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13 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
Nice flow, 2 July 2006
9/10
Author: CMUltra (collectormanultra@yahoo.com)

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

This is my favorite Angela Mao movie. Some of her other movies offer her better costumes and characterization but this movie just flows so nicely.

There is rarely a pause as the resistance fights Japanese invaders. The set fights, such as the church, the tavern and the final fantastic conflict in the bad guy's home are tight and fast. The outdoors fights are great too featuring the staple "bad guys chase the hero till they catch him and then get their butts kicked." That's one of my favorite kung fu movie staples. Particularly when it's a running fight where the hero will just demolish one of the gang every time they catch him, then take off running again... and the gang continues to pursue! There's not only fighting but brutal torture with hooks and chains, espionage and family love.

Another bonus in this, with a large cast of four heroes and at least three main villains, is that the fighters are scripted consistently in their prowess. Mao and Rhee are presented as clearly superior fighters to Wong and Winton, and the fights are carefully choreographed to reflect this.

I guess the movie is not technically "kung fu" as the main styles depicted seem to be Tae Kwon Do, Hap Ki Do and some type of generic Karate. But it is a Hong Kong production with true kung fu superstars such as Mao, Wong, and Sammo Hung.

The Japanese as villain in Hong Kong kung-fu flicks is so common and so cardboard that it is difficult to find offensive. The Japanese villains in these movies are such caricatures that they simply become a different entity. I don't look at movies with mobster bad guys and begin pondering Italian stereotypes and I don't do it here in the kung fu genre. It simply can't be taken that seriously.

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7 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Angela Mao shines as a hapkido expert fighting the Japanese, 3 August 2001
Author: Brian Camp from Bronx, NY

STING OF THE DRAGON MASTERS (1973, aka WHEN TAEKWONDO STRIKES) is an unusual kung fu film set largely in Korea during the Japanese occupation in the 1930s and involves an ethnically mixed cast of Chinese, Korean, Japanese and American martial artists. Korean Taekwondo expert Jhoon Rhee plays the leader of the Korean resistance movement and his group includes a Chinese hapkido expert played by Angela Mao, a Korean Taekwondo expert played by Carter Wong, and an American student of the art played by Anne Winton, who has seen her uncle, a Catholic priest, abducted, tortured and finally killed by the Japanese occupying forces. ('The Japs have no respect for religion,' we are told.) A long-haired Samo Hung appears as one of the Japanese karate experts who takes on the heroes in several fights. (He also played a Japanese villain in King Hu's THE VALIANT ONES, 1974.)

The plot centers around the efforts of Rhee to keep his resistance movement alive after being exposed to the Japanese and get a list of his rebel group's members to their contacts in China. This involves lots of fights in the first half of the movie, including at least three in a Catholic church and one in a restaurant. The final battle, pitting the four heroes against the top Japanese villains at the Japanese headquarters in Manchuria, is particularly exciting and filled with great martial arts action.

The film moves quickly and is well shot (on studio sets mixed with actual locations), but suffers from unusually poor English voice dubbing. Worse, the constant stream of inappropriate music cues lifted from other sources is lathered on in the most heavy-handed manner, often drowning out the dialogue. Also, the VHS edition is full frame and severely cropped meaning that much of the fighting action disappears off the sides of the frame.

Even so, the film is worth seeing for the sheer number of superb fights, most of which feature Rhee and Mao taking on the Japanese. Mao is at her peak here and shows off the genuine skills that made her the queen of the kung fu movie for a spell back in the 1970s. The director is Mao's frequent collaborator, Huang Feng, and the movie was produced by Golden Harvest.

ADDENDUM (FEB. 10, 2008): Since writing the above review, this film has since come out on DVD, under its original title, WHEN TAEKWONDO STRIKES, from Joy Sales as part of the Fortune Star/Legendary Collection line. The new edition is letter-boxed and in its original language, Mandarin, with English subtitles. The music track is very different and doesn't have the same problems the soundtrack on the English dub had. Also, the subtitles make it clear that the Catholic priest and his martial artist niece described above are meant to be French, not American. The DVD contains the film's original trailer, which identifies the numerous martial artists cast in the film and their particular specialties. Watching the DVD was like seeing the film for the first time. Highly recommended.

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Wall-to-wall action!, 25 October 2009
9/10
Author: InjunNose from Alabama

"Sting of the Dragon Masters" features Jhoon Rhee in his only martial arts film role. Rhee, who is known as the 'Father of American Tae Kwon Do' and counts Muhammad Ali among his students, plays a humble, unassuming man living in Japanese-occupied Korea in the early twentieth century. He makes every effort to conceal his martial skill, but is eventually forced to lash out against the Japanese oppressors. (In this regard, and also because it is a Golden Harvest production, "...Dragon Masters" bears more than a passing resemblance to Bruce Lee's "The Chinese Connection".) Fighting alongside Rhee are chop-socky stalwarts Angela Mao Ying and Carter Wong, while the seemingly endless array of villains includes Whang Ing-Sik (dressed in a very loud robe) and Sammo Hung. As is the case with many martial arts films, the storyline is simple and exists primarily to link the fight scenes together. But, good god, what fight scenes they are! "Sting of the Dragon Masters" offers spectacular, jaw-dropping action, with a special focus on kicks (as you might expect from a film whose alternate title is "When Tae Kwon Do Strikes"), and you'll certainly feel that you've gotten your money's worth by the time the closing credits roll.

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Very Badly Mastered DVD Version, 4 February 2007
1/10
Author: dvdmike from Chicago, Illinois, USA

The DVD version released by Crash Cinema was very poorly done. The mastering engineer must have been either drunk, asleep or not even in the room while it was being done. It looks like it was mastered from about a tenth generation copy and about halfway through the film, the audio synchronization disappears. The dialog is about 10 or 15 seconds behind the audio. If you're thinking about purchasing this DVD, please save your money. I remember seeing this film at the theater back in 1973. Also, the VHS copy of this film under the title of "When Taekwondo Strikes" looks better than the DVD, but the remaining several minutes of the movie are "missing". Where is the original camera negative?

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0 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :-
very bland, 1 December 2001
4/10
Author: rottingcarrot (rottingcarrot@hotmail.com) from Toronto Canada

I won't waste your time by describing the plot for this, the other reviewer already did this quite well. I will however give you my opinion of this movie. This movie is basically anti japanese propoganda. The japanese are portrayed as incredably evil b**tards who have respect for nothing, as well as having very poor martial arts skills (groups of japanese men get there asses kicked by single women on more than one occasion.) The fact that the japanese fighters lose almost every (if not every) fight in the movie kind of takes away the suspense. The plot is actually quite solid and perfect for a kung fu movie though. The problem lies in the fact that there's not much fighting. When there are fights some of the fighting is quite good, but other scenes are choreographed badly. One scene angela mao takes on six japanese in a church and kicks all their asses. The problem is they show her fighting them one by one when they're all supposed to be attacking at the same time. I gather this movie was incredably cheap considering how cheap some of the sets are. They use the same village set for when they are in korea and when they are in china without changing it at all. Some scenes are filmed at real locations though, and they look good. Overall the only real problem with the movie is it's slow moving and uninteresting plot. Since there are few fight scenes we have to rely on the plot for entertainment and, well, I wasn't entertained.

one and a half stars out of four

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