Kung Fu Review: The Tattooed Dragon

Jimmy Wang Yu and Lo Wei are two of the most important figures in kung fu film history. This lesser known but entertaining entry has a solid story and an awesome finale. It also has some value for fans of today’s Bourne series

I was really hooked on kung fu movies by the time I saw this one. I noticed this one was a little grittier. It had a contemporary setting but the action took place in a very rural area. Most of the time the only thing to see in the background were grass fields. This was my introduction to the lower budget films of the ‘70s. These weren’t the relatively lavish films of the Shaw Brothers. No this one was done on the cheap with available sets. Still I didn’t mind. The plot was very straightforward. In fact it was very western.

A gang of bandits steal money meant to help refugees. Into their camp, apparently in the middle of Angkor Wat, they are interrupted by The Dragon, played by Jimmy Wang Yu. The Dragon steals the money back but is wounded. He takes shelter in a village. As it so happens the bandits have set up a casino near the village. The bad guys cheat the villagers out of their life savings. The Dragon comes to the rescue, using his razor sharp hearing to turn the tables on the crooked game. The villains retaliate by killing the Dragon’s friend and he goes to casino one last time for a showdown.

I didn’t know it at the time but Jimmy Wang Yu was one of the most important figures in kung fu cinema. He’s credited with starring in and directing the first kung fu film to emphasis unarmed combat, The Chinese Boxer. Previously kung fu films had been swordplay movies like Come Drink With Me and its sequel Golden Swallow which also starred Wang Yu. Tattooed Dragon was directed by Lo Wei another important figure. As a director he worked with not only Wang Yu but also Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan.

I doubt Chan has anything nice to say about Lo Wei though. His pictures with the director were pretty forgettable. It was his projects with other studios that made Chan a rising star. The final “divorce” between Chan and Lo Wei was far from amicable. It may or may not have involved Triad members. Bruce Lee too had his problems with Lo. His first two big hits were with him but their success was more due to Lee’s charisma and groundbreaking fight choreography. Wang Yu seems to be the only actor who got along with Lo Wei and they brought out the best of each other as in this film. It’s slow in the middle with the action scenes at the beginning and end. Lo Wei loved gambling as this movie and A Man Called Tiger make clear. Despite this the story is solid, easy to follow and holds up to terrible dubbing.

Also in the cast are a pair who would star in their own action franchise a decade later. Samuel Hui plays the Dragon’s doomed friend and Sylvia Chang plays his girlfriend. Both would go on to star in the comedy action Mad Mission movies also known as Aces Go Places. Ms. Chang enjoyed a very long and diverse career. She became a director and writer herself and continued to act, appearing in Eat Drink Man Woman among other films.

Finally there’s Wang Yu’s fighting. For years it’s been derided by kung fu fans. Bey Logan once said he looked like he was trying to claw his opponents faces off. It’s very true that despite Wang Yu’s athletic background, he was a champion swimmer, that he wasn’t nearly as flexible or as acrobatic as later kung fu stars. He couldn’t kick above waist level and even then he rarely had his leg straight. But he was a Shotokan practitioner so it wasn’t like he didn’t know anything about martial arts. Asian Cult Cinema described his approach as no nonsense and when I viewed this movie again for this post I saw what they meant. He actually through in a lot of rough and tumble, down and dirty moves into his fighting. A lot of elbows, knees, and double strikes. His low kicks he aims at opponents’ knees or else he kicks them when they’re already down. In fact his fighting reminded me a little of Jason Bourne. The fighting in those movies wasn’t meant to be pretty. So in a strange way maybe Jimmy Wang Yu is ready for rediscovery.

If he is I’m glad. For further entertainment here is a review of Jimmy Wang Yu’s Australian epic The Man From Hong Kong, a glorious example of two gonzo filmmaking schools come together.

Next up: Avenging Eagle

The Most Influential Sci Fi, Fantasy and Horror Movies Part 4: Thief of Bagdad

Hollywood’s first big budget fantasy adventure would cast a long shadow over Hollywood. The Arabia of myth became the industry’s go to source for the fantastic

Why did it take so long for the Lord of the Rings to make it to the big screen? Was it technology that held Hollywood back? I don’t so. As we’ll see later on, Hollywood never let lousy special effects stop them from doing anything. If anything, making the Lord of the Rings back in the ‘50s or ‘60s would have been much easier as the studio system was still alive and well and capable of turning out gigantic sets, lavish costumes and fielding hundreds of extras and Ray Harryhausen was in his prime. But they never did. And part of the reason was because of this movie made in 1924, nearly three decades before Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Rings.

