Secret Ninja, Roaring Tiger: Dragon as D'Artagnan

From what I can tell, most Dragon Lee martial arts flicks start off kinda boring then get better as they go along. I myself go from itching to stop the video to smiling wholeheartedly as the sound-enhanced hijinks kick into high gear. Neither a lack of plot twists nor a shortage of fights is ever the issue with Dragon on-screen. In this particular bit of nonsense, Dragon goes from winning the hand of a young heiress (Seo Jeong-Ah) to three mustketeering with a lady ninja in unconvincing drag and her soon-to-be, babelicious boyfriend (Jack Lam). Since a sadistic kung fu magician (Hwang Jang-lee) has stolen away Dragon's fiancee who happens to be the lady ninja's sister and who happens to share a familial tattoo with her captor, the graphic softcore porn scene is especially perverse. Yet even acknowleding my suspension of disbelief, I remain dumbfounded by the final turnabout: An evil spell can be undone when a young maiden exposes her whipped breasts to the wind!

Tits aside, Dragon's up to his usual acrobatics and physical gags in Kim Si-hyeon's Secret Ninja, Roaring Tiger: He fights — and strips — a transvestite in one scene; he kickboxes while holding a bathtowel around his waist in another. The final face-off has some pretty spectacular gymnastics and features the only time I've seen two men perform a double handstand to strangle their opponent between their ankles. Call it the upsidedown chokehold.

Dragon Lee Vs. the Five Brothers

Co-directors Kim Si-hyeon and Liu Yueh-lin have made a delirious diversion that has nothing to do with its B-movie headliner or his hairweave and old-fashioned braid. The real stars of Dragon Lee vs. the Five Brothers are the mysterious woman in the veiled hat (Qiu Yuen) and the malicious man with the iron hand (Choi Min-kyu). The former is a sometime ally of Lee; she's a better fighter too — able to springboard off walls and run across the tops of trees — and wields her hat like a deadly boomerang equipped with spring-activated knives. Dragon's primary foe is the other draw of this kung fu caper. His ability to pummel opponents with his prosthetic paw is equaled by his mastery of misleading mustaches and beards. (His old man disguise is a wonder to behold!)

Our heroine wants to free her imprisoned brother. Our villain wants to get a list of the rebels. What does Dragon want? I'm afraid his needs aren't as clearly articulated. We know he wants to get a bracelet from his uncle to go with the decoder ring he already possesses but what the ultimate goal is of these two objects somehow got lost in the shuffle for me. When the body count starts to rise, jewelry becomes so much less important. It's a semi-precious movie. But it shines, man, it shines.

The Deadly Silver Ninja: Masked Man or Masked Woman

Am I alone in knowing that if someone killed my dad, I would not track down the murderer? I feel bad admitting this but as far as I know, most people wouldn't exact revenge with their own hands either. Are we scared of the bloodlust? Or are we not that close to our fathers? I ask because the Oresteian quest for justice has been around since Ancient Greece and surfaces in movie after movie after movie. In Godfrey Ho's and Kim Si-hyeon's The Deadly Silver Ninja, the son on the hunt for human flesh is played by the ultra-charming Dragon Lee. Before he attains street justice though, he's going to go mano a mano with endless bullies — with a man on ice, with a man who wears a horned bull hat, with a crowd that hates flowers.

But is he also the mysterious Silver Ninja who dresses like a Mexican wrestler — white bodysuit, white ski-mask, white cape — and repeatedly saves the day? Or is that unknown, silent folk hero someone else we've yet to meet? Could it be the kicky daughter (Qiu Yuen) of the blind man who outfights nearly everyone with a bamboo stick and hypersensitive hearing? I don't know if the screenwriters themselves knew until they got there. The script literally feels like it was written based on spur-of-the-moment ideas based on mouth movements and little else. But the fights are fun. And isn't that what you came for?

Mission for the Dragon: The Korean Bruce Lee

Did you know that after Bruce Lee died, a number of Asian actors took on very similar names for an endless line of Bruceploixtation martial arts flicks, all looking to cash in on the posthumous brand. There was a Bruce Li, a Bruce Lai, a Bruce Le, a Bruce Ly, a Bruce Lie, and a Bruce Lei. That last one also went by Dragon Lee but his real name was Moon Kyoung-seok and while he hardly ever garnered his iconic predecessor's mass appeal, he's certainly no less appealing than Jean-Claude Van Damme or Dolph Lundren (and likewise looks best when he's stripped his shirt for his cartwheels, bicep flexes, and tiger claw poses). In Mission for the Dragon, the chances to go topless come with some regularity as his character clearly prefers fighting bare-chested than with the encumbrance of a royal blue smock. Or even that fancy mirrored vest.

The central conflict here involves a beloved father who may have been murdered or may just be missing. More likely to hold your attention than daddy's whereabouts are the film's wacky audio tracks, both the sound effects (recalling the '80s-era arcade game Space Invaders) and the dubbed vocals (which, for all I know, might be performed by one underpaid actor doing multiple cartoonesque, often-accented voices). Be sure to keep the subtitles on despite the English dialogue, simply for the pleasure of seeing "(whips)" and "(thuds)," "(screams)" and "(grunts)" at the bottom of your screen. This feature also permits you to appreciate sterling bits of dialogue like "You can't recognize the truth," "Prepare to die," and "I must kill or be killed." Statements like that last one only gain depth and nuance when paired with "(emotional music)."