Rating: 
Summary: The One That Started It All For Me.
Review: Amazing. Thrilling. Complex. Action-packed. Beautiful. Muddled. Confusing. Wait...rewind that! What just happened?
*puts in 5 deadly venoms dvd*
okay...a secret hideout. cool. young guy trying to keep his master from dying of some strange disease by boiling him. okay. whatever. master is worried about the former pupils going off to steal the fortune they stole from one of their old masters. what fortune? why didn't they split the money? wait a minute! why would he be worried about that all of a sudden? he was never worried before? i don't get it. okay, poison clan. i like the sound of that. hope no hack director makes a movie starring uma thurman and steals the idea.
they all wore masks when they were pupils so none know another's identity. good idea. young apprentice has to go out and kill the former pupils so that none of them steal the treasure. thirsty...
*eating chips and washing them down with soda*
two cops walking down the marketplace. one cop gets slipped a note. hmmm. a strong guy on the steps. they're looking at each other suspiciously. why? do they know? is one a former poison clan member? are they both? if so, how did the strong one know the other guy if they wore masks as pupils? what's happening here?
things like that happen all through this wonderful, but haphazardly thought-out gem. this was the first movie i ever saw on kung fu theatre back in the 80's and it blew my mind.
I love the little intracacies about the film. How dirty and sloppy the baby-faced pupil is. The girly sliminess of SNAKE with his girly face and how I'd never say that to his face. how laughable was that snake-move of his? i also loved how evil and thugged out CENTIPEDE was with his dark beard and sinister smile. Jeez that guy had some fast hands! TOAD cracked me up with his arrogant laugh and built swagger like he was the king of muscles. he was the best! it's also funny how he's the first one to die in all their movies. LIZARD was cool and trustworthy and was a real friend, the only really good one in the bunch. and the one with the most unbelievable power. SCORPION was an okay guy but I'll be damned if i understood one word he said when he had the mask on. that was not an audio problem with the DVD or VHS either. that was just a bad idea when they were dubbing the voice in.
the venoms have made a bunch of different films together, including "flag of iron," "chinatown kid," and the unbeatable "kid with the golden arms." GET THEM ALL!!!
Rating:
Summary: 4 Stars for the Movie 2 for the DVD!
Review: First of all let me tell you how good is this Kung Fu classic. The story is good, about 5 Venoms who live a secret life and are trying to be found by the Poison Clan's master. I think we should all have this fun kung fu flick in our collection but! They have to come out with a better DVD. This DVD has no special features, no original language track, and the image quality has not been restored at all, they didn't even try! So unless you must have it, wait for a better print.
Rating: 
Summary: The gresatest 5 person group
Review: I can't believe some of the idiots talking trash about the movie, it's a classic. Like most people who look for these Venom movies I've watched hundreds of Chinese & Japanese action movies. And yes, todays movies are more elaborate and much faster (due to speeding the film). But the purity of the Venom movies are timeless, the styles, the combat, the characters. All great. How can you not be amazed at the talent of these individuals way back then. By far the group in Chinese action.
Rating:
Summary: Very good, a must buy
Review: I really, really like the story and concept of this movie. The action is very good for the time. It is a must have for your DVD collection. (If someone sees you have martial arts movies in your DVD collection, and you don't have this one, you will definitely be the butt of jokes for the rest of the day!!!!)
Anyways, as I said, the characters are developed really well, and you have great intrigue in seeing each character, and how they interact w/another fighting style. That aspect of the movie was fantastic.
Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang was a better movie over-all IMO. That is why I gave Five Deadly Venoms 4 stars (I think it deserves 4.5), but for when it came out, it is a true masterpiece.
Rating:
Summary: The best Kung Fu film ever made.
Review: I saw this film when I was a teenager on Sunday's "Kung Fu Theater." I've loved it ever since as my favorite Martial Arts film of all time.
Rating:
Summary: Absolute Greatness.
Review: I went to Blockbuster last week, looking for a Kung Fu film. I rented 2, "Iron Monkey 2" (AKA Duel at Tiger Village) and of course "Five Deadly Venoms" I decided to watch Venoms first. Boy, the movie was downright awesome. I was engaged in the storyline, and the fighting. I don't have to explain what happened because all the other reviewers basically already did. There wasn't much fighting in the movie, but just enough to keep you satisfied. I describe the fighting in this movie, a desert. Why? Because the fighting was a nice treat added to the story no matter how you cut it. There was some torture/unusual styles of murders, but they were also like desert in this platter called "5 Deadly Venoms" They were sick, but also awesome in my opinion. I personally like the paper suffication, but that's just me. Ok, when it comes down to it, this movie owns all.
