Dance of the Drunk Mantis

   
Director: Yuen Wo-ping
Year:  1979
Rating: 6.0
AKA - Drunken Master 2

The plot of this kung-fu comedy could fit on a large postage stamp, but that just leaves more time for some very nifty and astonishingly intricate martial arts. It is rare for more than a few minutes to go by without some combat breaking out on the screen. The vast majority of it is comedic in nature but that doesn't lessen the skills needed to make it look good. At the same time as good as it is, it does begin to feel repetitive after a while and the comedy - in particular the main character - gets tiresomely goofy. But each fight on its own is something to witness - not brutal - just so well choreographed with incredible acrobatics. At times it is like watching a dance being performed. The wine drinking sequence is wonderfully clever as are some of the training scenes.



This is the sequel to Drunken Master (1978) that was the breakthrough film for Jackie Chan as well as for Simon Yuen Siu-Tin. Both films were produced by Seasonal Films that was owned by Ng See-yuen who had formed the company back in 1974. He was the person who thought Jackie Chan would be perfect for his idea of a kung-fu comedy and so borrowed him from Lo Wei who had Jackie under contract. Wei had done his best to make Chan a star but the films all bombed - still Ng saw potential and starred him first in Snake in the Eagle's Shadow and then this film. After Drunken Master Jackie had to go back to Lo Wei but he was now a star. Without Jackie, they took another one of the Yuen Clan to sort of take his place - not Wong Fei-hung as was Chan's character but another young man without a lot of skills initially.




They bring a lot of the same talent with them - director Yuen Woo-ping directed both previous films, the Korean Taekwondo expert Hwang Jang-lee is again the villain as he was in both films, the kung-fu female Linda Lin-ying was in Drunken Master (and had gone to the same Peking Opera School as Jackie but years before he had) and Simon Yuen Siu-Tin returns again as the old master. Simon Yuen is of course famous for his sons who all formed the Yuen Clan but he also had a lengthy career in martial arts films going back to the 1940's appearing in many of the Wong Fei-hung films. He was never a star though until this amazing late life burst in which he played basically the same character in a number of films - all scrunched into a few brief years before he passed away in 1979. In 1979 he appeared in about 18 films though some were released in 1980 after his death. I doubt I would even recognize him if I saw him in one of his early films I am so used to seeing him with his gray birds nest thatch of hair and red nose. By this time he wasn't able to perform a lot of his acrobatic moves and they are doubled by Brandy Yuen - not one of his sons but a disciple who took his masters name (he is also the fake Beggar So).



I will see if I can fit this on a postage stamp. The brother of the villain in Drunken Master comes looking for revenge against Beggar So (Simon Yuen). Beggar So by the way was a real life character famous for his drunken boxing style and was one of the legendary Ten Tigers of Canton. The villain Rubber Legs has a student with him - Corey Yuen - more famous for his later action choreography than his acting but he has three fights in this. Beggar So has just returned to town after a long absence to immediately get into a fight with his wife - the before mentioned Lin-ying - and to discover that he now has an adopted grown up son, named Foggy.



Foggy played by Yuen Shun-Yi is as annoying as hell throughout the film and since he is the hero that is a problem. His physical skills are amazing - his acting not so much - he never became a star though he appeared in over 100 films and choreographed quite a few - as he got older he mainly played bad guys. Beggar So gives up on training him and so Foggy goes to his uncle for training. Within a few days he is ready to go. The uncle is played by Yam Sai-Goon, who had already been around for 30 years in films but I know him for his films in the 1990s - Heroic Trio, Iron Monkey, The East is Red and A Hero Never Dies. So if you are ever in the mood for a film low on story but high on wonderfully choreographed martial arts, this might do.
I should mention that I saw this in the English dubbed version which makes everything worse.