Chen Ho (Chen Lee) has come to Texas to become a cowboy, however,
nobody here seems too keen to take on a Chinese, so he finds himself
consistently on the butt-end of cheap jokes, even if he always manages to
teach those who play pranks on him a lesson. However, not succeeding to
become a cowboy, he accepts a job in Spencer's (Piero Lulli) gang,
illegally smuggling cattle from Mexico to Texas ... however, when
he finds out the cattle is actually Mexican slaves, he is appalled, but
when he sees his gang shooting dead the slaves because they have spotted
the army nearby and want to get rid of the evidence, that's too
much for Chen Ho, & he sides withthe slaves & defeats his colleagues
... even if he doesn't manage to save too many of the slaves.
However, Christina (Carla Romanelli), one of the slaves, is
incredibly grateful to Chen Ho, & soon they become a couple & he
agrees to bring her back to her Mexican village.
Spencer however is much less grateful, & he soon pins a price on
Chen Ho's head, & every scum & bountyhunter in Texas is soon
hunting for that Chinaman (among the bountyhunters are Robert
Hundar, Giacomo Rossi-Stuart, Gordon Mitchell, and Klaus Kinski as Scalper
Jack - the name says it all -, turning in an incredibly uncanny
performance even by his standards). However, when they all fail to defeat
Chen Ho, Spencer imports another of those Orientals, Japanese Samurai
Mikuja (Katsutoshi
Mikuriya) to bring him down ... but even Mikuja's dirty tricks
can't defeat Chen Ho, and in the end, our Chinaman brings Christina home
safely to her Mexican hometown and moves on, to fight more evil,
elsewhere.
In the early 1970's, when the Spaghetti Western genre was in decline,
but the Eastern/martial arts genre was on the rise, several Italian
producers thought it to be a clever idea to merge the 2 genres for maximum
box office appeal ... and Shanghai Joe was one of the first
Eastern/Western hybrids.
The film is rather mediocre, featuring a so-so story & lame martial
arts, but quite some graphic gore (in one scene, Chen Ho even pulls an eye
out of the socket in graphic detail) and eccentric characters (especially
Klaus Kinski's much too brief role as Scalper Jack), so yes, the film has
its moments, but overall, it's far from great.
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