Shih Tien Movies

Shangkuan I-yun (Hwang Jang-li) has developed the deadly eagle claw style to devastating effect on the follower of the Snake Fist technique, killing all except the group's dithering leader Pai Chang-tien (Simon Yuen Siu-tien). When harried orphan Chien Fu (Jackie Chan) saves Pai's life, the master teaches the youth some of the finer points of the Snake Fist style. When Chien nurses Pai back to health following an ambush by two of Shangkuan's followers, Pai teaches the lad everything he knows. Later, Chien watches with amazement as his pet cat kills a cobra, giving him the beginning of a new deadlier technique that eventually defeats the evil Shangkuan. This film helped created Jackie Chan's winning screen persona as a put-upon everyman and kung-fu comedian. This film proved to be so popular that director Yuen Woo-ping, Simon Yuen, and Chan went on to make the smash hit Drunken Master later that year. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Two short films and one longer one are brought together in this horror anthology. In the first, a man and his pregnant wife help an old woman bury a covered pot in a field. Believing that the pot contains treasure, they kill the old woman, only to find that it contains nothing but bones. The pregnant woman goes into labor over the dead woman's body, and blood from that event drips onto the corpse. The baby, when born, is fully able to bite his father's finger off and kill him. The second episode concerns an adulterous couple who, when discovered by the woman's husband, nail him up in a box and try various means to dispose of him, all of them somehow lacking finality. The final episode concerns a man who is wrongly accused and executed for a murder he did not commit. Using a bit of magic as he dies, he is able to return to his home for a few days as a very vigorous ghost so that he can finish writing the medical treatise that was his life's work. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide