In the wild and wacky world of chopsocky there are basically two varieties of flicks: The serious ones and the comedies. Although they're both often pretty funny, the looser comedies are usually the ones that hold up better. Humorless, overly serious flicks like, oh say Samurai Death Bells tend to grate quickly (unless they really spin off into the Ed Wood unintentional hilarity zone, in which case they're great) while the goofy caricatures and politically incorrect jokes of a film like Matching Escort can be endearing in a way.

The incomprehensible drama in Samurai Death Bells involves a lot of cliche clan mumbo-jumbo. Dragon is scheduled to fight Phoenix. Phoenix has died so Dragon will fight her student. (I appreciate the prominence of kick-ass female fighters in the film, if nothing else.) Off-screen, however, the new Phoenix apparently bests Dragon, leaving one of his sons to take over (skipping the obvious heir, thanks to his wimpiness.) The new Dragon, however, discovers that his father had been hiding a secret: He had been protecting a woman known as the Cold Blooded Mistress, an unpopular lass who was thought long dead but had been hiding in the false bottom of Dragon's coffin (which is apparently made of styrofoam.) Together they run around fighting lots of people (including Dragon's weirdly incestuous siblings) and doing all sorts of other nonsense.

What hurts Samurai Death Bells is the total lack of humor in the script and the cast. It's perhaps dumb to complain about this, but the film takes its idiotic plot so seriously that it leaves the viewer no room to enjoy. If the film relied on amazing fights that would be one thing, but they are largely sloppy and poorly filmed. The dialog is mostly creaky and stilted, which does lead to the occasional knee-slapper, such as "idiots like you I don't see often."

VIDEO:
Yet another horrendous kung fu transfer. The print is faded and murky, the colors are dead, the focus is... not. All-around dreck.

AUDIO:
The audio track is total noise. The voices are dubbed in a weird way (one minor character sounds exactly like Rolph of the Muppet Show) and sound ridiculous. And the music is a blaring synthesized mess.

EXTRAS:
Um, yeah...

FINAL THOUGHTS:
This is a middling-to-rotten example of its genre and the disc itself is devoid of technical qualities. Not worth a look.