Films of Fury: The Kung Fu Movie Book

by Meyers, Ric

  Even so, it did great, so naturally, it was Third Brother Yuen Baio’s turn to say “please?” That resulted in Dreadnaught (1981), Kwan Tak-hing’s final Huang Fei-hong performance, where-in a young launderer (Baio) runs afoul of a psychotic murderer (Yuen Shun-yi again) hiding out in a Peking Opera troupe. Wo-ping tries to do the calligraphy scene one better with a “mad tailor” sequence in which an assassin tries to kill Huang while measuring him for a suit, but it didn’t cut it (all puns intended).

  Those responsibilities to Jackie’s classmates concluded, Yuen returned to his predilections, leading to two of the strangest kung fu films ever foisted by a major talent. The Miracle Fighters (1982) and Taoism Drunkard (directed by Wo-ping’s brother Cheung-yan in 1984) have to be seen not to be believed. Featuring much of the family as always, it also portrayed such things as a “banana demon” — a black, Pac-Man-like, ball on legs with antennas and a watermelon-slice-shaped, chomping mouth lined with shark teeth.

  Whether the film is wacky or wonderful, Wo-ping approached the kung fu choreography in the same way. “I know the plot from start to finish,” he explained, “how it progresses and develops. I study how many action scenes, and work out which should be big ones and which should be small ones. Each scene should have its special theme, and they should progress and develop the way the rest of the film does.” But within a year, he would find a new path amongst his peers via a developing appreciation of taichi. His directing Drunken Tai Chi in 1984 would announce his intentions, as well as introduce a new star to the world: Donnie Yen. But more on him later.

  Ironically, Simon Yuen’s final appearance as Sam Seed wasn’t directed by Yuen. It was in World of Drunken Master (1979), which was directed by Joseph Kuo Nam-hung. Simon appeared only in the prologue — replaced for the bulk of the film by Li Yi-min as “young Beggar Su.” Joseph Kuo (aka Kuo Qing-chi) is generally considered the monarch of Taiwan martial art moviemakers, which was a bit like being one-eyed amongst the blind. As mentioned earlier, Taiwan produced literally thousands of genre films, so any that even approached Hong Kong quality were considered genius. Kuo approached approaching genius throughout his (unsurprisingly) prolific career. He made dozens of films in a variety of genres, but his best known kung fu efforts include The Blazing Temple (1976), The Seven Grandmasters (1978), The Mystery of Chess Boxing (1979), and The 36 Deadly Styles (1979) — while his Swordsman of all Swordsmen (1968) and The 18 Bronzemen (1978) were landmarks in Taiwan cinema.

  By that time, he had hit upon a winning kung fu formula. Using brothers Jack Long Sai-ga and Mark Long Kwan-wu (as well as Corey Yuen Kwai and Yuen Cheung-yan) as choreographers, he filmed fight after fight, and plotline after plotline, and then pieced them together until they filled ninety minutes. Anything left over was saved for the next ninety-minute slot. However disjointed his stories, there was always ample entertainment value in the fighting.

  The same was true of Lee Tso-nam, another Taiwan moviemaker who rose to the top. He co-starred in Kuo’s Swordsman of All Swordsmen, and was assistant director on The Big Boss — learning his mentors’ lessons well. He became a full-fledged director in 1973, and quickly made his name with such fun, catch-all, kung fu films as The Hot, The Cool and The Vicious (1976), Eagle’s Claw (1977), and Fatal Needles vs. Fatal Fists (1978). They were also elevated by the assured, pleasantly complex choreography by Tommy Lee Gam-ming, who learned his craft in a Taiwanese Opera School, and was exceptional at designing multi-group fight scenes of eight or more, so the camera could move seamlessly from one group of fighters to the next.

  All these starred Delon Tan (aka Tan Tao-liang) and Don Wang Tao (who was once groomed as a “new Bruce Lee”). The Bruce connection was not lost on Tso-nam, since he also made some of the most enjoyable “Bruce Clone” films, such as Exit the Dragon, Enter the Tiger (1976, with Bruce Li), Chinese Connection 2 (1977, with Bruce Li), The Tattoo Connection (1978, with Jim Kelly), and Enter the Game of Death (1978, with Bruce Le).

  Both Kuo and Tso-nam benefited greatly by filling their films with the best acting and fighting talent they could find. Their cast lists are a who’s who of superior supporting players, including Ku Feng, Bolo, Bruce Leung Siu-lung, Li Hai-sheng, Philip Kao Fei, Chen Kuan-tai, Shoji Kurata, Lo Lieh, and Chang Yi. If you watch kung fu movies at all, you’ll see these guys again and again.

