The Silent Flute is a martial arts movie about the Zen philosophy behind the martial arts. (In video stores, it is usually placed in the Martial Arts section with the names of Bruce Lee and David Carradine prominently displayed – unsuspecting punters who pick it up must wonder what they have ended up with. It would have been even more bizarre if The Silent Flute had been made with Bruce Lee – the thought of 1970s audiences coming to watch this and expecting another Enter the Dragon (1974) is a highly amusing one). One can see why the film was a failure – although mindedly, the tv series Kung Fu (1972-5), which David Carradine had come to fame in, was highly successful in espousing the philosophy behind the martial arts. Throughout, in the name of epigrammatic mysticism, one is treated to a parade of bizarre, presumably enlightening, visions. For example, while killing camels with karate chops, David Carradine waxes philosophically about what can be learned from the monkey that tries to bite one’s bottom. And then there is Eli Wallach who turns up as a man who has spent ten years in a barrel of oil trying to dissolve his penis because he has been too cowardly to cut it off. Dialogue is suitably inscrutable:      “Buddha once sat by a wall and when he arose he was enlightened.”      “Do you compare yourself to Buddha?”      “Only to the wall.”

And there are times it seems barely able to keep its tongue out of its cheek – like the pre-credits quote:      “Tie two birds together, even though they have four wings they cannot fly – The Blind Man.      On the other hand: A horse has no udders and a sow can’t whinny and up is down and sideways straight ahead – Cord.”

However, when the book that is supposed to hold all the wisdom in the world is unveiled as only a book of mirrors, the result is so absurd the film collapses into a colossal joke on the audience. No doubt Lee, Silliphant and Coburn intended it seriously as a Zen comment on the human condition but to the contrary it seems like a bad joke played on the audience who have sat all the way through out of interest to find what the film construes enlightenment to be. The whole film is absolute tosh, which makes the calibre of some of the names attached to it – David Carradine, Bruce Lee, Christopher Lee, James Coburn, Roddy McDowall – all the more of a surprise.