Monday, December 18, 2017

Stoner (1974)

Dating back to the early 1970s when Bruce Lee was still fresh in people's minds and kung fu and martial arts was big business worldwide (or at least the current in-thing) comes Stoner, starring George Lazenby. Bruce Lee was apparently originally set to star in this fairly standard but slightly odd film but after his untimely death it was decided to make the film anyway. Angela Mao was bought in as George's co-star. Let the hard kung-fu action begin!

There is a kind of plot, something involving an evil gangster mastermind (who has an excellent rotating desk) creating explosives and drug smuggling in his (evil of course) underground lair but the plot is just a bare frame on which to hang a sequence of pretty excellent fighting set pieces.

The result is undeniably cheesy, fairly confusing but also pretty entertaining. It is a 70s period piece and perhaps nothing that original from the time but worth seeing all the same. After all how many HK kung-fu movies had an ex-James Bond in them?!