This wasn’t a huge hit for its star and producer Douglas Fairbanks Sr. It wasn’t something he went back to. By contrast he made two Zorro themed swashbucklers and two Musketeer movies. But it was enough of a hit that it pulled the focus of fantasy movies towards it and its subject matter.

To see this film is to be impressed by it. Sure Fairbanks is sporting the world’s first spray on tan to portray the titular thief.

But the film is full of amazing effects for its days. The thief has to fight his way past a fire breathing dragon. He summons a huge army with magic powder. And of course he and his lady love fly through the air on a magic carpet.

But why Thief of Bagdad and not say King Arthur? It’s funny how the Middle East would come to dominate fantasy movies along with Hercules movies. Very few big budget fantasy films after this one had a medieval European setting. This is more baffling because in the decades that followed, there were medieval sets waiting to be used. Hollywood was churning out plenty of swashbucklers without any fantasy elements. Sure an occasional King Arthur movie cropped up or something like Jack the Giant Killer. But for the most part fantasy in Hollywood meant a trip to a 1001 Arabian Nights territory…or ancient Greek mythology which we’ll get to later.

That’s probably part of the answer. Medieval pictures tended to be rather chaste. Arabian and Greek fantasies allowed Hollywood to show off more skin while still keeping an atmosphere of good wholesome fun.

Thief of Bagdad would be remade several times including a glorious version by the Korda brothers I’ll review later. It might not have been a smash success by Fairbanks’ high standards but just as he gave Hollywood the template for costume swashbucklers with Zorro, the Musketeers, The Black Pirate and Robin Hood, Fairbanks gave Hollywood the template for fantasy adventure for the next several decades.

Next up: Flash Gordon

Kung Fu Review: Master of Kung Fu

This early Shaw Brothers gem has been overlooked in recent times. But it’s one of the most ambitious and thoughtful kung fu films of the ‘70s and deserves to be rediscovered

This was another early kung fu cinema experience for me. Return of the Dragon was the first kung fu movie I had ever seen. Five Shaolin Masters was the first of a long line that I saw on Saturday afternoons via local TV. Master of Kung Fu may have been the second in that series. It’s hard to remember exactly in what order I saw things. But the film really stuck with me. The action was fast and furious. The hero uses a three sectional staff which is like a nunchaku’s bigger, nastier brother. But what really caught my attention was the main character and the story.

The main character is a wise kung fu instructor and it was his kindness and wisdom that I really admired. He wasn’t played by David Chiang or Fu Sheng or any of the other actors I would later recognize. The actor here was Ku Feng and he had much more quiet persona. He was an actor that sucked you in with his performance rather than projecting outward like most kung fu stars do. And his character was fascinating. He forbade his students to fight or look for trouble. He always tried to do what was ethically right. And he had some real tragedy. He’s a master of something called the Death Kick. And back in his younger more reckless days he was goaded into using it on his brother. Now in Chinese culture the word brother gets tossed around a lot so it’s not clear if the guy in question was his actual flesh and blood or just his good friend. But whatever the relationship the result was… well the good news was his Death Kick really worked. I joke but it was presented very well in the movie. It’s shown as being the main motivation for his behavior.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that this character was based on the Chinese folk hero Wong Fei Hung. He’s even called Fei Hung in the original and maybe in the dub. For those who don’t know (and at the time I didn’t) Wong Fei Hung was a larger than life character in Southern China in the 19th and early 20th Centuries. He was renowned as a martial artist and a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine. He was known being completely scrupulous and a pillar of Confucian morality. When the Hong Kong film industry got started they cranked out films about Wong Fei Hung by the bushel. A ton of them were made in the ‘50s and ‘60s and most of those still haven’t been seen here in the West. The Wong Fei Hung character received renewed attention here in the states when he became the main character in Jet Li’s Once Upon a Time in China series.

But of all the films about Wong Fei Hung, Master of Kung Fu is the most ambitious and the most challenging. Instead of being set in the slightly romantic time of the 1890-1900 like Once Upon a Time, Master of Kung Fu transports the character into more or less into the modern age. The filmmakers seem to be asking the question; can a figure like Wong Fei Hung operate in today’s society? And the answer they come up with is ambivalent.

