Which is Stronger, Karate or the Tiger? (1976)

Chicken punching! Foolish shark-based assumptions! Karate vs. Tiger!!

Time for another Fridays of Fury Action Club selection, join the fun and see past and future movie selections here!

This is another 1970s Japanese martial arts movie from Toei, but as the title indicates it is a lot loopier than last week’s The Killing Machine. It is a movie that dares to ask the question Which is Stronger, Karate or the Tiger? (1976, directed by Kazuhiko Yamaguchi). Toei seemed to work their stable of directors like crazy back in the day, because in this period he was putting out 3 or more movies a year (including many Sonny Chiba vehicles). His Delinquent Girl Boss series helped start the Pinky Violence trend, but it was a lot less lurid than the movies it would inspire. Still, I found them quite enjoyable as they repeated and refined plot and character beats across four movies before perfecting it with the final entry, Worthless to Confess, one of my favorite movies I watched last year. I didn’t realize this was the same director until I looked him up afterwards, as I went into this one blind.

First the elephant/tiger in the room: the only version of this available to me has one of the most atrocious dubs I have ever heard. It isn’t just poor performances, it is wildly uneven audio mixing where dialogue and background noise are often indistinguishable. It also sounded like some lines were slurred or completely whiffed and still made it in, like they did one drunk recording session and no retakes. During some dialogue-free parts the dub cuts out and we hear the original higher quality sound effects and funky score. The story is generally easy enough to understand, but it is hard to get much out of the character interactions or dialogue when you are straining to hear it. Which is a shame, because the characterization was part of why I enjoyed his Delinquent Girl Boss movies so much (lead actress Reiko Oshida’s Rika is so loveable!). It doesn’t seem like I missed out on a lot, though, as it is a pretty standard story of betrayal and revenge and it seems like frequent fights and the crazy climax are the point.

My wife and I went in wondering how literal the title and poster would be. Then the opening scene showed protagonist Ryuzaki (Yasuaki Karata) punching chickens for donations(?) and a crowd’s entertainment(?). I joked that maybe he was going to work his way through the animal kingdom punching progressively larger animals. Instead, after that inexplicable scene we see that he is a masked martial arts fighter, taking on a champion who seems to be backed by shady individuals with Resting Villain Face. Ryuzaki pisses them off by beating the champ, then pisses them off even further when he refuses to work with their criminal operation. Ryuzaki helps coach a martial arts gym while the former champ tries to drink himself to death, to his sister’s horror. The crime boss’s wife dances flamenco (I had no idea its popularity spread all the way to Japan by the 1970s) and draws Ryuzaki’s eye. Eventually Ryuzaki beats some sense (literally) into the former champ and he starts training with Ryu. 

Flashbacks reveal the criminal organization’s wealth came from lost treasure found at sea. They were helping a man who searched for it for years, and as soon as they hauled up chests full of gold, they betrayed him and the rest of the crew. One of them was Ryuzaki, who they dragged in a net behind the boat, assuming the sharks would eat him. Obviously he survived (unlike his brother), and has come back for revenge. Later in the last act, he has a cliffside duel and ends up falling into the ocean (via a hilariously non-moving dummy). The villains don’t bother searching for him, AGAIN saying the sharks will get him. Guys, you have been through this before, why are you continuing to make specious shark-based assumptions?! 

Anyways, while Ryuzaki is “dead,” the former champ tries to escape the villain’s castle with his sister. He ends up being the first one to finally face the villain’s tiger that has been seen occasionally throughout the movie. Ironic considering his karate gi in the first bout had a tiger design on it (which had me thinking the title might be describing him until Ryuzaki easily beat his ass). Round One ends pretty definitively Tiger- 1, Karate- 0, although the champ mostly just scrambled around in a panic. Eventually Ryuzaki heals up (saved by the gangster’s bitter flamenco wife) and we get Round Two with the tiger. It alternates between footage of a real tiger ambling around harmlessly, adorable shots of Ryu wrestling with a stuffed tiger or tiger head, and some truly worrying shots of a guy actually running and rolling around with the real tiger.

stuffed tiger wrestling

real tiger wrestling

At one point he appears to be lightly punching the real tiger before defeating the stuffed one!

Honestly it doesn’t seem to bother the tiger that much, as outside of this movie’s fiction Karate does not appear to be much of a challenge for Tiger. Hard to gauge how much actual animal cruelty happened here, but there was definitely plenty of irresponsible animal/human interactions (including the guy’s arm in the real tiger’s mouth)!

The chickens in the opening scene seem about as nonplussed by the punches as the tiger, so I think they might have been fine. The gerbil they dribbled corn syrup on and tossed near an open flame might have been traumatized, though, and another bird might have been impaled by a sai? Viewer beware. 

Eventually this delivered on the crazy promised by the title, but it still couldn’t quite elevate what I found to be an otherwise average movie. I mentioned how prolific Yamaguchi was as a director at this time, maybe he didn’t have as much time to let this one cook as some of his other films. In theory I appreciate his attempts to add energy to the fight scenes, but sometimes his handheld camera tilts and zooms made the action too shaky for my liking. In the final fight he finally uses some close-ups and speed-ramping that emphasize the hits instead of distracting from them, I could have used more of that. Obviously there are differences since this is a full-on martial arts flick, but the action climax of his film Delinquent Girl Boss: Worthless to Confess was shot in a stylish but clear way that made the sloppy swordplay exciting. This movie occasionally seems to be trying to obscure/enhance sloppy fighting (including one kick that “hits” a guy a foot or two away!), other times there are competent moves that are stepped on by the camera. It looks especially rough after last week’s The Killing Machine made clear use of multiple angles and cuts to showcase Sonny Chiba’s already badass moves. Although to be fair, that movie didn’t have Chiba wrestle a tiger. Final score… Tiger- 1, Karate- 1, no clear winner other than the viewer.

Shout out to the one henchman who among all the other martial arts and weapon training was just lifting bails of hay with a bamboo pole. I figured that was some kind of strengthening exercise that would help with a giant Dynasty Warriors-ass sledgehammer or something, but nope, in the climax he just throws bails of hay at the heroes!

Check out reviews from the rest of the Action Club here