Rating:
Summary: The "classic"
Review: If you haven't seen this, go and buy it. Case closed.
Rating:
Summary: the strange, indefinable quality of the five deadly venoms
Review: Like so many others on Amazon.com, I used to watch weekend Kung Fu theatre programs on TV. Many movies I remember fondly (Kid With The Golden Arm and Shaolin Master Killer [aka 36th Chamber of Shaolin] come to mind) but one in particular stands out: Five Deadly Venoms. I caught it one rainy Saturday afternoon as a teenager and it has stayed with me ever since.
Set in "old" China and featuring a suspenseful plot (a mystery, no less), garish (yet not overly lavish) costumes/set design, and some great old school combat/camera work, this may not even be the best film from either the legendary Shaw Brothers or famed director Chang Cheh himself but there's just something about the pacing of the story which is in no hurry to go anywhere too soon. AND THAT'S A GOOD THING. It is creepy and the tension builds...perhaps not remarkable qualities for a vintage Kung Fu flick but this picture makes the most of it.
Another thing about the movie deserves praise: the absolutely fantastic score! It is austere AND comical, spare, seductive, and sinister without being cheesy. Extraordinary music! - even if it IS "borrowed" from other movies as some say....so be it. To me, the score is what really puts you in the world of 5DV.
PLEASE READ: I own both the DVD and the VHS video (the Steeplechase/Martial Arts Video versions) and they are flippin' LOUSY, with the DVD having a marginally better picture/bad sound and the video having much clearer sound/a horrible picture tracking problem. I could be wrong, but in their mastering of the DVD, it seems that Steeplechase/ M.A.V. simply took a bad widescreen edition VHS tape of the movie and did a poor transfer (although I HAVE seen worse) via the ol' mirror in a shoebox technology. Ha! Typical! The soundtrack is muffled like when you play a non-Dolby encoded cassette tape back with the Dolby switch on. I can't speak for the Front Row Video, Inc. version they're selling on Amazon.com but don't hold your breath. Here's hoping that Celestial Pictures (who now owns the rights to many 1970s Hong Kong classics like this one) get their act together and release a spiffy new version of 5DV. Two essential things for a new release: Original film negatives for a better picture and, for Pete's sake, the original recorded elements for clear, non-muffled sound. Some subtitles would be nice, too. Note to Celestial Pix: Please do it justice, fellers!
The 5 stars given are for the film itself which is remains uniquely satisfying: classic, yet refreshing and timeless. The Five Deadly Venoms is still cool and I've tried to turn friends on to it, usually by forcing them to watch it with me so that I can "re-experience it" thru their eyes! It's hard to define how much unconsciously bigger this movie is than its own genre. But it is. In a way, it stands alone. :-]
Rent it if possible. If not, approach with caution or wait for the eventual "special edition". Good luck.
Rating: 
Summary: Five Deadly Venoms
Review: Not too bad but not that great either. Jason Hepokoski
Rating: 
Summary: Don't believe the hype!
Review: Recently I have developed an interest in kung fu movies after seeing the Kill Bill movies. I bought Fist of the White Lotus because of the good reviews it was given and because the character of Pai Mei was in it. I loved Fist because of its simple plot and great training/fighting scenes. I then decided to get Five Deadly Venoms because it was also on the top of most people's must-see kung fu lists. Unfortunately, I was sorely dissapointed. Venoms starts out great with an intriguing introduction to the FDV clan, but its all downhill from there. For one thing, there is almost no kung fu fighting in the entire movie except for the final fight. I certainly saw no "nonstop wall-crawling action sequences" as described in the Amazon.com review. What few fights there are only last a minute or so, and they do not effectively demonstrate the supposedly animal-like fighting techniques practised by the FDV clan. The movie genre is more of a who-dun-it than a kung fu film. The plot of the movie is centered in a courtroom where a judge is trying to find out who the killer was in a recent murder, but the dialogue and story are so boring that you don't really care to find out what happens in the end. The movie is only 95 minutes long, but it seems to drag on for about 3 hours. All in all, I, as a newly-introduced fan of kung-fu, was very un-entertained by all of this, and I can't recommend it to anyone other than hardcore enthusiasts.
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