I want my money back. There are two things about this Shaw Brothers film
that really annoyed me. First it is a kung-fu comedy, the bane of my Hong
Kong cinematic viewing. I know they were a big deal around this time but
in general they drive me nuts with their brand of broad idiot comedy. A little
is fine but when it overwhelms the film, it is just too much for me. And
this film crosses the line from some very solid kung-fu to too much dimwitted
comedy. But ok - I get it - it was popular but for me hasn't aged very well.
Later on Jackie and Sammo were to insert comedy into their films but they
did it with a degree of sophistication and moderation.
But my main issue with this film was how my expectations were shattered.
In the title is the word Tigress and starring in the film is Kara Hui Ying-hung,
one of my favorite Girls with Guns stars but who started off years earlier
in Shaw Brothers films - her two best known being The Lady is a Boss
and My Young Auntie. Both of those came after this film but still I had expectations
that she would be the headliner in the film. Nope. Not even close. A bunch
of the other cast get way more time than she does. And more action. She is
barely in this damn film and has no great action scenes. In the finale she
shows up, trades some blows and then gets beaten. What the hell. Clearly
a bad case of translation in the title I would expect. There is also no Shaolin
anything in this film - but that seems common in a lot of kung-fu films.
Put Shaolin in the title no matter what.
Instead the star is Lau Kar-yung, a nephew of Lau Kar-leung. His martial
arts skills are terrific and some of his action sequences are very good but
he isn't particularly charismatic and carries no weight. He certainly isn't
Kara Hui who every time she shows up you are thinking, ok now they are going
to let her do her thing - because her thing is very good. Not that you would
know it from this film. She is like a Tigress on a rope.
This is very imitative of other kung-fu comedies with the typical plot -
a young man Ah San (Lau) arrives in a new town with kung-fu ability, but
as he finds out not enough and so looks for teachers to help him. It also
has a character that is usually reserved for Dean Shek and another one that
normally would go to Simon Yuen. Ah San gets on the wrong side of a band
of villains who sell fake medicine and when business is slow beat up people
to create customers. They beat him up and he is left for dead but he is saved
by Hong (Kara) who takes him home where her grandparents - the Simon Yuen
like drunken character (Huang Ha) and the ferocious Xiao (Liu Jui-yi) who
is a master of the Leper Fist - because she is a leper and she throws him
into a leper colony to train. Eventually there are a couple good showdowns
that are fairly serious but they don't make up for all the preceding bad
comedy and the lack of Kara. Directed by Law Kei who directed a whole
bunch of films you have never heard of. Damn, I was so looking forward to
this and Kara.
