Tiger Love (1977)

Posted in Reviews by - January 04, 2020
Tiger Love (1977)

This gets really weird, really quickly. Believing her boyfriend (Lo Lieh) to have been killed, Hu Chin leaps off a rock in a suicidal death plunge, only for her fall to be broken by some trees. She wakes up to find herself next to a tiger (a real, actual tiger). In her panic, she pisses herself, which the tiger interprets as some form of power move. So instead of eating her, the tiger decides to nurse her back to health inside its tiger cave. Flash-forward 18 years and Hu Chin has since given birth to the sprightly Stephen Tung Wei, who has been raised by the allegedly docile tiger (referred to as ‘Uncle Tiger’), although it is quite clear that the animal has been sedated in some way to stop it from killing the cast. Stephen Tung Wei is now something of a Mowgli character sporting a tiger-print skirt and gladiator boots who eventually starts to learn the weird truth about his family. The film now enters a Romeo and Juliet section, in which the boy kidnaps a pretty poacher by lassoing her (that old trick), and the two fall in love (sort of), but being the son of Lo Lieh, the two are soon discovered to be from rival kung fu families, and all kinds of vengeful murdering ensues. You think that’s the end, but then director-producer King Weng reveals a final trick for act three, which is when the film goes all-out crazy. In a strange twist, the tiger now becomes vengeful and goes on a killing spree after taking on the form of a bucktooth old lady; her spectral, vampiric figure starts murdering and eating people in a new, spooky, unexpected slasher-like setting. Quite why a large, fierce, predatory animal like a tiger would need to disguise itself as a feeble old lady to kill people is something of a moot point. Anyway, its not your typical kung fu movie that’s for damn sure.

AKA: Legend of the Tiger; The Tiger Love; Tiger’s Kong Fu; Tiger’s Love.

This post was written by
Editor and creator of Kung Fu Movie Guide and the host of the Kung Fu Movie Guide Podcast. I live behind a laptop in London, UK.

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