In the movie, Wong Fei Hung and his students are harassed by the school of another kung fu master who sees his pacifism as a sign of weakness. Soon both Fei Hung and his rival become embroiled in a plot by gangsters to rob a rich Westerner. The rich man is holding a martial arts contest to see who will be his new bodyguard. The gangsters send their top fighter into the match against Fei Hung’s rival. They cheat and beat the man nearly to death. Fei Hung intercedes and offers to medically treat the man. At this point in a regular Wong Fei Hung movie, the rival would see the error of his ways and become Fei Hung’s friend. But this movie twists the knife. The gangsters slip poison into the wounded man’s medicine so he dies and it looks like Fei Hung murdered his rival. Our hero tries to do the right thing but the tragedy is compounded. Out of revenge his students are attacked and all of them are killed except for two. This struck me back then as incredibly dark and looks even grimmer now. The decimation of Fei Hung’s school is never addressed. It’s just another something he will have to live with. Eventually Fei Hung brings the evil doers to justice. But there’s no triumph. The happy ending belongs to one of his young students. Fei Hung is left to continue on, now with more ghosts to haunt him. It’s an incredible and brave story to tell. It’s a revisionist story told when the genre was still at its height. It would be like making No Country For Old Men in the middle of the ‘80s action craze.

Master of Kung Fu is now very difficult to find. There are no images to sample on Google or clips on Youtube. That is a shame. This is one kung fu movie that took a huge chance. It’s entertaining even if you know nothing about Wong Fei Hung. And if you’re a fan of the Once Upon a Time in China or Drunken Master series, it’s a must see.

Next up: Tattooed Dragon

The Most Influential Sci Fi, Fantasy and Horror Movies Part 3: Nosferatu

This classic of the silent era gave us an iconic new image of the vampire. Ninety years after it was made, the images still haunt us

Last two parts I mentioned how filmmakers like George Melies and Fritz Lang were ahead of their times. The science fiction and fantasy genres as we know them today are really a product of the Twentieth Century and many of the seminal works were produced after World War II. With Horror fiction it’s sort of reversed. Much of the classic works were written in 19th Century. The Victorians may have been buttoned down but they enjoyed a good scare.

By the 1920s the genre was well established and respectable. Frankenstein was by then over a century old and had been a staple of live theater for almost as long. Poe and Hawthorne were now being marketed to young readers. The decades previous to 1920 were very rich for creepy stories with tales like Turn of the Screw. The problem now was how to create horror that would stand out.

Some people like HP Lovecraft thought all this respectability went against what horror was all about. He set himself to making the genre dangerous and controversial again. He succeeded maybe a little too well in that it would be several decades before anyone even tried to adapt his stories to the cinema. Movie makers in the silent era were satisfied to bring Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to the screen. F.W. Murnau wanted to adapt Dracula but couldn’t obtain the rights. Out of that obstacle a classic was born.

Nosferatu keeps a lot of plot elements from the Dracula novel but in every other respect it is completely different. Count Orlok is a human rat rather than handsome and seductive. His appearance is meant to do one thing; terrify.

The imagery in Nosferatu is some of the scariest in any vampire movie. Murnau used light and shadow to maximum effect. This is one of the first films to show just how cinematic the horror genre would become.

There is no romance to this vampire film. This is about a monster relentlessly attacking a group of people until he is finally destroyed.

Nosferatu instantly became one of the first horror movie classics. People who have never seen a minute of the movie recognize its iconic vampire. To this date there are only two iconic images of the vampire; the seductive Count Dracula and the monstrous Count Orlok.

Next up: Thief of Baghdad

An Open Letter to Team Green Arrow

The internet is buzzing with rumors that Green Arrow will be made into a pilot for the CW. Nobody asked but I’m going to offer my two cents. When it comes to comic book TV and movie projects you can’t assume anything. So if Team Green Arrow has already had this discussion then congratulations you’re off to a good start.

The series has two ways it can go; young Green Arrow or Older Green Arrow. Both versions offer strengths and weaknesses.

With Young Green Arrow you might be thinking this is easy, it would be a continuation of the Smallville series. Except that that Smallville was no longer Smallville by the time it ended. Hell it technically came to an end when Green Arrow appeared IN COSTUME. Remember the primary concept of Smallville originally is this was Clark Kent before he put on the mantel of Superman. The moment Green Arrow showed up Smallville essentially became its own sequel as it was about young heroes in costume; except for Clark who for some reason put off donning the Superman cape for another 5 years. So a continuation would actually be a continuation of Smallville 2.0, young heroes in love. This can work because of one character, Black Canary. The Green Arrow/Black Canary pairing is one of comicdom’s greatest. It’s been going on since the ‘70s. It’s provided loads of sex and is the main reason IO9 ranks it No. 1 on its list of comic book movies that should be R-Rated. But like all good couples there’s been plenty of friction and conflict over the years. They’ve broken up, found new love interests (always another costumed vigilante) only to come back together again. So this would be nothing like Smallville in tone or focus. Think Fraser vs. Cheers. Same character but the show completely changed once Fraser Crane became the focus.

