Martial Arts Madness: House of Traps (1982)

By Tanner McCullough


A note before I begin, dear readers. I’ve been sick as a dog for two days now and a little off due to the cold medicine. Hopefully this will not have a negative effect on my writings/editing.
I happy to introduce our new column: Martial Arts Madness. Each Saturday our resident martial arts expert (yours truly) will discuss a martial arts flick. These will cover the entire spectrum of Martial Arts cinema, from the beginnings to the modern era. If there are any movies that you are curious about seeing reviewed, just let me know.

Today’s film is the 1981 Shaw Brothers talk-fest, House of Traps. House of Traps is about an untrustworthy prince who is conspiring against the emperor. He hides important stolen artifacts and a list of fellow traitors into a House of Traps. The house is shown to be quite deadly, dispatching several people in the first half of the film. Watching the various new traps get set off on unwitting burglars is fun. The fight choreography is fairly typical of a Shaw Bros film. In other words, it was entertaining, but nothing mind-blowing. The Deadly Venom Gang (5 Deadly Venoms) have a few incredible scenes near the end of the film.
Unfortunately, most of the other elements in this film are nowhere near as fun. The plot is as bad as most of the Kung Fu movies of the era, but this film dwells upon it in much more detail. There are double and triple-crosses, but none of it really mattered to me. In the final battle, I asked the friend I was watching it with if he had figured out which side was supposed to be the good guys. The fact that I had to ask that is a bad sign. Worse still is that he didn’t know either. The characters are all very one-dimensional and bland.
I know what you’re thinking: give the movie a break, it’s a martial arts film. Generally, I’m willing to overlook these glaring problems in a Kung Fu flick, but the problem is that this 90 or so minute movie only had about 20 minutes of action, be it fights or traps. Thats a lot of talking (horribly translated subtitles) for a supposed action movie.

I would recommend this film only to diehard Shaw Bros. or Deadly Venom Gang fans. For those of you who are watching martial arts movies looking for fun however, there are lots of better places to look. Hopefully I’ll get to one of those next week.

2.5 out of 5

© Tanner McCullough, 2011