18 Swirling Riders (1977)

Just keeping riding, not worth a stop over

I started 18 Swirling Riders aka 18 Shaolin Riders because Lo Lieh was in it and I am on a mission to watch all of his films that are available. Otherwise, I would have dropped this film somewhere between the 20-40 minute mark.

There were numerous characters and no coherent story. A great deal of the fights took place in the dark meaning there was no way to tell who was doing what to whom. Because of the large cast and terrible storytelling, it was next to impossible to care about any of the characters or the characters never introduced who died off screen. Or the characters who died on screen of which there were many.

Chia Ling was criminally underused as was Lo Lieh. Wen Chiang Long dominated the screen as the stiff upper lip hero who had a habit of laughing maniacally at inappropriate moments. He was also a master of disguise and used old school Mission Impossible face masks and wigs to fool people. Don Wong Tao played “Paper Knife”, a mysterious fighter who always wore a black weimao to conceal his superhero identity. Chen Sing finally showed up an hour into the movie as the Big Bad or one of the Big Bads, Lo Lieh’s character just seemed to be in a bad mood that was only alleviated by robbing and killing people.

As near as I can tell, the Riders stole from the corrupt rich and gave to the poor. Chen Sing was mad at the Riders for stealing a knife he cared about years ago and vowed to kill all of them, including 1000 children in their care. Lo Lieh, yeah, I don’t know, he seemed to be upset that the riders foiled his robbery. But even then, it wasn’t them and the contraband wasn’t gold, it was a woman. I could see why everyone might have been confused as there were no air holes punched in the small chest she was transported in. She wanted the Riders to help her avenge her master because a knife or “the” knife or a paper knife had been used to kill him. The synopsis says that there was a mole in the riders, but I never did see one. Oh, and there was a carp painting that people were dying for because it revealed secret kung fu weapons shaped like fish.

The fights that I could see involved wire-fu, trampolines, and reverse filming. The sword fights were okay. Because it was filmed in Taiwan, they had to fight in the woods, at least they avoided the quarry. In this instance with less than spectacular flying through the trees scenes.

To sum up, unless you are in a ride or die contract like I am with Lo Lieh, I highly advise skipping this mess. I gave it a generous 5 because it was dubbed and maybe some of the story was lost in translation.

22 March 2025

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