Stop me if you have heard this plot before. A young boy witnesses his father
being killed by a gang of three men and swears revenge. When he has grown
up he learns martial arts and thinks he is ready but gets his clock cleaned
when he faces them. Then an old man with shaggy gray hair takes him under
his wing and puts him through strenuous training and teaches him the deadly
Eagle Shadow Fist. And then he is ready once again to take revenge. And it's
a comedy. Following on the heels of the success that Jackie Chan had with
Snake in the Eagles Shadow and Drunken Master both released in 1978, this
Golden Harvest film followed much the same recipe. This one was even put together
by the Yuen Clan with their father taking on the role of the old teacher.
Except instead of Jackie they had Billy Chong. And Chong is great though
obviously he did not have the same career arc as Jackie Chan who was able
to transition over to a more contemporary and sophisticated style of martial
arts film. Kung-fu comedy is basically a thing of the past and often looked
down on as being plain goofy - but the comedy is rarely verbal - it is physical
and much of the time the choreography is as complex as during the fights.
It takes perfect timing.
For years I had heard about Billy Chong but had never seen any of his films
till these past few days. But I had gotten it into my head that he was all
fists and brutality with no personality - a killing machine. At least based
on the two films I have now seen nothing could be further from the truth.
He bubbles up with personality - very genial, impish at times, cocky as hell,
a large smile usually plastered across his face and eyes that speak to the
humor of the situation. And then of course he goes into action, a flurry of
kicks and punches - but even then he sometimes stops and has a laugh. It
is too bad - from my perspective - that he didn't go further with HK films
into the glorious 1980s but instead went back home to Indonesia to continue
his career there. A fight between him and Jackie would have been gangbusters.
Ah Wen (Chong) tries to join a martial arts school with zero skills and
zero money. So they take him on but relegate him to help in the kitchen.
The school and the masters are totally incompetent - kung fu comedy incompetent
- and he learns nothing. In the kitchen he feuds and plays practical jokes
on the old cook. Who always one-ups him. One night as Ah Wen is ready to
quit the school he begins to leave at night when he sees the old cook practicing
kung-fu in the garden. He is in awe and begs him to take him on as a student.
The cook finally agrees.
He is of course the legendary Simon Yuen. Yuen was trained in Peking Opera
and appeared in martial arts films beginning in the 1940s - but he is most
famous for having eleven children - six of whom became integral to the development
of martial arts films. His career had this huge resurgence in the 1970s when
he took on many similar roles as an eccentric mentor and teacher. A few of
his classics were Drunken Master, Heroes of the East, The Mystery of Chess
Boxing and Dance of the Drunk Mantis. He has nearly 350 film credits as an
actor and over 40 as a choreographer. By this time he was 67 years old and
he isn't really capable of doing the physical action - so the filmmakers learn
masterly to interchange him with a double. If you can't see his face, chances
are it's the double. This was sadly to be one of his last films as he died
of a heart attack within a year. But the Yuen Clan would go on.
The film follows the well-tread path that you expect as Ah Wen gets badly
savagely beaten up by the same three who killed his father. Among them is
a blind man who fights by sound - he is the wonderfully weird looking Addy
Sung who I just saw recently as the good guy for a change in Hired Guns. Then
another one of them is deaf played by Brandy Yuen and their leader is played
by Chu Tit-wo with the Double Phoenix Fist at his disposal. Only the Eagle
Shadow Fist has a chance against it! It doesn't get down and dirty till two
thirds of the way in with some light kung-fu fights and comedy until then
- but when he finally goes against his father's killers there is some terrifically
choreographed and executed martial arts. Chong is clearly in incredible shape
- during the training he has to do upside down push-ups with Yuen on top
of him. It hurt just to look at it. My video was clearly sourced from two
different prints - one dubbed, one subtitled - and it does back and forth
which takes a little getting used to.
