From the crudely edited looping of the Temptations' "Papa Was A Rolling Stone" (wahka-chakka guitar with space-echo, etc) as the theme music, to the pastiche of every action film style imaginable (noir, spy, gangster even spaghetti westerns etc) this minor-masterpiece of grotesque violence will be quite a hoot for fans of 1970's crime-movie schlock.
I found it copied from an appropriately battered and discolored 16mm print re-titled as 'Hands of Death' on one of those 'Kung Fu 20-movie-DVD pack' for $5.00 used - and worth every penny. The credits are almost nonexistent, other than 'A Sino-American Co-Production by Terry Levene Directed by Roc Tien' (Roc Tien is also known as Peng Tien) It is is clearly a Chinese picture, but different from the typical martial arts flick from Hong Kong (i.e. Shaw Bros) and apparently Taiwanese. There seems to be slightly different prints circulating, but I'm not certain.
'The Tongfather' has the familiar plot which follows a tough take-no-prisoners detective from the Taiwan police as he infiltrates and destroys several opium smuggling gangs and their bosses across Asia, only to discover they are controlled by a single Japanese crime lord, the ruthless Tongfather.
There aren't many fighting scenes (by martial arts movie standards anyway) but there are a few fairly imaginative and original depictions of brutality and pain, including my favorite - the scene where several underling crime bosses meet with their boss the Tongfather. They're all sitting cross-legged Japanese style on the floor in a circle having tea and discussing crime business. One of the underlings shamefully admits that one of his men betrayed them to the police. The Tongfather asks him how he will atone for this failure. The guilty underling slowly and silently reaches down, grabs his own leg and with all his strength slowly bends it upwards until its bones crack while the others stare in astonishment! The man doesn't scream and only grimaces a bit. Nice!
Available as 'Hands of Death' on Tubi as of June 2023.
