Charles Herold (cherold) As someone whose first martial arts films were slick movies like Rush Hour and Kiss of the Dragon, I've found most early martial arts movies unwatchable schlock. But I heard this was cult classic and that it had an unusually solid story for the genre - a mystery no less! - so I thought I'd check it out.On the bright side, the dubbing is better and the acting and story better done than other films I've seen from this period. But that's a very low bar.The convoluted story involves a rich man and some ne'er-do-wells, and the "mystery," people talk about involves figuring out who's who, but it's not a mystery as I think of them and the story, such as it is, is told through clunky, matter-of-fact dialogue.There not much martial arts in the early part. There's a tedious bit of showcasing a variety of styles then about a half an hour of "plot" before the next fight. This fight is like watching a high-school martial arts exhibition with sound effects and some acrobatics thrown in. And this movie came out THE SAME YEAR AS DRUNKEN MASTER, whose amazing fights made up for the horrible schlockiness of everything else. After that I decided I would just skip to the end of the movie and see how the final battle was. It was about the same; too dull to even sit through.I will never get why people like this sort of thing.

Jackson Booth-Millard I recognised this Chinese film as one of the titles that used to feature in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, so I keen to see if I would agree with this recommendation. Basically the dying old master of powerful Poison Clan and head of Five Venoms House (Dick Wei) sends his last pupil, Yang Tieh (Sheng Chiang) on a crucial mission to find five former students. The students, the Five Venoms as they were known, were each taught unique, special and deadly styles of kung fu, they are the Centipede, the Snake, the Scorpion, the Lizard, and the Toad. Each have now changed their identities, the master never saw them remove their masks during training, so he has no idea what they look like, and some of the five students also don't know each other. Yang is tasked with finding them and seeing what they are doing now, he knows little about each style of kung fu, but he eventually finds two of the good students, Lizard (Phillip Chung-Fung Kwok) and Scorpion (Chien Sun), they must work together to destroy the students that have become evil, Snake (Pai Wei), Toad (Liang Shen) and Centipede (Feng Lu). Also starring Lung Wei Wang as Judge Wan, Feng Ku as Old Master Yuan and Shu Pei Sun as Constable Lin Kuang. The story is just about simple enough to follow, there are some sections when it slows down, but the training and fight scenes, filled with superhero style gimmicks and very high pace, are the most memorable moments, overall it's not a bad martial arts adventure. Worth watching!

drewconnor This one is a simple story that can get confusing, but has just the right stuff to keep the audience on track. Instead of a revenge theme like we so commonly see in the kung-fu flicks. Not that revenge themes are bad but it gives us a new taste to a different type of film. Basically, a master has taught his pupils 5 deadly arts of Kung-fu all of which fit the the title 5 deadly venoms because the styles mimic animals that are poisonous. The centipede, snake, toad, lizard, scorpion. Hence the name "poison clan". The master teaches all of these to pupils at different times and is only explained by the master as a sort of flashback but more of a background builder. Each pupil mastered a specific style within the clan but do not know anything besides that style. However, they know their own style very well. Each style has it's own weaknesses but if one can know how to do them all they essetially complement each other and then one can have no weaknesses. The master is telling this story to his pupil Yan Tieh who actually has a small role in the film even though his role is rather important because it actually sets things in motion. The reason is the master has taught all of the tecniques to Yan but he doesn't know anyone technique very well and therefore he can be easily beaten by anyone of the 5 previous pupils. His mission is to check up on the 5 pupils to see if they are doing good deeds with their skills. As the story unfolds there are 2 who are obviously bad and are after a treasure and killing people left and right. Only they screw up and use their skills and leave death marks of special kung-fu on the people they killed. PLus to add to all the fun some innocent bystander witness thee murders. 2 others are less noticeable but are good and one later reveals himself who is actually an officer of the law (but you kind of figure this out because he get the lead role in the film). The officer hides himself by using the Toad who is his friend to help caputure the bad guys which are centipede style and later the snake who actually has a feels sorry for his murders and centipde who could careless and wants to keep using his skills to kill people for money and status. They succeed and a chain of events leads to an ultimate battle at the end because the scorpion actually finds the map to the treasure and later reveals himself as the wild card of the stack and plots to kill all of the clan members so he can be the most powerful and have all the gold. Yan teams up with the officer who has the lizard skills and teaches Yan his style. The toad is tortured to death because Snake and Centipede styles are behind the whole thing and have semi-control over the governing body. Toad: strengths are iron skin style (it does exist in real life but well over dramatic in the movie of course). The iron skin does not allow weapons and hand to hand combat strikes to cause damage to the person who trained toad style. His weakness is his temples. Lizard: Strengths are able to do wall kung-fu. Able to strike like a lizard while standing on the wall.Centipede: Speed of attack is best of all the techniques and rest of the styles.Snake: It's awkward floor (fighting while on the ground) and hand speed and cunning is its strengths.Scorpion: Able to smash objects with great efficiency. The powerhouse of the techniques.You can tell putting all these together makes you basically invincible. The wall-to-wall action makes the pace of the film fast and furious. The unique kung-fu is fun to watch and the choreography is brilliant. The best thing is the actors are very talented and very fast with their fighting. Everyhing here looks very well done.Acting: B Actor Performance: A+ Action: A+ Choreography: A+ Entertaining value: A+ Replay value: A+ Storyline: A- Directing: A

oversig My all time favorite Kung-Fu movie! Why someone has not made a remake of this classic is mind boggling to me. I hated they chose Toad-Style to die because he was the best all around character. He was good, Innocent, trusting & almost invincible. They could make five movies based on each one's life then culminating in an epic final movie just a thought. The other style that I mostly liked was of course Snake-Style. The overall look of the actor made the character awesome. Also the fact he helped the good side in the end was most honorable & inspiring. The fight scenes are awesome even with old school sound effects. This movie has one of the best story lines of any Martial arts movie ever made. It will leave you wanting more as the ending is abrupt. If anyone knows how to get a director/producer on board for remaking this classic then please do so. Peace...