Fantastic!

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

This movie was shot back to back with Dragon Fist, and the similarities shows. They both take place at Shaolin temple, and Jackie is a student. This one has more comedic flavor to it. Lo Wei directs this movie as well.Book of Seven Fist has been stolen from Shaolin temple. Only Five Star fist can win over the Seven Fist, but this technique has been lost. Conveniently, the spirits of the Five Star travels to earth and shows Yi-Lang (Jackie Chan) where the lost book is located. They also give private lessons to Yu-Lang. Killing starts to happen around the temple with Seven Fist technique. It turns out that a man kept in the dungeon Wei-Wu is the culprit who stole the book, and doing the killing. He feels that his Seven Fist style is invincible. Yu-Lang volunteers to leave the temple to settle the score with Wei-Wu. But the real culprit turns out to be a surprising person, and more unexpected things happen with the spirits during the battle.1978 must have been a good year for Jackie Chan, as he made slew of good movies including his early master piece the "Drunken Master". While this movie is no masterpiece, Jackie Chan looks so good in his role as the Shaolin student. The movie came out after the Dragon Fist, and the Drunken Master, and this movie almost looks like a cross between the two. There's lots of comedy, but Jackie's kung fu looks so sharp and stylish.To be perfectly honest, I couldn't enjoy some of the comedic parts of this movie. Problem with Lo Wei's directing style is that he always portrays supporting cast as low class or no class idiots. He might feel that this is a necessary comedic touch to entertain the audience, but this in my opinion has kept the status of Hong Kong movie low for years. This became obvious when younger directors like Jackie Chan came along and started to direct movies with quality comical touch. Now Hong Kong is considered to produce top notch movies, second perhaps only to Hollywood.The movie is better than average kung fu movie from the same era. It's a charming movie with good kung fu action mixed in.

The problem of this action flick is not the absence of money. Did you watch "Xtro" (a cheap "home-made" horror from the UK)? "Xtro" was amazing because it was imaginative to the core and had a very freaky atmosphere. "Spiritual Kung Fu" lacks such charm. I think that the problem lies in some sort of laziness of the filmmakers. What could have been done better? OK, here we go...No.1 The opening scene is an example of frustration. Some sparkle falls from the skies and there is an earthquake causing a few funny ghosts to emerge from the monastery's vaults. The execution of this scene is awful. I would kick a football set on fire into the building, apply a set of metal sticks for some strange sound, and make the "ghosts" come out from the earth and fight each other for "warming up". Would it cost more money? I don't think so. But the final product would have been much more entertaining.No.2 The scene where Jackie Chan's character is being tricked by the ghosts is slow and unimpressive. What would I do? I would set up a tougher scene with the ghosts making Chan's character suffer a few bad falls and a few hurtful kicks and punches. The ghosts would scare away all the monks beating some of them to unconsciousness and only our "clown" would not retreat. After beating him up the ghosts would teach him their type of "spiritual" kung fu as a reward for his masculine behaviour.I don't have much time for all this kind of typing work but I can easily go on, while even the famous scene of Jackie Chan vs. the monks is far from being fantastic.Watch "Dragon Lord" or "City Hunter" instead. Those ones were made correctly, in my humble opinion. As to this "Spiritual Kung Fu", I have a feeling that Mr Jackie Chan was not very interested in the whole production, was drowsy all through the movie, and did not want to fight. There is no fire in his eyes and no fire in his movements here. And the jokes suck. And camera-work too (the focus is constantly roaming and the right scenes are shot badly as a result).2 out of 10 (well, it is not ultimately bad). Thanks for attention.

Lo Wei, the director of this rubbishy kung-fu comedy, as usual never let Jackie Chan shine properly in this slow-paced story about some ghosts that teachChan ‘Five Fists' kung-fu, for he is in search of a stolen book containing the means of learning Seven Fists kung-fu.Dreadful dubbing, awful special effects (mind you, this was Hong Kong with very limited budgets - something that HK fans are undoubtedly used to), not all that funny, and just plain dull. Not even the intricate fight scenes are worth looking at, and even these are a bit tiresome. Costumes - what were those ghostswearing?!And of course there's the diabolical dubbing. Distributors should learn that the original language makes it a lot easier to appreciate even a bad movie, but it still wouldn't save this...

This isn't as mind-numbingly bad as some of Jackie's films for Lo Wei, but the director has a very weird idea of what makes for a kung fu comedy (it seems to involve Jackie shoving snakes and frogs down his shorts and peeing on ghosts). This movie deserves to be on Mystery Science Theater 3000, with its terrible idea of ghostly special effects (guys in white face paint, red wigs, and sparkly skirts hopping around, and a sparkler used to look like a falling meteor). The martial arts scenes are okay, but not great.