Born Invincible (1978)

Lo Lieh and Carter Wong team up as the super bad guys in this tale of Born Invincible. A traditional revenge trope gets a boost from a slightly different take on the heroes training and retribution stories.

The title is somewhat erroneous. Carter Wong was the invincible Big Bad, but he wasn’t born that way, he trained from childhood in the impervious Tai Chi kung fu style (probably not really Tai Chi, but as always, we just go with these things). He had only one place on his body that was vulnerable and he could move it around depending on his mood and time of the day. For the good guys this created a deadly problem when their school let Carter’s prey, an old swords master and his daughter stay with them. Carter and Lo Lieh showed up demanding the swordsman. When the master of the school (Lung Fei playing against type) took them on and was killed it set up the revenge for the master trope. Born Invincible strayed from the typical storytelling and instead of one student training to take on the Big Bads, three different students at three different times trained to battle and find the weakness of the White Haired Invincible fighter.

Carter Wong and Lo Lieh looked like they were having fun playing the Big Bads. The good guys with their bad Bruce Lee wigs seemed rather bland in comparison.

Yuen Woo Ping was the martial arts director and he went out of his way to create inspired fight scenes. His brother, Yuen Shun Yi, played one of the minions who caused problems for the school. The fight scenes were quite good and the action and training scenes kept the story moving at lightning speed.

As always, I grade old niche movies on a curve. Born Invincible was entertaining, dared to alter a tried and true trope, and the fight scenes were good. Not much else to ask from an old kung fu movie.

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