Leofwine_draca Another Taiwanese cheapie from director Joseph Kuo, and a follow-up to his 18 BRONZEMEN movies; this might as well be called 18 STONE MEN for all it has to do with the number '28', which must have been a mistake made when translating the title into English. Indeed it plays out almost exactly as a BRONZEMEN sequel, with a youthful and flexible hero forced to undergo some intense training in a temple packed with traps and tasks.The plot is perfunctory at best and features the stoic Meng Fei as the hero. His character starts out as a kid, witnessing the massacre of his family, before growing up under the tutelage of a wise master played by Jack Long (of BORN INVINCIBLE fame). Long sees fit to instruct him in the ways of the aforementioned brutal temple test in which Fei battles ridiculous-looking stone men in a series of highly amusing moments.At times this film feels very much like a kid's cartoon with lots of inconsequential and silly stuff padding out the narrative. There's a random interlude involving an effeminate man trapped in a well who turns out to be the master of the rat and snake style. Later Fei gets hold of an ancient text which teaches him more styles and some mad climbing skills. Eventually he battles Mark Long, who played the infamous 'Ghost Faced Killer' in MYSTERY OF CHESS BOXING, in a hilariously overblown fight that sees Fei cheating, a flying hat which doubles as a boomerang, and random inserts of toads. It's completely random and oddly entertaining in a completely trashy way.

treble_head Wu Shao Tung is raised to be the leader of the Wu Tang clan, who previously have been defeated by the evil Yen Chan tin and his clan. He is taught roughly and is shown how to defeat the Unbeaten 18, a cave of treacherous traps. (a bad translation I feel), though we are only shown 11, including iron and stone men and a cross-dressing boy with some of the strangest animal styles ever (Ox, Rat and Chicken) who is shown to be 80 years old (!) Some great fight scenes make this a very fun, if goofy film. It's no Shaw Brothers epic, but it's certainly worth the $4 I paid, or even the $10 to $15 you may pay for a DVD. Just a fun film. Get this one or you're seriously missing out.

FilmFlaneur (Some spoilers)A film that simultaneously demonstrates why kung fu films inspire derision as well as cult following, The Unbeaten 28 is a rough and ready affair that, never the less, proves surprisingly entertaining along the way. Fei Meng plays Tiger, the child brought up on strict martial training (and 'a special diet of tiger's milk and wild herbs', hence his nickname) to restore the honour of his clan and win access to a special kung fu manual. His archenemy, Yin (Yan Nan See), head of the Kun Chung clan, had previously ordered the murder of his Wu Chan clan folk, and Tiger was forced to hide out and be raised by the kindly Pu Chien in Lin Wan Mountain. If such a welter of names and titles is confusing, then that's not a problem, as characters in this sort of drama are largely interchangeable stereotypes, and the fighting is the thing. Reared in his mountain hideaway, Tiger undergoes a rigorous training programme from his earliest years. It includes such kung fu standards as plunging his hands 'into hot sand until his fingers were the strength of tensile steel' (as the slightly portentous narrator describes), balancing and posing neatly on the rims of rice baskets, and having large weights thrown at his chest. The film suffers from the kind of dubbing painfully familiar to those who watch much of this genre. Voices sound like they were done by a drunken uncle shouting in auntie's spare bedroom, while the enthusiasm of common sound effects (fists crunching against faces, rice sticks flailing air, and so forth) is betrayed by unusual inaccuracy in execution when the pace hots up. Fortunately, the film gives little weight to the dialogue in the course of the plot, apart from carrying broad points so the ugliness of the dubbing can be ignored. Atrocious voicing apart, a lot of the film's weaknesses can presumably be laid at the door of the writer-director-producer Joseph Kuo, an obscure figure who directed a number of such chop-socky fests until he disappeared from view in the 1980s. (The Unbeaten 28 is the penultimate film out of his 15 listed). Character development is peremptory, and there is no attempt to suggest that Tiger is anything more than a primed fighting machine, and he's offered no moments of quiet reflection or to prime the love interest part of the tale. Kuo is much more interested in the mechanics of training, and it is this fascination that produces the series of set pieces in the centre third of his film which make it so memorable.The representation of martial ordeal is common in kung fu cinema, as it is only through such structured dedication and suffering that the adept find true enlightenment and triumph. By extension of this process, some films draw out this process to great, almost surreal, lengths where - as in 36th Chamber Of Shaolin (aka: Shao Lin san shih liu fang, 1978) for instance - the process of testing becomes, in effect, the point of the film itself. Kuo's film offers a sustained low budget variant on this theme. The now fully grown, and trained, Tiger sets off to T'ai Ching Temple to face an 18-strong martial obstacle course and gain possession of the prized kung fu manual.What follows is worth the price of admission alone. Poor Tiger (who has to return to the Temple three times to complete his tour of the gruelling test circuit) faces by turn challenges such as heavy bronze doors; a one-armed giggling stone man; fighting statues; nunchuka attack; missile firing foil men; breath control; jumping skills; a fearsome '36 blows' ordeal from two monks and, (most amusingly) a 60-year-old fey fighter lurking down a well. In the single most impressive sequence, Tiger battles a clutch of faceless stone men in a tight corridor, then a 'room of illusion' fluttering with red sheets - scenes of some flair, showing the imagination which Kuo was capable of.After such struggles the final conflict is something of anticlimax. Tiger and his girl (Lisa Chang) naturally get to fight Yin in an outrageous battle, which involves flying hats, then him hanging upside down to fight from tree trunks. Although punched definitively in his weak spot, Yin finally retreats to his secret lair and, recalling the baroque travails of Tiger's obstacle course, employs a giant Buddha and a fire breathing stone dragon to try and subdue his pursuer.Its technical shortcomings aside the vigorous naïveté of Kuo's film, ultimately, has an appeal that belays the harshly staged opening scenes. Once Tiger grows, and faces a succession of challenges, matters come alive. The result is great, undemanding fun, if no masterpiece. For elegance and fine cinematography, you'd be best directed to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; for a film in which the hero gets mugged by a statue, this is the one worth considering...

