No contest. While the former may come with Quentin Tarantino's Rolling Thunder seal-of-approval (worthless, if you ask me, if not for the clean transfer) and the claim to having used the same jungle march in its soundtrack before the other—which is how I came up with the billing—it all boils down whether Kuo Chui, Lu Feng and Chiang Sheng were better martial arts choreographers than the studio was at building miniature sets. I haven't seen Peter Jackson's King Kong, but I certainly hope the expedition there wasn't just an idea three guys had going through a microfiche at a library. And did they actually think they had a shot at capturing something reportedly ten stories tall with a caravan of a dozen skinny Indians? (Half a dozen, after the elephant blitzkrieg and mountaineering mishap.) How were they gonna get themselves, much less Peking Man, back down that rock cliff? I could go on, but then I'd have to venture into such subjects as interracial sex and primate masturbation, which I'm sure'd get me busted by the NSA.

Now Masked Avengers, how I wish this were up for restoration. Sadistic torture devices, sadistic booby-trapped entrances, sadistic private elevators, all controlled with the turn of a swastika. The tridents were the movie's gimmick more so than the masks, but you sure-as-hell can't fault their mastery of them, surpassing, IMO, even the Flags of Iron (though No. 1's balancing act at the end, makes you wonder, if that was a deliberate act to die spectacularly). But it's not just their skills this time around; there's a mystery, or at least it seems there should be, to this sinister organization that surrounds itself with Buddhist symbols and relishes in bloody rituals. Maybe not quite the controversy of a Da Vinci Code, but way better kungfu.