MOVIE REVIEW: Revenge of the Dragon (1977)

In light of current events, I watched a movie on Tubi that might be considered radical. Indeed it is, for the movie is a Filipino kung-fu story about revenge. Revenge of the Dragon is a 1977 film shot in Manila with what looks like mostly natural lighting, and the dialogue is dubbed from Tagalog to English. The soundtrack and is beset with the same Filipino folk song at certain points — to make sure you know this is a very sad part — and the fight scenes are scored with funky break-beats crafted with studio instruments. A lot of this is just plain bad, but the movie’s story makes up for it.

Our main character is Pylon (played by actor/martial artist Ramon Zamora), a Filipino “lawman”-unsure if policeman or sheriff — who wants to get away from his life of bringing justice to the criminal element. This important to note, as most lawmen in this movie are judge, jury and executioner. Men like Pylon normally kill criminals in the line of duty, so he wants no more of the dirty work. He retreats to a village where he is known well for his good deeds. There he is betrothed to the beautiful (and suspiciously European-looking) Amian, daughter of the village chief Farfilon. Pylon is reluctant to accept, and his reasoning amounts to his guilt for all the men he’s killed. Amian wants to help him forget, and thus the union is made. Not soon after, Amian brings Pylon’s son into the world.
If you forgot about the criminal element in this film, you’d be forgiven: they are led by Leon, a Asian guy that looks more like a henchman than a boss. He has an army of goons and they go looking for Pylon for revenge on behalf of their dead fellow criminals. They find the village and question Farfilon, but the old man plays dumb. He AND most of the village pays for it, nearly wiped out to a man (oddly enough Pylon’s baby son is safe). Pylon and Amian return to get ambushed; Pylon is beaten, shot, and left for dead. Amian fares worse, as we can only see what’s left of her on the other side of the river behind tall grass. The two of them are found later by three village women returning from gathering, and they heal Pylon (he’s not dead? HOORAY!). Once he is strong enough, he loads all the dead into a house — Farfilon and Amian included — and sets it alight as a funeral pyre. Leaving his son with the three women, he sets out for REVENGE.

Pylon’s deadly martial arts skills come to good use when fighting unarmed targets, but fall short when facing large groups of armed men. He nearly dies several times, but he is saved each time by the mysterious Olga — a lady sniper with deadly aim. She has heard of Pylon and wants to join his quest to kill Leon, because Leon killed her father. “The jungle is no place for a woman like you,” Pylon says as he declines her help, “Her place is beside her man.” Olga shouts after and curses his name as he sets off for more REVENGE; she’s not the last woman to do so in this movie. Vengeful Pylon kills a man in front of his wife and baby daughter and she curses him with never-ending strife.
In one of his attacks, Pylon kills some of Leon’s goons guarding a woman — a woman who looks a whole lot like the late Amian. This woman is Rita, Leon’s sister, and she is dragged from the house where she was by Pylon to bring her back to the village. As they are camped (Rita in bondage while Pylon cooks up a komodo dragon), the latter hears a noise and finds Olga snooping around. In the commotion, Rita escapes into the green jungle hell to face off against both Pylon AND Leon’s goons — because she is with Pylon, they want to kill her too. Push comes to shove as they try to cross the sandy expanse (can’t call it a desert b/c it’s a tropical island country, but it looks like one) and are ambushed by the whole of Leon’s forces. Big fat guys, long-haired guys, nunchaku masters, and dual-knife wielding thugs are found standing against our hero. Pylon is shot, stabbed, and beaten repeatedly, but he not only pulls through but beats or kills many henchmen — he does it all with a knife in his back.
The vengeful Pylon’s body fails him in the final kung-fu fight with Leon, only for Olga to wound the crime boss. It is here the movie steps away from the usual chop-socky vengeance fare and steps into LEGENDARY territory for its ending. M. Night Shyamalan ain’t got NOTHING on this ending; viewer be warned as you may fall off your seat at the end.

CHOICE CUTS:

• Shitty martial arts is shitty, not just because of the “interesting” use of Bruce Lee yells.
• At first I thought the movie was a Western, because all the villagers in the movie wore headbands like Pueblo or Lenape Native Americans, there were lots of six-shooters, and there were no cars or electricity seen in the show. Turns out it’s NOT a Western, because it’s missing two crucial components: White people and horses.
• The character of Olga could and should have been explored further, as she was an interesting foil to Pylon.
• I don’t know if it’s because it was the 70’s, Catholicism, or colonization that caused it, but damn that is a LOT of sexism. Women get treated like trash in this film.
• FUN FACT: Ramon Zamora was one of the opponents in the tower and the fight coordinator for Bruce Lee’s 1974 film, “Game of Death” — Bruce Lee’s final film. That explains the Bruce Lee yells…but not the fight quality.