The Fighting Fists of Shanghai Joe / Il mio nome è Shangai Joe (Mario Caiano, 1973)

I check it few times and it seems that this movie doesn’t have its own topic :o

Anyway i liked it a lot. Sure, it’s very silly, but it gives it the feel of a ‘comic-book western’ and it’s one of the best in that category. Chen Lee makes a very likable protagonist and he’s pusued by the great team of bounty killers - Claudio Undari, Gordon Mitchell, Giacomo Rossi-Stuart and Klaus Kinski. Kinski’s performance is a little bit different in this one - he plays a mad character with more silent intensity than usual. We also get a great Nicolai score. It’s also one of the most violent of SWs - lots of bloody gun wounds, eyeball gets ripped, hand gets broken with bloody result , another one gets demolished by gunshot, and yet another one is cut out with a sword. I had lots of fun with this movie - 9/10


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Database page: Mio nome è Shanghai Joe, Il - The Spaghetti Western Database

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I agree, this is great for action fans. I saw it first on the bad full screen print and still loved it.

One of my favorites, not top20 film but really entertaining stuff which I watch more often than some more classic high quality films. Episodic structure works quite well because it’s a kung fu western (I’ve seen many kung fu films which are just basically fight after fight without much of plot) and the villains are so great.

Some Kung-Fu fans that I know aren’t favorable to it because the fighting displayed isn’t very good but it is still incredible fun.
Can’t think of a single boring moment…well… maybe the finale where Joe fights the other kunf fu-er.

I enjoyed this movie alot, not exactly from a martial arts standpoint but as a movie as a whole. I admit that the kung fu scenes sucked big time. They seriously needed to bring in a hong kong choreographers and stuntmen to make it better. Perhaps if golden harvest produced this movie, it would’ve turned out to be a classic. But as it is, I still enjoy it. 6.5 out of 10.

OK, someone has to drag this movie down and I guess it’ll be me… I considered this the worst spaghetti western I had seen at the time. Have definitely seen much worse since, but way back when I started exploring this genre and saw Shanghai Joe I was much disappointed. May have been partly because of the other spaghetti westerns I was introduced to at the time… Django Kill, Companeros, Run Man Run, A Bullet For the General etc. For lets face it, compared to those movies Shanghai Joe IS crap…

Also the Kung Fu-moves as mentioned above are far from convincing. I am no martial arts movie fan or practioner but hey I could do better than the bloke in this movie :slight_smile:

The only really good thing about this movie is its excellent soundtrack though…

Will try to rewatch the movie soon… It may be more fun the second time around.

It’s been some time since I’ve seen it but I think it’s very entertaining. Not a great movie at all and the Kung Fu sucks but as Bill has pointed out the episodic structure works well, the villains are bad ass and there’s violence you’ll see in merely a few SWs !!!

I follow Sören, my memory says something like 3/10

I enjoyed it for what it was - a low budget kung fu/SW crossover. 6/10.

Yes, the martial arts in this films consists of sloppy movie fighting, and some gymnastics, no genuine kung fu.

Shanghai Joe was also played by a Japanese, and whatever martial arts training he had it must have been karate or something, not chinese kung fu.

He does what looks like some sort of kata in one scene, practising moves on his own, and he even wears a karate dress then, if a remember correctly. Really stupid in fact when he was supposed to be Chinese!

At least the film itself is good fun, the worst thing for me is when SWs are dull, not whether they’re serious or more light-hearted.

Both these types of films can be boring though :wink:

Perhaps not a great movie, but great fun nonetheless. 4 stars.

That bored you?
Any spaghetti finale with a hand chopping scene has my approval. And let’s not forget the heart ripping bit.

haven’t seen this film yet. I always thought, it’s more a (stupid) comedy.
but maybe I should give it a chance …
all other films directed by Caiano are really ok, nothing special but you always get a good directors work, nice shots and a good score.

I love this movie but in a different way to say, Django Kill or Once Upon A Time In The West. I love this movie in the same way that I love Captain Apache. Its just good fun. When I first saw it I was surprised at its violence. Apart from its obviously not so great kung fu elements, which are nevertheless entertaining, its actually a well made movie. So it gets 4/5 from me

I saw this a few days ago and absolutely loved it. Sure, it wasn’t something to take seriously, and I wouldn’t know the difference between kuung fu and karate, I just found it hellaciously entertaining.

Very entertaining movie and one of the most violent SW’s ive seen. 8/10

Yes it has some nice gore-scenes indeed.
My favourite East-Western.

Need to watch this one again I think.

Yea, it really rocks!

A friend of mine is a real eastern specialist, he said, he liked the fighing in this one…

Ach so :smiley:

well… maybe Companeros, and A Bullet For the General … but Django Kill? come on… django kill is pretty damned boring, despite its “cult” status…

i’m a fan of shanghai joe as well, might have to watch it this weekend again. beats the pants off of silent stranger, which i just watched…