by Meyers, Ric
Although he has not been given his own film since those heady days, he has contributed exceptional performances, choreography and direction for dozens more, including Moon Warriors (the 1993 movie that inspired the kung fu of the Star Wars “prequels”), Wong Kar-wai’s seminal Ashes of Time (1994), and The Stunt Woman (1996). Then came Martial Law (1998-2000).
It was with the knowledge of Sammo’s incredible talents, not his lapses in judgment, that Stanley Tong approached successful television producer Carlton Cuse — then best known for the successful cop show Nash Bridges (1996-2001). Cuse knew that CBS television desperately wanted to attract young male viewers to its Saturday night lineup, and Tong had a proposal for a series based on Supercop, the movie he directed for Jackie Chan. When Jackie declined to play the role for American television, Tong turned to Sammo. Anxious to fill a 9:00 pm time slot, CBS-TV gave the team a green light, and within record time, production on the series started.
Sammo Hung played Sammo Law, a top Chinese police detective who comes to Los Angeles to track an Asian crime lord and then stays, thanks to a convenient cop exchange program. Within six episodes, the network knew it had a hit, and according to unnamed sources, the production knew it had trouble. Sammo was used to the kind of control he had back in Hong Kong, and, like Jackie, wasn’t comfortable with English. He also wasn’t enthusiastic with the kind of early mornings and late nights American TV production required. The rumored tensions behind the scenes started showing in unusual ways.
First, actress Tammy Lauren, billed as a full co-star, mysteriously left the show after six episodes. Law’s partner, played by Louis Mandylor, and his L.A.P.D. boss, played by Tom Wright, were marginalized. Then Rush Hour premiered, and, during the ninth episode, Arsenio Hall was introduced as a wisecracking African-American press liaison. The stories and dialog began to degenerate to a noticeable degree.
New producers were brought in for the second season because of “runaway production costs.” Mandylor and Wright were gone. Hall and co-star Kelly Hu were reduced to static stake-outs in such exotic locations as a nondescript building’s hallway. On the last episode of the year, Law returns to China. Within two seasons, Martial Law went from being CBS’ most successful new drama (with Sammo winning the first TV Guide Award as Most Promising Newcomer) to being quietly and ignominiously cancelled. The Sammo Syndrome had struck again: snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
On the one hand, he had nimbly avoided the growing pains of Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule by being in America. On the other: “When I got back to Hong Kong, everything had changed. It was getting harder to find good actors anymore. Also, people do movies with many guns. You have guns, there is no fighting. But there is still television, and I still had good friends. Soon I was back to work.”
And he is still working, despite having stents put in his heart during 2010 (after which he only rested for a few weeks before being back on set). I asked him if he ever thought about slowing down.
“If I come across a rewarding role,” he promised, “I will still be fighting.”
Picture identifications (clockwise from upper left):
Michelle Yeoh in Wing Chun; Brigitte Lin in The Bride With White Hair; Anita Mui, Michelle Yeoh, and Maggie Cheung in The Heroic Trio; Brigitte Lin in Swordsman 2; Early Swords(wo)man; Michelle Yeoh in Project S: Once a Cop.
Back when action films began to captivate Chinese audiences, the aforementioned accepted adage was that movies were, literally, just for women. Men were too busy bringing home the barbeque pork to waste their time watching films, so only housewives went to theaters. And since no wage-earner wanted his pregnant, barefoot cook swooning over handsome heroes, every major hero on screen was played by a woman.
Some of the pioneers included Chin Tsi-ang, whose unique skills (including trick horse riding) were well utilized in 1920s movies. Her first starring role was in The Lady Swordfighter of Jiangnan (1925), made in mainland China, but she went on to establish herself in Hong Kong — becoming so respected that she instituted her own studio.
Suet Nei was responsible for creating some of the most lasting images of him/her heroes, including the “cool, unbending hero” of The Deadly Dragon Sword (1968) and the “Mad Diva” of The One-Armed Magic Nun (1969)! “I was a girl then and didn’t know fear,” she was quoted. She did trampoline jumps, leaps from rooftops, and wire work. She drew the line, however, at somersaults for some reason. For that, in came stuntmen, such as Tsui Chung-hok, who was known as the “king of the doubles for female leads.”