Black Canary will be such a central figure in this show, unless you DON’T want the massive built in audience to tune in. This is a chance to correct a major TV injustice. A decade ago the then WB announced Birds of Prey based on Gail Simone’s hit comic book. The TV writers thought they knew better, didn’t consult Ms. Simone at all and proceeded to create one of that season’s biggest flops. Do yourselves a favor an have a much publicized sit down with Gail Simone to talk about the characters, particularly Black Canary. That alone will give you early points with the fan community. Believe me you’re going to need them because you’re going to rub some fans the wrong way no matter what you do.

And for the love of God please don’t do a Smallville prequel and show how Oliver Queen eventually took up the bow. Prequels suck. It didn’t work out for George Lucas. Do you think there’s a huge fanbase out there that wants to know what Oliver Queen was doing before he was Green Arrow?

Now some on the internet fret whether this show will be Gossip Girl with Weapons. That actually is a good description of the current Green Arrow “family.” You have the two sexy parental figures Green Arrow and Black Canary. Then you have younger characters like Roy Harper, Arrowette, Mia, Connor Hawke. This wouldn’t be a bad set up. The younger characters have diverse backgrounds. Mia was living on the streets and is HIV positive. Arrowette had a privileged upbringing but an overbearing mother. Then there’s Roy Harper and your chance to redress a huge outrage. Roy Harper was an amazing character; a recovering drug addict who was also a single father to an adorable little girl, Lian. But then DC decided to kill Lian off because they wanted to make Roy more “intense.” The result was enormous fan backlash and the new “intense” Roy Harper was something of a joke. For some reason comic books are the one industry where it’s okay to cause massive fan outrage. Don’t expect the same courtesy. Fans will keep shelling out hard earned money for comics but they’ll drop a show they can see for free if they don’t love every second of it. If you put Lian Harper into your show you’ll have a ton of goodwill from fans.

So good luck. I’m hoping this project gets picked up and that it does right by the characters. No matter what you choose to do, there are opportunities. But there are also pitfalls.

Kung Fu Review: The Five Shaolin Masters

This all star epic is a perfect entry into the Shaw Brothers films especially for Star Wars fans

Five Shaolin Masters has a special place in my heart. It was the first kung fu movie I saw after Return of the Dragon and it blew me away. It was poorly dubbed but that didn’t matter, there was just so much action and adventure it captured my imagination.

The plot is simple, after the burning of the Shaolin Temple by Manchu soldiers, five of the monks escape and join the local resistance movement. They are hunted by five enemy martial arts experts including a traitorous former monk. In the finale they fight the five enemy masters and win. It’s a simple plot that’s easy to follow despite atrocious dubbing and an unfamiliar setting. That’s the secret to the appeal of a kung fu movie; the studios kept their plots short and easy and put all their energy into fight choreography and stuntwork. Joe Bob Briggs in his book Profoundly Disturbing said that no Western studio would even dream of putting as much time and effort into a fight sequence as the Hong Kong Studios did, but for the Shaw Brothers and their counterparts there was no other choice. The fight scenes weren’t just a compliment to the story, they were the story. The actors were telling a story through their stuntwork and fight scenes. Even at a young age I responded to this. And why not? Despite every critic at the time looking down his or her nose at the genre this is a purely cinematic way of story telling. It’s all action just as it was in the silent era. It wasn’t until after Jackie Chan started making extremely obvious references to Buster Keaton that the Western critical community finally took notice. But Chan didn’t invent this still, it had been in developed over the course of decades in Hong Kong and Five Shaolin Masters is a fine example of the mid ‘70s style.