  But beyond the relative quality of their work, Joseph Kuo and Lee Tso-nam assured their international fame through a stroke of luck. Both made deals with pioneering exporter Ocean Shores Limited to sell their flicks internationally for the home entertainment market, catching the first wave of American interest in the genre. While the rest of Hong Kong was belittling kung fu films, Ocean Shores and its farsighted boss Jackson Hung, was instituting a ground-breaking Los Angeles office (run by Matthew Tse), and selling its made-in-China videotapes to whoever would buy or rent them. They even instituted a then-revolutionary rent-by-mail program for the individual American kung fu movie fan.

  Although they tried to follow fads (shoving the word “ninja” into any title they could) and swallowed a lot of producers’ propaganda (that Americans didn’t want widescreen or subtitles), many Asian filmmakers might never have been known on these shores without Ocean Shores. Following quickly into the fray was Tai Seng Entertainment — its American office run by general manager Helen Soo — who snapped up many VHS Ocean Shores videotapes to make the transition onto DVD. This included Sammo Hung’s seminal The Victim (1980), not to mention the best independently-produced Liu Chia family films (such as 1977’s He Has Nothing But Kung Fu, 1978’s Dirty Kung Fu, 1980’s Fists and Guts, and 1984’s Warrior from Shaolin).

  Back in the early 1980s, Jackie Chan’s Peking Opera school senior, Sammo, was chafing a bit over his “younger brother’s” mega-success. Born in 1950 and nicknamed after the famous Chinese cartoon character “Sam-mo” (meaning “three hairs”), Hung Kam-po enrolled at the Peking Opera School at the age of ten, started appearing in films at age eleven, then became a freelance stuntman at sixteen. Show business, it seemed, was in his blood.

  “I was born into a movie family,” he told me. “My father and mother both worked in the Hong Kong movie industry. I learned karate, judo, taekwondo and hapkido, which were the basic needs of my profession then. I worked for all the studios. Even though they didn’t look real on screen, I had to spend a lot of time preparing for the fight scenes. It was old-fashioned, traditional kind of kung fu before the stardom of (Jimmy) Wang Yu.

  “Actually, I like every kind of kung fu. I didn’t think about which one was better than the other, I just learned everything I could. [Style] names were not important. The most important thing was how to defeat somebody. When I was young, things could get very violent. I had a lot of fights. That’s how I got my facial scars. I was in a nightclub, and some drunk got so angry that I did a flip on the dance floor. When I got to my car, there were three people waiting to ambush me. One comes up behind me and swings a broken bottle into my face. I’m actually very lucky. If it had gone into my eyes, that would have been it. Even so, it took twenty-three stitches.”

  Sammo didn’t let the scar stop him. He didn’t let anything stop him. He got his first kung fu choreographer job at the age of twenty, for The Fast Sword (1970), then worked both behind and in front of the camera for several King Hu films, including A Touch of Zen, The Fate of Lee Khan (1972), and The Valiant Ones (1974). He was twenty-three when he started working with Bruce Lee and only a few years older when he got his most prestigious assignment.

  “My first major movie as star and director was called Shaolin Monk (1977), and the funny thing was I wasn’t originally supposed to be in the movie. I wanted Jackie Chan to do it. He was nothing at that time, but I wanted him. But the producers say no. They decide that I’m not too bad, so they say ‘Go, you do it.’”

  That led to more directing assignments, from Warriors Two (1978) to his charming satire of a Bruce-fixated pig farmer, Enter the Fat Dragon (1978). All this new-found work necessi
tated that he finalize his own loyal team of collaborators. The three at the team’s core were Yuen Baio, Lam Ching-ying, and Chan Wui-ngai — an eclectic trio culled from Sammo’s life at the China Drama Academy, other Peking Opera School alums, and friends made on movie sets. Baio, born in 1957 (making him seven years younger than Sammo and three years younger than Jackie) grew up with his new boss. Ching-ying used to pal around with Sammo when they were both in different schools, and Wu-ngai was an old school sort, who had learned his craft from Han Ying-chieh. Between the three, Sammo got the best of all perspectives.

  “From the very beginning I like to do things different,” Sammo explained to me. “I like to combine comedy, tragedy, and a lot of action. I like unusual heroes. The audience has more sympathy toward them. Later on, I found out it was better to concentrate on comedy. The audience likes to laugh more than they like to cry, but still the hero has to go through changes.”