An even more popular kung fu contemporary was Connie Chan Po-chu, who became so skilled in playing men that, when she played a woman, she didn’t recognize herself. “My movements were hard and rough,” she said. “I was like a man playing a woman.” Although never quite credible to Western eyes, she more than sufficed for her Asian audience in such films as The Six-Fingered Lord of the Lute (1965), Paragon of Sword and Knife, and The Virgin Sword (1969), among others.
But for kung fu fans, she was best loved as on-screen partner to the iconic Josephine Siao. Born in China, but moved to Hong Kong at the age of two, she first appeared in movies at the age of six. Like Connie, she was a teen idol, but unlike Connie, she got to play a woman most often. In fact, in several of the films they made together, Josephine played Connie’s lady love. Always a pioneer, Siao co-directed a ground-breaking independent kung fu film, Jumping Ash, in 1976.
Her contemporary, Hsu (aka Xu) Feng was notable for starring in many of legendary director King Hu’s films, including The Valiant Ones (1974) and Raining in the Mountains (1979), even though, as she put it; “I am a martial arts star who hardly knows any martial arts.” It helped when she had people like Sammo Hung to instruct her, but she also had a valuable point of view. “Whenever I’m making a movie, I think of it as my last, so I really try my best.”
But all bowed before the power and talent of Cheng Pei-pei. Born in 1946, she became famous in King Hu’s lyrical, exciting, artful 1966 Shaw Brothers Studio film Come Drink with Me (which was only her fifth film), in which she played knightess errant “Golden Swallow,” who takes on a group of kidnapping bandits. She immediately became a sought-after heroine, who such directors as Lo Wei, Ho Meng-hua, and even musical master Inoue Umetsugu vied for. Then Chang Cheh got her for his nominal sequel, Golden Swallow (1968).
Not surprisingly, the creator of “yang gang” used it as a showcase for co-star Jimmy Wang Yu, but Cheng quickly locked horns with the chauvinist director. “I threatened to walk off the picture if he didn’t [treat me equally],” she has said. “I love to do fight scenes!” Pei-pei made many popular action films, including The Golden Sword (1969), Lady of Steel (1970), and The Shadow Whip (1971) until she was declared the “Queen of Swords.” But then she went to America to marry. Not to worry, however. She’ll be seen again.
That era’s “Queen of Kung Fu,” however, was undoubtedly Angela Mao. There had been kung fu heroines and slashing swordswomen before her, but never had a female action star taken center stage in world cinema, and held it, the way Angela Mao did. To many martial arts movie fans, she is, and will always be, “The” woman. Mao, like the Venoms, was a graduate of a Taiwanese Opera school. Luckily for her, and her legion of fans, she was born late enough in the century (1952) when women were finally allowed to play the female roles in these fascinating Chinese mixes of grand opera and martial ballet.
In fact, she became one of the most popular and famous wu dan (female martial leads) of her time — known for being able to deflect twelve spears in succession with one foot (tantamount to Pavarotti hitting a high C three times in a row). She never failed to bring down the house, but the then prevalent Shaw Brothers Studio didn’t really recognize the value of a main woman action star. They, after all, had Lily Li, who seemed satisfied with supporting roles. Besides, to directors like Chang Cheh, women were window dressing, and fighting women might as well be boys. They felt that in the eyes of the public, a fighting girl lost her femininity.
“To tell you the truth, they don’t look at me the same way they look at purely dramatic actresses,” fellow Shaw Studio actress, Kara Hui Ying-hung told me. “They don’t want to fool around with me because they know I can fight.”
Upstart studio Golden Harvest, however, didn’t hold as much sexism. Studio head Raymond Chow would do whatever he needed to get attention, and films starring an accomplished kicker might just do the trick. Angela co-starred in a few ensemble pieces, but it was in 1972, with her first major leading role, Lady Whirlwind, that she caught the populace by surprise. Director Huang Feng understood her allure and showcased her in a series of increasingly frenetic and exciting films: The Angry River (1971), Hapkido (aka Lady Kung Fu, 1972), When Taekwondo Strikes (choreographed by Sammo Hung, 1973), and The Opium Trail (aka Deadly China Doll, 1973), among others.
