Directed and “scriped” by its star Bruce Lee, The Way of the Dragon sends Tang Lung (Lee) from Hong Kong to Rome to help protect the Chinese restaurant of a friend’s niece from a steady barrage of neighborhood thugs. Upon arriving in Rome, he dines at the airport lounge, where he eats five soups! This makes him need to go potty! Two times!

No sooner as he reaches the troubled restaurant than the hooligans appear, trying to cajole the owner into selling the land. One of the bad guys looks like an über-feminine Pinocchio. Tang beats them all up, but they just keep coming back for more. And when he takes off his shirt, boy, he means business.

Eventually, the big boss gets wise and hires an American karate expert named Colt to take Tang out. Colt is played by a very hairy and paunchy Chuck Norris, who — let’s face it — was destined to play guys named Colt. He and Lee spar like lightning in the Colisseum, which is really something to see. After Enter the Dragon, this effort — aka Return of the Dragon — may be Lee’s most enjoyable movie. —Rod Lott

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Leave it to schlock director Al Adamson (Satan’s Sadists) to merge the kung-fu and blaxploitation genres with The Dynamite Brothers, marketed as the first movie of its kind to pair a black and Asian lead. Timothy Brown (aka M*A*S*H’s Spearchucker) is Stud Brown, “the black cat from Watts,” while Alan Tang is Larry Chin, “the kung fu cat from Hong Kong.”

No sooner has Chin arrived in San Francisco than he’s handcuffed by the cops to Stud, if only to allow the characters to meet cute and then bond as they escape and run around the woods like so many Defiant Ones.

The duo gets mixed up in a drug war too complicated for the film to adequately explain. Needless to say, the cop after them (Aldo Ray, The Centerfold Girls) is racist and corrupt, and James Hong (Blade Runner) plays a narcotics kingpin who kills his enemies with an acupuncture needle. The final confrontation takes place at Hong’s castle, if only so several henchman can fall from it.

One poor guy gets his scalp ripped off; a mute girl gets her face mutilated with a straight razor; and several honky bitches get naked. Dynamite is more competent than the usual Adamson fare, and comes complete with a groovy, ass-shakin’, jazz-funk soundtrack and a wild, Pop Art, quasi-animated title sequence. —Rod Lott

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Good ’n’ bloody ’n’ cheap, the martial-arts movie Shaolin vs. Manchu begins with a five-minute introduction of all the various Shaolin kung fu styles. Only then do we get to the (as the uproarious trailer puts it) “excellentent plot,” in which the young monk with the entirely indigenous name of Rocky (Ling Man-hoi) is selected to be the Shaolin temple’s new chief abbot.

This move pisses someone off, so Rocky is wrongly accused of rape and thrown out of the monastery with broken feet, but only after a nighttime attack by ninjas, one of whom has an exposed butt crack. It’s all a setup by one of the crooked prince’s spies, of course, so Rocky must clear his good name, oust the evil abbot and retrieve the Shaolin’s stolen relics.

Does he succeed? You know the answer. But I bet you didn’t know a Manchu warrior gets drunk to the point where he dumps a bowl of greens on his head and laughs about it. C’mon, admit it. —Rod Lott

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Part kick-’em-up revenge tale and part sappy love story (guess which part I didn’t care for?), Fists of Fury director Lo Wei’s To Kill with Intrigue begins with Cao Lei (a long-haired Jackie Chan) ruining his father’s 60th birthday celebration by breaking the news that the evil Killer Bee Gang is on its way to kill them all, presumably with intrigue. Bummer.

Things get weird when a phalange-challenged magic ghost shows up first, bemoaning, “Return my hand! Return my hand!” before jumping from here to there in split-second timing, through the high-tech filmmaking miracle technique known as “frame removal.” Then things get bloody when the aforementioned Bees buzz in and kill everyone, with intrigue, except for Cao Lei.

Prior to the attack, Cao Lei feigns disinterest in his pregnant girlfriend so she’ll skip town and, thus, be safe. But she runs into the arms of a not-so-nice guy who, it is revealed with no surprise, is a rival clan leader. So Cao Lei must save her, but first he is nearly killed (with intrigue) and then brought back to his vital self by his enemy, a scar-faced woman who then scars him, making his face look like he has an expired Steak-umm glued to one side.

Only then does Cao Lei fight the bad guy. Initially, his blows land to no avail, but soon he finds the man’s weak point and kills him. With intrigue? You betcha. —Rod Lott

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The story behind Miami Connection would be more compelling than the story of Miami Connection, if the movie had one. As is, characters aren’t introduced so much as they just show up, and plot elements are established, only to be abandoned immediately. This, of course, is why you should watch it. Thanks to someone at Austin, Texas’ legendary Alamo Drafthouse buying a 35-mm print off eBay on a whim, the world can.

An independently funded blend of martial arts and crime, it concerns a band of five metaphorical brothers who attend college by day, rock nightclubs as Dragon Sound by night, and practice tae kwon do in between, sometimes onstage during their performances. Dragon Sound’s synth-laden numbers have the appearance of being for adults, even if their lyrics read like Zig Ziglar and Dale Carnegie cut a record: “Friends through eternity, loyalty, honesty / We’ll stay together through thick or thin / Friends forever, we’ll be together / We’re on top because we play to win.”

The rock group booted from the club in favor of Dragon Sound doesn’t take the diss lightly, so its members order the peaceful quintet of black belts to be killed. Somehow, this comes to involve a clan of black-robed ninjas brandishing very sharp swords, a cocaine ring, a guy with a beard that appears to have been swiped from a G.I. Joe doll, a motorcycle gang, various gym rats with beer bellies and, perhaps most notably, a missing father. Don’t miss the dramatic mail-opening scene!

Leading the guys of Dragon Sound — all of whom live together — is Mark, played by producer Y.K. Kim, a real-life inspirational speaker who barely speaks English, yet nabbed the starring role and co-wrote. As with everyone else in the picture, he cannot act, but his sincerity shows through to a point of infection. Whereas some might find his unconvincing fake-the-guitar skills as horrific, I found them charming. It’s about the only Connection that Miami manages to make.

After a violent and bloody 80 minutes, the movie ends with the sobering title card, “ONLY THROUGH THE ELIMINATION OF VIOLENCE CAN WE ACHIEVE WORLD PEACE,” so there. —Rod Lott

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