I never saw it myself, but I had a college roommate who went through every kung fu movie in the section of the crappy little video store across the street. His favorite title of all of them was Half a Loaf of Kung Fu. I’ve looked it up and not only is it real, it was co-written by and stars Jackie Chan.
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It has to be Steve Oedekerk’s:
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Yeah, it’s an early Jackie film made when he was still working for Lo Wei. It’s being released at some point on Blu Ray by 88-films who’ve done a great job over the past couple of years with some of his other 70s and 80s films.
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My daughter introduced me to this years ago and we’re now both huge fans. We frequently find opportunities to say “That’s a lot of nuts!” a little too loudly.
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From my husband:
Miami Connection
Bad. Just bad. Not even in a good way bad.
He thought of another one
Such highlights as claiming to be in Seattle while you can see the Hollywood sign in the background. Bruce Lee was also apparently so fast his shoes would change color midstep.
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Golden Dragon, Silver Snake is part Bruce Lee rip-off and part Jackie Chan rip-off - that’s two rip-offs for the price of one! It features Dragon Lee and Johnnie Chan and is a pretty entertaining film. You have the usual clunky editing and terribad dubbing but also cartoony sound effects, a terrible Bruce Lee impersonation and comical kung fu capers a la Jackie Chan. The head bad guy also has a cat he strokes as he oversees his criminal empire like Blofeld - but I don’t think Blofeld ever threw the cat at his goons when he was displeased at them.
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In Kung Fu From Beyond the Grave martial arts and horror collide as Billy Chong is visited by his father’s ghost and tasked with getting revenge and recovering his father’s remains. His father’s killer Kam Tai Fu however has a wizard on hand who uses black magic to protect his master. With the aid of a magic book he found on another dead wizard, Billy has a supernatural standoff with the black wizard in a fight that involves ghosts, demons and even Count Dracula himself!
After being tricked and losing the book to the wizard. He gets help from the temple and finds his father’s remains but is attacked by another ghost with stretchy arms like Dhalsim from Street Fighter. This ghost is chased off though when green smoke comes out of the backside of the woman he’s with. I have absolutely no idea what is going on here.
Billy and his chums manage to trap the evil wizard in a brothel who has his magical protection broken by women throwing small towels at him. After he is defeated the main villain Kam Tai Fu is then chased by a bunch of toasted marshmallows into a graveyard where he battles Billy in the finale.
Bit of an odd film and curiously the soundtrack for it also “borrows” from James Horner’s score for Alien. Not a classic but might be worth a look if you like Mr Vampire or Spooky Encounters and want some more spooky kung fu action.
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Does The Last Dragon count as a bizarre and/or terrible kung fu/martial arts film?
Sho’Nuff!
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Bizarre, definitely. Terrible? No way!
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“martial arts mastery known as the Glow”
That’s so 80s my laptop just turned into a Trapper Keeper.
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I am so happy to see this thread. A lot of my favorites are already mentioned:
Shaloin Soccer was the first Stephen Chow movie I saw…and everything about this movie is fantastic. Everything.
A good friend of mine showed this to me in middle or high school. It’s definitely a bit weird, but I remember enjoying it.
Another classic.
You could also go with the live action adaptation, which was…really horrible.
This was also fantastic. So much appears to be ripping off Robocop, but the costume is just not up to snuff.
I also have a couple that haven’t been mentioned. I’ve got a good friend who specializes in cheesy movies of all genres, especially Italian horror, but he had quite a few old kung fu films as well. He introduced me to The Ten Tigers of Kwangtung. I’m not an expert, so the special effects might not be that cheesy compared to other films of that era, but it seemed pretty bad to me at the time:
And finally, one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen, Kung Fu Zombie. I purchased this in one of those ten movies for two dollars sort of deals. I’ve watched it exactly three times. I need to be in a special mood to watch something that bad. The spoiler text on the box promises that you’ll eventually see the majesty of the “mad Korean spinning death kick.” I still cannot pinpoint what this is referring to. It’s worth watching, if you’re into to that sort of thing:
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Stephen Chow is the man. @ColdStorage mentioned it earlier, but The God of Cookery is pure joy.
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I remember seeing a Kung Fu movie many years ago and I was rivited by it, I don’t know the name of it, but the basis was a guy had this braid in his hair and I don’t know if it has a knife in it or what but he would whip that braid and catch people in their neck and kill them. I’d love to know the name of it so I can watch it again. I didn’t imagine it, honestly… 
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I know this came up in American Samurai:
Not sure if that’s the one you saw.
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Thank you! It might have been, but I’m thinking it could have been made earlier, maybe in the 70s or 80s…
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Robo Vampire, yes! There’s a RiffTrax of it, too!
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Fantasy Mission Force is worth your time, folks. It has a deranged, freewheeling lack of logic that keeps going through sheer enthusiasm. Jackie Chan appears a few times, but only in cameos.
If you need a taster, Brandon Tenold reviewed it a few years ago: Brandon's Cult Movie Reviews: Fantasy Mission Force - YouTube
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I saw this thread mentioned in the latest KS update, and realized this may be my best chance to actually find a student film that I saw on public access in the days…
wait for it…
BEFORE THE INTERNET.
We saw it while living in San Francisco in the late 90s. It was filmed in the snack bar of a Syufy drive-in (possibly in Sacramento, CA); as a former Syufy employee, the architecture was unmistakable to me. It also helped that our protagonist was wearing his actual uniform shirt turned inside-out with a fake nametag pinned to the inside of the embroidered logo.
Other details I recall with various levels of clarity:
- I thought the protagonist was called Kung Fu Joe; that obviously leads me to a lot of dead-ends involving I’m Gonna Git You Sucka.
- There were two rival ninja masters, one of whom was improbably named Cletus and would “blink” from spot to spot in the snack bar (couldn’t tell you if he was actually teleporting or just supposed to be reallyreally fast)
- The immortal line (and this is why this piece of art deserves to be found): “Sweet-n-low! My one weakness!”
If anyone here actually recognizes this, I will be amazed. If this masterpiece still exists, I will be overjoyed.
EDIT: My husband has just confirmed for me that we actually saw this gem on KTSF, as filler before Iron Chef one night.
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Literally ANY Godfrey Ho movie is automatically the worst kung fu movie ever made. He’s not called the ‘Ed Wood’ of Hong Kong cinema for nothing.
IMDB lists him as director on 150 kung-fu movies, but I doubt even Godfrey Ho himself knows exactly how many he’s really made, because up until he went semi-legit in the 90’s, with almost passable original films like Honor and Glory, his entire shtick was taking random kung-fu/gangster/kaiju/horror movies from China, Thailand, and other countries and then splicing them together with two or three other random kung-fu/gangster/kaiju/horror movies, then Frankensteining the segments together with second unit footage shot himself… frequently involving American soldiers and Chinese hopping vampires.
He’d then crank these turds out super cheaply as part of the budding 80’s/90’s video market, sometimes releasing the same movie 4 or 5 times with slightly different titles and box cover art.
This is how masterpieces like Robo Vampire, Crocodile Fury and Twinkle Ninja Fantasy get made.
And I’m totally not kidding about the hopping vampires thing. This guy loves his hopping vampires the way Ed Wood loved stock footage of octopus. Here are just a few choice examples I could find on YouTube:
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