The Magnificent Butcher
The Magnificent Butcher
| 19 December 1979 (USA)
The Magnificent Butcher Trailers

A plump butcher student of Wong Fei Hung, Lam Sai-Wing gets into trouble with a rival kung-fu school known as Five Dragons. He is accused of raping the Head of that school's goddaughter and killing his son. Now Ko, the Head of Five Dragons, wants revenge.

Reviews
Grimerlana Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike
Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation
Humbersi The first must-see film of the year.
Cooktopi The acting in this movie is really good.
roninf5-1 With the movie called 'Magnificent Butcher' I thought we would see at least some scenes of Sammo Hung's character practicing his trade. Boy, was I let down. They call him 'Butcher Wing' and I don't think Sammo cut one slice of meat. Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York was dicing up a piece of raw meat (human or otherwise) in almost every scene he was in. Butchering was made integral to the character. That doesn't happen in this movie. I think we see Sammo carry around a couple of dead pigs in the first few minutes and that's it. Disappointing. This has some great Kung-fu fights and funny comedy but it really came up short in the butchering department.
ed_two_o_nine I really like this movie for a number of reasons. Way back in my early teens this was the first time I found the legend that it Samo Hung, and his magnificent brand of kung fu comedy. This film holds up well today probably because of the stellar crew behind the scenes including the legend Woo-Ping Yuen. Hung here plays Butcher Wing' the apprentice in a dojo who constantly finds himself caught up in mischief. Wing gets caught up in a series of events that conspire to make him enemy no.1 and lead to some truly amazing fight sequences that truly have to be seen to be believed. Where this film is a departure from the traditional historic kung fu movie is there are no grand themes or sense of the epic just a nice tight small story and some incredible scenes all laced with some incredible physicality both of the violent and comedic nature. A true kung fu classic. Enjoy it again and again.
udeaasykle Old school kung fu movie. Can't go wrong with that! That and the fact that it stars Sammo Hung makes this a good movie within this genre. With that said, comparing this to Jackie Chan would be bad, because this is another type of fighting. Here, they don't use everything around them; they only use arms and legs. And this is the type of fighting that seems to be conducted like music. It is in a certain rhythm. It is hard to explain but people familiar with this genre will understand what I mean. This is also kind of a typical martial arts movie when you think of the story. There is always a young innocent man, Sammo in this cause, who has a problem that he has to solve. And in these movies, he has to get help from someone before he is able to do just that. As martial arts movies go, this is quite good. I rate this movie 5/10
Wizard-8 Bravo, 20th Century Fox, for giving this movie a DVD release in North America! And not only with a gorgeous-looking print, but with the option of watching in the original Cantonese with subtitles, unlike other American distributors (coughcoughmiramaxslashdimensioncoughcough).I hadn't heard of this particular Sammo Hung movie until tonight, when I spotted it at the video store. I took a chance, and I'm really glad to have done it! Completely entertaining, and never dull for a minute. The fights are "old school", but they are still pretty swift, and the various acrobatics and moves are absolutely amazing. Plenty of comedy as well, pretty low-brow slapstick for the most part, but won't help but bring a smile to your lips several times. Now, as others have said before, there are some brutal and deadly serious moments, and they will seem out of place to most westerners. But from what I've seen from other Hong Kong movies, this kind of thing isn't that unusual. At the very least, such moments like this just further the ways as to how this movie will be unique to anyone raised on western filmmaking. Don't think this is the cheap kind of martial arts movie you see on Kung Fu Theater or on public domain video labels - give it a try. You won't be disappointed.