Guns of the Master Killer is a mid/late-eighties HK cop action film with Gordon Liu (Fist of the White Lotus, 36th Chamber of Shaolin) sporting a moustache and very bad wig covering his perpetually shaved head. If a Dance Fever Halloween costume ever existed, one imagines that is where the wig was found. Gordon Liu plays a cop who is assigned to bust gun runners and finds his case halted due to a high ranking officials daughter being involved. Their case must be airtight otherwise her powerful father will easily bail her out and the department will suffer a great embarrassment.

Very cheap. The action is pretty crudely staged so the mighty talents of one of kung fu's greatest stars never really gets to shine. Doesn't measure up to better examples of the genre like Long Arm of the Law or In the Line of Duty 3. However, it does feature one of the most disturbing scenes I've seen in an HK film- Gordon Liu and his son taking a bath together and the kid commenting that he can't lean to get his back scrubbed because Gordon Liu's "member" is too big.

Raiders of Buddhist Kung Fu is a Godfrey Ho (Enter the Invincible Hero) directed old school number. After a supply convoy is attacked the two traumatized brothers leading it swear revenge. The plot gets pretty murky, but the basics involve Gordon Liu cast as the bad guy official double dealing with the Manchus. Overall pretty tame and uneventful.

The DVD:Here is why I don't need to expunge upon the merits of either film. Even by budget standards, the mastering job is crud.

Picture: Raiders is a basic full-screen worn out EP-vhs looking transfer. Guns of the Master Killer is letterboxed and is mired by terrible artifacts and pixellation. The picture stutters a few times every minute. I tested it on three players and the time counter never jumped, so it was the actual source they were using that had the flaw. It makes Guns of the Master Killer absolutely unwatchable.

Sound: Dolby Mono. Raiders is an English dub, the usual laughable kind that give chop socky films such a bad name. Guns is in Cantonese with burned in English and Chinese subtitles. The subs are often rendered unreadable, either because they are blurry or because they disappear into the whiteness of the background. Also, like the picture, Guns audio source is terribly flawed, the track is a good three seconds out of synch, which makes listening to the movie as annoying as watching the stuttering picture.

Extras: Chapter and "Jump to Fight"Scene Selections

Conclusion: I don't mind a cheapie DVD of cult material. I'm fine with less than perfect source when it comes to such films. But, in the case of this DVD, Raiders is nothing to write home about and Guns is one of the worst transfers I've run across and worthless in every respect.