The Killer Meteors (1976)
Review by Doc Ezra
Film:
DVD:

Adapted from the novel by Gu Long
Directed by Wei Lo
Starring Jackie Chan and Jimmy Wang Yu

Features

• Trailers
  
• Mandarin and English audio
  
• English, Spanish, and Portuguese subtitles
  

Rating: NR, suitable for audiences 16+

Anamorphic: No

My advice: Rent it.

Hua-Wa Bin (Chan) has been poisoned, most likely by his wife. Now, to be fair, he’s kind of a bastard, so she was probably well-justified. Nonetheless, the powerful noble contracts the services of the powerful vigilante known as “Killer Meteor,” Mei-Hsin-Ho (Wang Hu) to try and retrieve an antidote from his estranged wife and her gang of freakish martial artists. And, of course, Hua-Wa will have to do a little kung fu of his own in order to bring the matter to a conclusion, bringing the sinister noble and the vigilante together to defeat a greater evil.

The Killer Meteors gives us Jackie Chan in one of his incredibly rare performances as a villain. Jimmy Wang Hu is really the star of the piece, though. While Chan gets his fair share of kung fu sequences and crazy acrobatics, it takes a back seat to Wang Hu’s fights. The real highlights are when the two are onscreen together, but it doesn’t happen quite often enough. The story is a bit bizarre, even for kung fu movies, and Killer Meteor’s signature weapon is definitely weirder than pretty much anything but the infamous “Flying Guillotine.”

The movie occasionally tries too hard to be weird and over-the-top, with weapons and the like becoming a bit too outlandish, even for kung fu theatre. My personal favorite is the “pulverizing drug,” which, when imbibed, reduces the drinker to a puddle of goo. Despite this, it’s plenty entertaining. The story is straightforward and only a slight variation on the classic “hero vs. series of master opponents” theme, and the fight choreography is superb. Chan and Wang Hu turn in excellent performances, though there are spots where Chan looks a little less than comfortable with his role as bad guy. It’s plain to see why he chooses to avoid such roles these days.

The audio and video are decent, thought there is some streaking and crackles in the picture. This is to be expected from a Chinese film of its age, but overall none of it is bad enough to be truly distracting. An anamorphic transfer would have been nice, too. Audio is decent, though the English dub is a bit muffled in places. The music, as is so often the case in kung fu land, is terrible and cheesy. Of features there are none, except a couple of trailers for other kung fu flicks.

Chan fans will probably want this one just for its nearly unique bad guy bent, and die-hard kung fu types are likely to appreciate the more unusual aspects of the martial artists and the plot. More casual fans might want to give it a rental before committing to a purchase.