  So Sammo put himself, as well as Jackie Chan, through changes. “Jackie and I worked together often, but I didn’t want to be compared with him, just as he didn’t want to be compared to Bruce Lee all the time. Everybody has a different idea and approach to filming kung fu. For Jackie the camera hardly moves … Jackie moves! I like to use the camera to get, and keep, the audience’s attention. Same with the editing. Some other directors think that editing is not their job, but I do.”

  And it showed. Sammo established himself as one of the finest fight scene makers ever in what many consider his finest film: The Prodigal Son (1981). A beautiful, brilliant, powerful film about a young man who’s fooled into thinking he is a great fighter, an asthmatic Peking Opera performer who teaches him wing chun, and another young man whose rich father kills his kung fu opponents, it cemented Sammo’s team of co-stars and co-choreographers.

  Yuen Baio, the youngest of the Seven Little Fortunes, was Sammo’s go-to star and collaborator, while Lam Ching-ying, who worked closely with Bruce Lee on The Big Boss and Enter the Dragon, became a star in his own right via his performance as the asthmatic “wu dan” (Peking Opera female fighting star) in this film. Sammo’s team also utilized such other Little Fortunes as Yuen Wah and Corey Yuen Kwai — both of whom would also go on to become acting and choreography mainstays.

  At the same time Sammo conceived The Prodigal Son, he also came up with the brainstorm of H.A.M. (Horror Action Movies). “Since I was a small boy I heard all kinds of ghost stories from my mother and my master in the Peking Opera School. All the old people told me all these great stories of the supernatural until I became afraid of the dark. I still am!” So Sammo created Encounters of the Spooky Kind (aka Spooky Encounters, 1980), as well as The Dead and the Deadly (1982), and, most notably, the Mr. Vampire series (1985-1992) — starring the personable Lam Ching-ying as the “one-eye-browed priest,” and featuring the fascinating Chinese hopping dead known as the “gyonshi.”

  By then, a Sammo Hung fight scene was as recognizable as a medicine ball on a golf course. In his own movies, Jackie Chan would toss an opponent off screen. In a Sammo Hung movie, he’d beat and kick them insensible — even plant a machete in their heads (as in Heart of Dragon). Sammo himself, despite spotlighting wing chun in Warriors Two and Prodigal Son, leaned toward the more externally powerful-looking hung gar to bounce his opponents all over the set.

  Things proceeded smoothly, and profitably, through the landmark “Three Brothers” movies until, after Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars, Jackie didn’t want to play anymore. Sammo responded by plunging into a plethora of productions as producer, choreographer, and director through his production companies Gar Bo, Bojou, and Bo Ho. It was at that moment that the Shaw Brothers closed its film units, and suddenly dozens of Hung’s associates were out of work. Although he maintains that had nothing to do with it, suddenly Sammo mounted two of his most expensive, expansive movies ever, which called for a large cast of experienced kung fu talent.

  Millionaire’s Express (aka Shanghai Express, 1986) was a catch-as-catch-can action comedy with hunks of spaghetti Western thrown in, featuring an entire western-style town that the studio built in the middle of nowhere, filled with more than three dozen action and comedy stars (including Yuen Baio, Shih Kien, Jimmy Wang Yu, Dick Tei Wei, Eric Tsang, Cynthia Rothrock, Richard Norton, Johnny Wang Lung-wei, Hsaio Ho, Philip Kao Fei, and Liu Chia-yung). Although it featured a full-scale kung fu free-for-all finale with the entire cast, the rest was an exercise in time-filling.

  “It took three months to prepare and five months to shoot,” Sammo recalled. “It was a lot of work, but it wasn’t difficult.” But it was expensive and didn’t exactly set box office records. Then came Eastern Condors (1986), which many Westerners consider Sammo’s masterpiece (being just about the only film where Sammo’s weight is never even mentioned), but others consider a camp classic. Combining The Dirty Dozen and The Deer Hunter (1978) with a James Bondian climax, it featured another large cast crammed with renowned kung fu stars, as well as Oscar-winner Haing S. Ngor, directors Yuen Wo-ping and Corey Yuen Kwai, and Yuen Wah in a career-making performance as a supremely creepy, cunning, and capable Vietcong villain. It also showcased Sammo’s future wife: the statuesque green-eyed ex-Miss Hong Kong, Joyce Mina Godenzi (aka Kao Lai-hung).

