The Shaolin Kids (1975)

An ambitious prime minister fancies himself on the emperor's throne, and hatches a plot with Mongols and random Japanese samurai to take it. First he needs to eliminate some loyalist ministers who might be an obstacle, but this alerts them to the plot and eventually leads to their children launching a counterstrike.

The Shaolin Kids isn't a very coherently plotted film - it jumps about and loses focus, leaving you to piece events together yourself at times. It's not complicated though, so it isn't much of a challenge. It resembles the typical Taiwanese wuxia plot of patriots resisting despotic occupiers, except it's set a bit earlier so it's about pre-empting them instead.

The individual pieces from which the plot is semi-assembled are all reasonably well done, and there's plenty of action to join them together (or vice-versa).

It's not a very well-named film either, as there are no "kids" in the film - only some adult offspring (Polly Shang-Kuan and Lin Da-Chou), and there isn't much Shaolin - apparently Lin Da-Chou had studied there and they call on his sifu (Carter Wong) for help in the final battle.

Still, that's more Shaolin than there was in the previous year's Shaolin Martial Arts, and kids are annoying so not having them in the film is hardly something to complain about.

The film scores bonus points for an excellent rendition of the song On The General's Order, aka the theme song from Once Upon A Time In China - though arguably unearned since Wong Fei Hung is nowhere to be seen.

Other than that it's probably not a film I'll remember anything about a few weeks from now.