The most famous Venoms film outside of their debut, THE FIVE DEADLY VENOMS. KID WITH THE GOLDEN ARM is a near plotless series of fight spectacles with a garish, comic strip feel to them. The larger than life characters are separated into heroes and villains, and the story is about a gold shipment waylaid by bandits. Each character has his own specialism with a big emphasis on weapon play throughout. Needless to say, the stars are at the top of their game here, at the peak of their athleticism. I particularly liked Lo Meng's titular badass and Phillip Kwok's drunken sheriff. Chiang Sheng has less to do, but then he was choreographing the fights, and Lu Feng is back to the spear play again. Violent, heavily stylised, thoroughly entertaining, this one.

Director Chang Cheh reunites the Five Venoms in his second biggest cult hit in the West. It is Lo Meng's most memorable performances whose showdown (as Golden Arm) with fellow Venomand drunken master Kuo Chui is artistically violent while being graphically artsy.

Paste Magazine included "Kid with the Golden Arm" at 20 in their list of the 100 best martial arts films. In their review, they wrote, "Honestly, Kid With the Golden Arm isn't particularly complex or even all that original, but it's pure, unadulterated old-school kung fu fun." Stan Hall of called it a "surreal, action-packed period piece" with impressive fights, highlighting Silver Spear's final battle.

Despite the same shallow sets of all Chang Cheh movies, it really does come down to the fight scenes, doesn't it? Of course. The sets can be awful and the plot can be weak, and as long as we get some good flips and slaps, we're happy. This is definitely a solid addition to that. It is not by any means as good as "Five Deadly Venoms", but still a solid second-tier movie.

The storyline for The Kid With The Golden Arms is about as basic as can be: the good guys are escorting a shipment of gold to a famine-stricken region and have to stop the bad guys, a collection of broad, colourful comic-book style bandits with self-explanatory names (eg. Bronze Head, Silver Spear, Iron Robe),from stealing it along the way. Makes a change from all of those old school kung fu films that require an in-depth knowledge of Chinese political history in order to understand what is going on, I suppose.

Fortunately, what director Chang Cheh's film lacks in plot development, it more than makes up for with awesome kung fu action, the film comprising of one expertly choreographed and flawlessly executed martial arts scene after another, with a wide variety of impressive weapon work, lots of breath-taking acrobatics, and a surprising amount of bright red gore (characters are regularly sliced and impaled). Philip Kwok, as drunken Agent Hai Tao, proves particularly impressive with his amazing athleticism and impeccable timing.