Movielogr

Rating: 7 stars

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youtube singapore martial arts mobsters masked criminal extortion kidnapping arson murder revenge justice banned restored asian film archive

All movies seen on 05/17/2020

View on: IMDb | TMDb

Ring of Fury (1973)

Directed by Tony Yeow, James Sebastian

Action

Overview

Fei Pah works at a hawker center but is constantly harassed by the local gangs to pay his share of ‘tax’ to them. He decides to take matters into his own hands however when the girl he loves is kidnapped.

Length 78 minutes

Actors

Peter Chong

Viewing History (seen 1 time)

Viewing Notes

Thanks to Brad Henderson for turning me on to this nice little gem of a movie. Released in 1973 but banned and apparently didn’t see the light of day until the Asian Film Archive restored it from the only existing 35mm negative print in existence, which had suffered some mold and fade damage. It’s not perfect but it looks pretty good. Probably the most frustrating thing are the white subtitles burned on the print itself, which at times are hard to read.

The story itself is pretty straightforward, revolving around a street noodle shop owner who refuses to pay protection money to the local gangsters who are headed by a mysterious leader named Iron Mask (who literally wears an iron mask even while lounging around his house shirtless).

Much of the action takes place in an unusual location, a granite mine, which makes for a pretty monotone background and interesting geography in that a lot of it is mud in various stages, from hard and cracked to soup-like. I really dug the location a lot.

There’s almost no information on the film on IMDB. Thankfully the Asian Film Archive made the restored version available for free on YouTube. It’s worth the time to track it down and watch as it’s thought to be the first Singaporean martial arts film and it was banned for so long that very few people have seen it until recently.

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