Ten Fingers of Death, which is also known by many other titles including Master With Cracked Fingers, is a very early Jackie Chan vehicle. He wasn't a star by 1971, when this was made, but he does, at least, get the starring role. Like many low grade martial arts flicks, this one only goes through the motions of a plot that sets up an assortment of relatively uninteresting fight scenes. A lot of it is laughable.

We open with a mostly irrelevant scene of one big badguy beating up two guys who want to leave his crime organization. He fights them blindfolded, and they have swords, but that's ok, because when these swords swing -- and sometimes even when they don't -- they are loud. The badguy stabs one of the other guys in the chest with his foot, and that's that. Cut to a kid watching a karate lesson -- he attempts to learn by imitating the teacher's movements. But the teacher looks more like he's teaching ballet than karate. He goes through an elaborate sequence of delicate, graceful maneuvers; the kid imitates by throwing a left and a right and leaving it at that.

So the kid runs into this fat old guy who teases him a bit, and the kid talks back all snotty in his little chipmunk voice. Eventually the old man agrees to train the boy in secret. So they meet out in the woods, and the old man makes the boy get naked and crawl in a sack full of snakes and bugs.

Then we get a montage of more training, accompanied by the strangest musical score imaginable. In fact, the whole movie is accompanied by a very strange score. We get jolly little electronic tunes in the grimmest moments, dainty kiddie flick scores during the training, merry-go-round music, Gene Kelly musical music, and, believe it or not, the actual theme to "Popeye."

Years pass, and he grows up to be Jackie Chan, while his sister grows up to look exactly like she had all those years ago. He's working as a waiter in a nice quiet restaurant. He happily visits each table, takes the order, then shouts it back to the cooking area at the top of his lungs. Trouble makers arrive, though, and a fight breaks out. His old teacher, watching mysteriously from the bushes says, "Good. He has enemies now. Let's see where it leads." Ok, narrator, let's.

Alas, Jackie Chan's father thinks that fighting is bad, apparently even in self-defense. So he punishes his son first by making him carry water, then by throwing flower pots at him which Chan has to catch, then, finally, by having him punch his fist into a bucket of broken glass.

The story takes us to an irrelevant side plot about a girly gangster. He's the movie's comic relief, but I can't even begin to describe to you how perplexing he is. He's funny, but only because of how astoundingly NOT funny he is. He speaks with a very high pitched voice and moves like a rubber band, randomly flexing, posing, dancing, doing the hokey-pokey, etc. The karate teacher man comes in and beats him up, which disproves my suspicion that the teacher was just a figment of Chan's character's imagination, as until that point he had never interacted with anybody else. Some stupid lines get exchanged ("That's called getting your kicks!") and the scene ends.

At last we have the final showdown fights. Chan fights a fat guy first, who puckers up while he's preparing for the fight. "What kind of style is that?" Chan asks. "It is a fish style, and it is very effective."

So finally it's time to fight the big badguy -- the one from the very beginning that stabs people in the chest with his feet. He whinneys like a horse to intimidate Chan. Actually it *is* a horse, dubbed in. They fight blindfolded for a while, and then the teacher dude -- watching from the bushes, of course -- throws Chan a trident. It sounds like an incoming bomb, which is good, because then Chan could hear it and know where to catch it. The fight ends, and Also Sprach Zarathustra celebrates his victory.

Scene to watch for: Rubber Band Man.

Best line: "Will you cut that out? Now get your foot out of my chest."

Things That Make You Go "Huh?": Exactly what is the karate teacher's role in life?