She was so well established, in fact, that when it came time for King Hu to find a suitable female co-star for Hsu Feng in The Fate of Lee Khan, he signed Angela. And, of course, when it came time to find the actress to play Bruce Lee’s sister in Enter the Dragon, it was Angela. From there, sadly, there was no place to go but down. As if you hadn’t figured it out by now, China is a paternalistic culture, and the desire to present Mao as more “ladylike” never died, despite the fact that she was a third-dan hapkido black belt in real life.
She was dressed as a boy through most of Stoner (his name, not his vice, 1974), a fairly sad attempt to milk the then nearly nonexistent fame of George Lazenby, who, as I have obsessively repeated, would be forever pitied as the man who turned his back on James Bond after barely completing On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Angela even tried to kick-start her comparatively stalled career by reteaming with Huang Feng for The Himalayan (1976), which remains one of Korean kicker Tan Tao-liang’s best films. Finally, after such forgettable Taiwanese fare as Snake Deadly Act (1979), she married … and in her male-dominated society, that meant she had to stop working — a fate which befell many great Hong Kong screen sirens, even as late as the 1990s.
Other filmmakers used talented female kung fu stars, like Sharon Yang Pan-pan in Story of Drunken Master (aka Drunken Fist Boxing, 1979) and Hsia Kuang-li in The Leg Fighters (aka The Invincible Kung fu Legs aka The Incredible Kung Fu Legs 1980), but even Kara Hui Ying-hung didn’t graduate to full-fledged superstar status in Angela’s wake. The only person who really came close to filling the gap was the previously lionized Lily Li (aka Lee Li-li). Born in 1950, she entered the Shaw’s actors training course at the tender age of fourteen. With her attractive, yet assured and even maternal, good looks, she quickly became one of the Studio’s most valued players. She had already been featured in ten films, for a variety of directors, when she achieved public prominence in The Wandering Swordsman (1969), starring David Chiang and directed by Chang Cheh.
In addition to credible performances in romances and Cantonese comedies, a good female action star is rare, so Chang Cheh and Liu Chia-liang constantly put her to work. Even with excellent performances in The Heroic Ones (1970), Challenge of the Masters, and Shaolin Mantis, she never got the kind of starring roles that Angela Mao essayed. The only time she got close was in Executioners from Shaolin, highlighted by the wedding-night battles between her crane style and Chen Kuan-tai’s tiger style. But even that didn’t do the trick. Soon Li became a free agent, continuing to give exceptional performances in more than a hundred films and TV series, working with everyone from Jackie Chan to Yuen Wo-ping.
Meanwhile, the kung fu film industry continued the way it had always been: a boy’s club. Most actresses got movie roles via beauty pageants, and few (outside of Jackie, Sammo, and Karl Maka) were going to risk those faces and forms by putting them too close to flying fists and feet. Possibly the greatest exception was the remarkable Brigitte Lin Ching-hsia. Discovered at fourteen, she’s had four distinct eras in her career, starting with a beloved series of romantic melodramas which seemed to take over her personal life from 1973 to 1981. Wanting to leave all that behind, she threw herself into a series of campy, crazy, action films with titles like Pink Force Commando (1982), Seven Black Heroines (1982), and the aforementioned Fantasy Mission Force — all directed by hackmeister Kevin Chu Yen-ping.
Finally, Tsui Hark cast her as a demigod in his landmark extravaganza Zu Warriors of the Magic Mountain (1982) — which introduced Star Wars-style special effects to Hong Kong cinema. That led her back into better filmmakers’ good graces. Jackie cast her in Police Story before Tsui showcased her in his remarkable feminist-romantic-action-comedy-drama Peking Opera Blues (1986) alongside co-stars Sally Yeh Tse-man and Cherie Chung Chor-hung (not to mention such Shaw Studio stalwarts as Ku Feng, Wu Ma, and Li Hai-sheng). The latter film set her on an entirely new road. As beautiful as she was, she played an obviously heterosexual woman who preferred dressing as a man in the film — as a statement of political power and inequality.
