Dating back to the early 1970s when Bruce Lee was still fresh in people's minds and kung fu and martial arts was big business worldwide (or at least the current in-thing) comes Stoner, starring George Lazenby. Bruce Lee was originally set to star in this fairly standard but slightly odd film but after his untimely death it was decided to make the film anyway.
Solid martial arts skills in the form of Angela Mao was bought in as George's co-star. so let the hard kung-fu action begin! There is a kind of plot, something involving an evil gangster mastermind of course. A villain who has a ridiculously fast rotating desk... excellent! The (evil) master mind is creating explosives and drug smuggling in his (evil) underground lair but the plot, such that it is, is largely a bare frame on which to hang a sequence of excellent fighting set pieces.
The result is undeniably cheesy, fairly confusing but also highly entertaining. It is definitely an early 70s period piece and perhaps nothing that original from the time but worth seeing all the same. How many HK kung-fu movies had an ex-James Bond in them after all?
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