Brian Camp Taiwanese-based writer-producer-director Joseph Kuo (EIGHTEEN BRONZEMEN and its sequels) had a fondness for kung fu films that put their heroes-in-training through elaborate tests involving a series of chambers and corridors adorned with rigged traps and mechanical opponents. THE UNBEATEN 28 came somewhat late in the game and lacks some of the energy, visual imagination and narrative tension that distinguished so many of Kuo's earlier films.Kuo's EIGHTEEN BRONZEMEN star, Carter Wong, is replaced here by Meng Fei (PRODIGAL BOXER) who is cast as Wu Shao Tung, the Wutang Clan heir who undergoes rigorous instruction by Master Yung (Jack Long of 7 GRANDMASTERS and BORN INVINCIBLE). The goal is to prepare the lad for a match with villain Yen Chan Tin (Mark Long, the "Ghost-Faced Killer" from MYSTERY OF CHESS BOXING/aka NINJA CHECKMATE), who'd killed Shao Tung's parents and Master Yung's wife and students.Shao Tung's training starts at infancy (after Master Yung has rescued him and taken him into hiding). The bulk of the action focuses on Shao Tung's struggles to pass the test of 18 Obstacles at Tai Shin Temple. Many of the obstacles involve lumbering stone men who seem unbeatable until Shao Tung is able to find their weak spots. (The stone men replace the flashier mechanical gold men of the BRONZEMEN films, reflecting perhaps a reduction in budget.) He also has to fight a heavily made-up little madman who attacks in a variety of eccentric animal-based kung fu styles (bull, rooster, rat and monkey). Shao Tung's first two attempts to pass the test result in failure, but he later succeeds and, aided by Master Yung's daughter, Lin Erh (Jeannie Chang), goes on to fight Yen in a furious hand-to-hand battle in the Taiwanese countryside.Other than a fight between Yen and Master Wu (Shao Tung's father) under the opening credits and the climactic battle with Yen at the end, there are no extended fights between enemies, so the training and testing scenes have to keep viewers interested for most of the film. Unfortunately, the stone men are not terribly exciting to watch and their obstacle scenes tend to slow down the already short (85-minute) film. There is a confrontation at the midway point between Jack Long and Mark Long, two of producer Kuo's most dependable kung fu stars, yet it is inexcusably short and anticlimactic. Meng Fei was good at playing callow young fighters forced to develop some wisdom and skill and he supplements his fighting displays with acrobatic flips. However, he lacks the strength and intensity that Carter Wong brought to these roles. Still, the final bout with Mark Long is well worth waiting for.There is no 28 in the film, unbeaten or otherwise. There are 18 obstacles, according to the spoken dialogue in the English dub (although we don't see that many, unless they count each stone man encountered), so perhaps there was a mis-translation of 18 to 28 for the title or of 28 to 18 for the dialogue.