HOTW- The Iron Monkey

 

"in every age, in every time, a hero is born, as if by some grand design..."

From Wiki- The film is a fictionalised account of an episode in the childhood of the Chinese folk hero Wong Fei-hung and his father Wong Kei-ying, and their encounter with the "Iron Monkey".^[1]  Iron Monkey is actually the alter ego of a traditional Chinese medicine physician called Yang Tianchun. During the day, Yang runs his clinic and provides free medical treatment for the poor, which he subsidises by charging his rich patients.  He joins forces with the Wongs and his assistant, Miss Orchid, to defeat Hin-hung, a Shaolin traitor.

This is a really good movie.  There was never an Iron Monkey folk hero, so it works.  He leaps about like a grasshopper.  Watching this made me wish Golden Harvest could have made a Kamen Rider movie.  That could have been amazing.  There are several unrelated movies of similar names, one with Chen Kwan-tai in 1977, and more after this movie.  I have seen the first one, but none of the others.  Yuen Woo-ping directed this, and you can tell.  Mr. Tarantino got it released in the US on DVD, so kudos to him.

I cannot find a version of this movie that has the English dub and the original Chinese language with subtitles.  That is rather vexing!