RACEHORSE SCREENING ROOM

"The Fighting Fist of Shanghai Joe"

(1973)

Director: Mario Caiano

Director of Photography: Guglielmo Mancori

Music by: Bruno Nicolai

Produced at the nadir of the Spaghetti Western cycle and the ascendancy of the Kung Fu craze, "Shanghai Joe" is a unintentionally hilarious genre mash-up starring Chen Lee and a villainous Klaus Kinski and features terrible special fx make-up and prosthetics and the worst clearly-visible wire work ever committed to celluloid. But I couldn't help but be entertained by the entire enterprise. Perhaps with a bigger budget and a more skilled filmmaker, we would be talking about this film more - an early-70s film with a Chinese lead character battling racist white bastards in the Old West - could have been an early example of a revisionist western tackling the myths of history told by the victors. Definitely worth a watch.

Bought at https://videomatica.com