That statement became an intriguing shout when she then played a man who became a woman via a particularly powerful but emasculating kung fu style in Swordsman 2 (1992). She played variations on the role for years afterwards — most notably in Dragon Inn (1992), the amply symbolic Swordsman 3: The East is Red (1993), and Deadful Melody (1994). But arguably, her most memorable contribution to the kung fu genre was the mesmerizing romantic wuxia tragedy The Bride With White Hair (1993). Directed by Ronny Yu, who is now known for his elevated slasher movies (2001’s Bride of Chucky and 2003’s Freddy vs. Jason), it told a particularly powerful and poetic Romeo and Juliet-like Jiang Hu tale involving sword sects as well as a villain who is/are a pair of male/female Siamese twins joined at the spine(!).
Finally, Brigitte found her happy cinematic ending by way of Wong Kar-wai, who featured her in his famous art films Chungking Express (1994) and Ashes of Time (1994). Then Lin gracefully retired from acting. Even in the worst of her one hundred and six films, she was never less than a class act.
Meanwhile, the boys’ club that was the 1980s kung fu film industry rolled on. That is, until the pendulum swung again, and mogul/producer Dickson Poon got a really bad idea: Why not launch his fledgling D&B production company with a film about two butt-kicking beauties? Why not, indeed. The resulting film, Yes Madam (1985, but made years earlier) — named for what police subordinates say when replying to a superior female officer — was deemed unreleasable when director Corey Yuen Kwai finished it … possibly out of standard operating sexism.
Kwai (aka Ying Gang-ming), another Peking Opera school “Little Fortune,” was already well-established as an actor, stuntman, and choreographer. But his directing career had just begun, having helmed the surprise hit Ninja in the Dragon’s Den (one of the first non-Liu Chia-liang films to show Japanese — in this case Hiroyuki Sanada — in a positive light) in 1982. Having lost face by his new film being shelved, off he went to direct, action direct, and write Jean-Claude Van Damme’s breakthrough film No Retreat No Surrender (1985).
But producer Dickson was attracted to one of the starring actresses of Yes Madam, and decided to give her another chance. He showcased her in a new Japanese/Hong Kong co-production called Royal Warriors (1986), directed by noted cinematographer David Chung. This action-packed, over-emotional tale of a female Hong Kong cop and a male Japanese detective running afoul of a killer’s brother after spectacularly foiling a jet hijacking, caught the public’s fancy. But the audience, like Dickson, was especially impressed by the lead actress. She was as beautiful as she was charming and capable, and they wanted to know more about the budding superstar that Poon had dubbed Michelle Khan.
Michelle was born to a lawyer’s family in Ipoh, Malaysia, on August 6, 1962 with the name Yeoh Choo-kheng. Growing up in a tropical, tin-mining, town, young Michelle represented Malaysia in national swimming, diving, and squash competitions. But her real passion was dance (her mom went on record, saying that her daughter started to dance before she could even walk). She eventually attended the London Royal Academy of Dance, but her dreams of ballet stardom were cut short b
y a rotated disk in her spine.
When Michelle returned to Malaysia in 1983, she discovered that her mother had entered her into a national beauty contest, and she was crowned Miss Malaysia at the age of twenty-one. Taking advantage of the travel that came with the contest, she met Dickson Poon, who was looking for someone to do a TV commercial with Jackie Chan. Michelle wound up doing two charming spots with both Chan and Chow Yun-fat. The public reaction was so positive that the producer quickly offered her a film contract. But that, with Yes Madam, seemed over before it began.
But Royal Warriors did what she, Rothrock, Corey Yuen, and sanity could not — its success freed Yes Madam from the vaults and into theaters, where, of course, it became a huge hit. Looking at it now, it’s hard to figure out what anyone could consider unreleasable about it (outside of standard operating sexism). The tale of a female Hong Kong cop and a female Interpol agent running afoul of three petty thieves (played by comic actor John Shum, stuntman/choreographer Mang Hoi, and director Tsui Hark) while trying to bring down a crime lord had snap, crackle and pop to spare. It also had a future action star to whom ignorance was bliss.
“In the beginning, I substituted my lack of experience with guts and bravado,” Michelle told me. On the first day of filming the climatic fight in the villain’s palatial home, Michelle was supposed to do what the action choreographer referred to as an “easy” stunt … which, unbeknownst to Michelle, had already sent one stuntman to the hospital. All she had to do was sit on a balcony railing, fall back, curl the back of her knees on the railing, swing head-first through a pane of glass beneath the railing, grab the legs of two villains, and then pull them back the other way so they could crash to the ground below.