  “Pre-production started in July 1987,” Sammo explained. “We started shooting in November 1987 in Canada. We shoot for a month, then go to Hong Kong to film a basketball scene. That took a month, and we wound up editing it out! Then we went to Bangkok for a month. In January 1988, we all go to the Philippines and spend five months there. Finally, we come back to Hong Kong and spend another month there. We finished in June, 1988. All together, almost a year.” Although it had plenty of entertainment value, Sammo’s Asian audience, and studio, began to think he was taking advantage of them.

  The final straw was Lucky Stars Go Places (1986), a flick co-written, co-starring, and co-produced by Sammo, that combined two of the colony’s most popular action-comedy film series — Aces Go Places and The Lucky Stars — into one sloppy, condescending, mess. Suddenly the masses turned on Sammo, giving everything he threw at them, including Dragons Forever, the cold shoulder. After that, Sammo tried to get back into the industry’s good graces by playing his own Peking Opera school teacher in the lyrical, heart-felt Painted Faces (1988) — the story of the Seven Little Fortunes’ school days — but it seemed too little too late.

  So began Sammo’s “Look Back in Anger” era — full of his greatest fight scenes, but also his most outrageous bouts of racism, sexism, and homophobia. Whenever anyone wonders why Sammo is not vaunted alongside his more popular peers, some explain that it is because Hung is overweight and facially scarred. Part of the whole truth, however, is evident in the title of one of his last personal films: Don’t Give a Damn (1994). Although largely responsible for some of the greatest action movies, the most influential horror films, and simply the best individual kung-fu fights of all time, Sammo is consistently undermined by his own seething apathy — a bad attitude that sinks too many of his movies under the weight of scenes that go way beyond political incorrectness.

  A perfect, and painful, example is in the aforementioned Don’t Give a Damn, when two Chinese cops vie for the opportunity to blacken their faces and put on “nappy” wigs (to unconvincingly impersonate the African-American villain’s brother), while detailing how the black man has ruined society. The following scene, where the ridiculously disguised Chinese actor pretends to be black, makes Amos and Andy (1928-1966) look like Roots (1977). It was embarrassing and shameful, but despite the protestations of the actors, Sammo went ahead with it anyway.

  The closest thing anyone could get to an explanation was that he was paying back Westerners for years of similar racism toward Asians. That explanation, while possible, doesn’t make up for his misjudgments that have kept him from the pantheon of movie success. It certainly hasn’t crimped his output, however. Having been involved with at least eighty movies by the time of Dragons Forever, he went on to appear in, produce, and direct
at least fifty more — ranging from his award-winning performance in Eight Taels of Gold (1989) to an even worse “Lucky Stars” film, the awful Ghost Punting (1992).

  Thankfully, there was the Shaw Studio-flavored Pedicab Driver (1989), which even featured a show-stopping fight scene with Liu Chia-liang. Maintaining that aura, Sammo eventually produced Operation Scorpio (1994), starring Chin Kar-lok as an aspiring comic book artist who runs afoul of a Scorpion-style killer, but is saved by the “Wok-fu” taught to him by a chef played by Liang. Then came Encounters of the Spooky Kind II (1989), an honorable sequel to Hung’s groundbreaking H.A.M. of 1980. He then tried to recapture the pre-Lucky Stars Go Places magic of 1978’s Dirty Tiger, Crazy Frog with Skinny Tiger and Fatty Dragon (1990), which featured the same co-star — comic actor Karl Maka — while borrowing the plot of the 1986 Billy Crystal vehicle Running Scared … but it wasn’t exactly welcomed (not helping matters were scenes of Maka beating up girls).

  Sammo reacted to that rejection by really sticking it to the audience with Pantyhose Hero (1990), a variation on the unfortunate Ryan O’Neal/John Hurt movie, Partners (1982), in which a cop has to pretend he’s gay to find a serial killer of homosexuals. Seemingly daring the viewer to call him on his outrageous stereotypes, Sammo filled the film with some of his most savage fights and unbelievable stunts (such as actually being hit by a car in slow motion).

  “My fighting got more savage in these because I was in an increasingly worse mood,” he explained. “Everything was the same in these movies. I was getting in a rut. So I got more serious and savage in my fighting.”

  Wanting to share the love, he tried to do for his wife’s career what he was doing to his own. Teaming with Corey Yuen Kwai, they made her the star of She Shoots Straight (aka Lethal Lady, 1990), an overwrought martial melodrama that featured a climatic wedding scene slaughter. Audiences and distributors reacted in kind: Pedicab Driver, Pantyhose Hero, Spooky Encounters II, and Don’t Give a Damn have never legally appeared on DVD. But, eventually, even they learned the same Sammo lesson that everyone in the film industry ultimately accepts. The guy is just too great a talent not to eventually rehire.