Sadly Over-hyped

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

This has got to be one of my favorite old school Hong Kong Kung Fu flicks. There are a lot of clichés in both the writing and the characters' mannerisms, but for someone who enjoys this genre of film those things are par for the course. On the other hand, there are a few things that make this film stand out. The protagonist style (mantis) is one that is already one of the weirdest (and most vicious) systems of Kung Fu in the martial arts world, and has been given an even weirder twist in this film. Secondly, the boy in this film is one of the stars and nearly steals the show; he has some impressive training sequences, does some impressive acrobatics (some of them wire assisted) and has at least one solid fight scene. The last thing that really makes this film stand out is the ending. The whole film up until the end is pretty happy-go-lucky and predictable, but the bizarre and brutal nature of the film's conclusion has caused it to stand out in my mind. For fans of the genre who don't mind a dark twist here and there this is a gem, but if you're easily shocked, please turn away.

First of all, I doubt very much that this movie is from 1984 (Edit: Oh good! It's been corrected to 1980 now!), as the Kid in it is certainly not six years older than he was in the previous movie (Sleeping Fist, 1978). He's about 12 here, and couldn't have been much more than a year younger in the first.Anyway, Thundering Mantis was yet another disappointment to me. It starts out as unbearably terrible happy-go-lucky comedy, which however admittedly grows on you a bit as it proceeds. But it remains exaggerated and never reaches a truly entertaining level. Also, several passages in the movie are so dull and cliché that you have to fast-forward past them. The quality of the fighting is okay, but nothing particularly impressive.I love Eddy Ko, and was glad to see that he was in this movie as well. However, he once again plays some stupid evil guy (with silly lilac talcum powder on his face) with no motivation at all, and although he gets to put in some decent fighting here, his character remains nonsensical and undeveloped. The torture scenes, mercifully brief, are simply unpleasant.Beardy's mad and bitin' fightin' in the end is the only thing serving to recommend the movie, and it's not much of a recommendation. It's kinda funny and all, but it doesn't succeed in raising the movie to a level higher than mediocrity.I have to mention the horrid, disgusting English dubbing. Some of the accents are British, and others sound like 50-year-old cowboys. There's a lot of cringe-inducing shrill shrieking and some really idiotic sound effects. This was a digitally remastered DVD; where the hell is the sense in remastering the movie and then retaining the horrible original dubbing? Must be because anything else would be too expensive, but... one really wonders who the hell can find it in themselves to present us with this kind of crap dubbing in the age of the DVD. Un-Ac-Ceptable.5 out of 10. (The first movie, Sleeping Fist, received a 6 rating from me.)

`I call this my Shrimp Fist, I designed it to beat idiots like you,' says the happy-go-lucky Ah Chin, a trouble-making scamp with an eye on helping the needy. His misadventures lead to all kinds of trouble with the Jade Horse clan, who set their mind on wiping out Ah Chin and all who knows him. God knows what triggers the brutal assault, but needless to say Ah Chin must hone up on his kung fu skills (by learning a crazy form of Mantis Fist) in order to defeat these evil scoundrels. Fists perched, legs balanced and beard on full display, Leung Kar Yan truly shines in this somewhat lacklustre kung fu quickie. Culminating in a memorable if truly insane finale, we watch as Ah Chin becomes so bitterly twisted and vengeful, he takes on a new deranged form, dribbling down his beard and occasionally collapsing into lapses of Mantis convoltions, before breaking his opponents to pieces and eating their sweet raw flesh. Hmm, tasty.

"Thundering Mantis" gives you what you expect from a Chinese kung fu movie--poor dubbing, lots of fighting (much of which is obviously fake), and a fairly predictable plot. The main musical theme is like something you'd find in "ChiPs", not really belonging to the movie, but rather amusing. And the introduction, oh boy, if you like cheesy fighting, you'll be rewinding like anything.This movie does do a few things right, better than most kung fu movies. I actually wanted the villains to get their butts kicked. The movie does a good job of showing how Hsia and his henchmen are increasingly cruel and sadistic. Moreover, I actually cared when the good guys suffered(!), especially the boy. "Thundering" even has some pretty funny scenes which are actually supposed to be humorous.Overall, it's worth viewing at least once. Some people may be repulsed by the ending, and there is a bit of swearing, but I still give it 6/10.