Lack of good storyline.

just watch it!

An Exercise In Nonsense

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

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!

Yang Tieh of the Poison Clan (Sheng Chiang) is instructed by his dying master to seek out the venoms—five former pupils known for their particular styles of kung fu—to see if they have turned bad. Yang is also instructed to find wealthy ex-Poison Clan teacher Mr. Yuen to try and convince him to donate his money to good causes. Unfortunately, Yuen falls victim to two of the five venoms, Snake and Centipede, who are keen to get their hands on his fortune. What follows is a tale of deception, betrayal, torture, and murder, with Yang caught in the middle. But not much fighting.Directed by the legendary Chang Cheh, The Five Venoms is often cited as one of Shaw Brothers' best martial arts films by those in the know, which made it rather disappointing for me to discover that there is actually very little kung fu until the inevitable final battle between the heroes and the bad guys, intrigue and suspense taking precedence over punching, kicking, jumping and flipping. This mightn't have been so bad if the mystery had been utterly compelling, but to be honest, I just wasn't gripped by the whole 'who are the venoms and what has happened to the money?' storyline.The aforementioned showdown between the goodies, Yang and Lizard, and the baddies, Snake, Centipede and Scorpion, is certainly a lot of fun, each fighters signature move allowing for some creative choreography, but getting there… not so much.4.5 out of 10, rounded up to 5 for the 'iron coat' torture scene. Nasty!

This movie stars most of the same cast of The Crippled Avengers. It suffers from the same problems too. This movie has an interesting premise but it falls apart because the fighting choreography is more flips and ridiculous spinning low kicks than genuine gungu fu. It makes me think the one who choreographed these fights was a circus perfomer or gymnist/opera type person and not a genuine martial artist at all- if he was he must be real low class and must have been kicked out of his school or quick because none of the fights in this movie show a skilled practitioner in the martial arts yet there are supposed to be martial art heroes in this movie- martial artists that can do the impossible- and what do they do? Break chains? Do flips? Big whoop- Conan the Barbarian can do that. Nothing in this movie is special or representative of the true martial arts way or kung fu- there are so many stupid things about this movie besides the poorly staged fights. For example: They are all trying to steal a fortune. One of them is rich already so why is he involved and trying to get the money? It's never explained so technically he doesn't have a motive and yet goes after the money anyhow. Does that make sense to you? Then there is another guy who GETS the money/treasure and yet thinks he has to kill the rest too. Why? And then why doesn't he just do it? He could have skipped town when he got the treasure and yet he stayed like a fool- and more importantly he didn't kill all the members when theoretically he was absolutely in a place to do so. Stupid movie. It doesn't make sense because it's not supposed to- it's just plain dumb. When Bruce Lee said Kung Fu movies at the time had pointless fighting that was explained with no real reason he sure was right- and movies like this and My Young Auntie prove it. That movie too was dumb. At least The Crippled Avengers had a very good reason for fighting but again that had bad choreography like this one and the story got very weak by the 2nd half. Save yourself time and watch another Shaw Brothers film. - Mad Monkey Kung Fu is a good one. And Clan of the White Lotus is a good one too.

There's no romance or other side plot to this movie, it's action and intrigue all the way, making it a real man's kung-fu movie.An aging master dispatches his last disciple Yan Tieh to stop his five former pupils who's styles represents five venomous animals centipede,snake, scorpion, lizard and the toad. Despite the word "Venom" in the title, none of these pupil uses venoms to kill their opponents. Yan Tieh told by his teacher that he's no match for the five former pupil, must find one he can form an alliance with to defeat the other four. How Yan Tieh and the others find each other is the intrigue to the story, with good kung-fu action spread out throughout the story.Recognized as a cult classic, this movie has already established itself in the annals of kung- fu action movies. It's known well enough that other movies make reference to the five styles depicted in this story.It's no artistic masterpiece, with the usual bad dubbing, and corny acting, but the movie is one of the best of its kind, because its so focused on the all the ingredients of kung-fu action movie of its time, and gives an extra concentrated dose of them.One movie you must watch if you are a kung-fu movie fan.