss with all signs pointing that it was made before.
I really did end up enjoying this - I was expecting something Magnificent Seven like, based on the title alone, and to be fair I think there is shades of a western movie influence in here, you tell me the last shot of the movie wouldn't be out of place in a western? The plot is basically 8 people who end up with revenge on their mind, and involves them eventually teaming together to take down the big boss.
To me this was Angela Mao's movie, it had the most energy whenever she was on screen, and are character was among the most enjoyable but it was pretty good the eight had distinct enough personalities to stand out from each other.
Overall, there is probably better kung fu movies with better fighting etc. but I was left satisfied and was rooting for the eight to get their revenge, if you like the old kung fu movies there is no reason why you won't like this.
Which brings me to The Invincible Eight, an early film from Golden Harvest, at one point the homes for Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan among others, which I got the chance to watch online - this did get a release on the Legendary Collection in Hong Kong itself which all of sudden out of nowhere all went out of print - which is directed by Lo Wei who did go onto direct the first two Bruce Lee Hong Kong films and Jackie Chan (which wasn't a creative partnership), actually this was made the same year as The Big Boss with all signs pointing that it was made before.
I really did end up enjoying this - I was expecting something Magnificent Seven like, based on the title alone, and to be fair I think there is shades of a western movie influence in here, you tell me the last shot of the movie wouldn't be out of place in a western? The plot is basically 8 people who end up with revenge on their mind, and involves them eventually teaming together to take down the big boss.
To me this was Angela Mao's movie, it had the most energy whenever she was on screen, and are character was among the most enjoyable but it was pretty good the eight had distinct enough personalities to stand out from each other.
Overall, there is probably better kung fu movies with better fighting etc. but I was left satisfied and was rooting for the eight to get their revenge, if you like the old kung fu movies there is no reason why you won't like this.
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