Another big reason I loved this film so much is that I was a sci-fi geek and I loved Star Wars. Five Shaolin Masters is part of a kung fu sub-genre called, appropriately the Shaolin Cycle. As it turned out The Shaolin Cycle was a great gateway for a Star Wars fan to get into the kung fu movies. The Shaolin Cycle is about the Shaolin monks and their resistance to the Manchu Dynasty in the late 17th Century. The Manchu Dynasty is probably the most hated in Chinese history. And much of the criticism is well earned, just see Last Emperor. They were very malleable bad guys in that regardless of whether you lived in the PRC, Taiwan, or Hong Kong they were easy to hate. If you were a democracy advocate they represented totalitarian authority. If you were a nationalist they represented foreign domination. If you were a communist they represented feudal lords oppressing the common man. But the great thing is they make compelling villains to those outside the Chinese community. To me they were the evil empire. The resistance movement was the rebel alliance. The Shaolin masters were Jedi and the Manchu masters were the Sith Lords. Kung Fu was this strange discipline that they used in combat, much like the Force. It’s well known that George Lucas was inspired by Samurai films when he was creating Star Wars. It’s incredible that the Shaolin Cycle seems to fit his world even better than the samurai films do. Imagine what Star Wars would have looked like if Lucas had discovered the Shaolin Cycle.

Five Shaolin Masters also has one of the great superstar casts of any Shaw Brothers movie. David Chiang and Ti Lung had starred in some of the first great Shaw Brothers classics in the early ‘70s and at this point were still in the prime of their careers. David Chiang plays the leader of the five monks. The role represents something of a departure for him. In movies like Vengeance and Shaolin Handlock, Chiang is more impulsive and often brutally reckless. But here he and Ti Lung play the older brothers of the group and they have to be more leveled headed. Chiang is the group’s strategist and planner and he manages to convey a lot of intelligence.

Opposite David Chiang and Ti Lung are Sheng Fu, also known as Alexander Fu Sheng and Chi Kuan Chun who were just starting to make their names. Sheng Fu is known as the James Dean of kung fu films and not just because his life was cut tragically short by a car accident. Sheng Fu specialized in playing rebellious youth. I’ll visit several of his films later. In this one stands out as the hotheaded youngster of the group. His mannerisms and even his look are anachronistic. He’s clearly sporting ‘70s hair. But provides a lot of energy and humor in between the fight scenes.

The villains here are very well cast as well. All of the actors here would go on to have long careers in Hong Kong cinemas. Liang Chia-Jen would become a kung fu hero in his own right in films like The Victim. But the villain who nearly steals the entire movie is Wang Lung Wei who plays the legendary traitor Ma Fu Yi. Wang just has the perfect look for a kung fu villain. He would have a very long career and would reappear in the ‘80s to fight Jackie Chan in Project A Part 2 and provide a memorable fight in Millionaire’s Express.

Five Shaolin Masters lit the fuse for me. After that I watched these movies religiously for next five years. I caught every one that was on TV whether it sucked or not. I’m very glad to see it is revered as one of the best from the Shaw Brothers.

Next Up: Masters of Kung Fu

The Most Influential Sci Fi, Fantasy and Horror Movies Part 2: Metropolis

The First Classic Sci Fi Movie Was Way Ahead of Its Time. It’s a Modern Science Fiction Story Created 10 Years Before Modern Science Fiction

Going a little out of order but so what. Metropolis is a classic of the silent era. It’s one of the first great science fiction films. Most impressively it is a modern science fiction story that was made a full decade before modern science fiction really got started. The term “Science Fiction” wasn’t even in use at the time. Hugo Gernsback is credited with coming up with the term “scientifiction” in 1926 but switched to the easier to understand and pronounce “science fiction” in 1929.

In 1937 John W. Campbell became the editor of Astounding and instituted a policy that moved the genre from the pulp fantasies of the 1920s into what we now call Science Fiction; stories based on speculation about the future, where some advancement or discovery becomes the basis for the conflict and the plot.

Campbell’s policies ushered in writers like Robert Heinlein and Arthur C. Clark and took the genre out of the Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers era and moved it towards works like Dune and Childhood’s End.

But all of that lay a decade in the future when Metropolis premiered. But Campbell probably would have approved of most of the film if not the entire work. There is some mysticism but mostly what people take away from this film is the incredible vision of the future.

The sharp divide between the workers and the rich is something that was going on in society in the ‘20s. Fritz Lang simply extrapolated what would happen if the trend continued. Something that is very Campbellian. The movie didn’t invent the dystopia but it was one of the first to portray it in such stark terms.

The term “robot” had only just been invented. The play R.U.R. premiered in 1921, just 6 years prior to this film. Yet here we see one of the definitive robots in sci fi. Not only that, but a robot duplicate; a trope that would reappear again and again from the Twilight Zone to Austin Powers.

And of course you can’t have a robot duplicate without a mad scientist.

All of this combined to make a classic that was in every sense of the word ahead of its time; every bit as ground breaking in its subject matter and story as with its visuals which became the standard for science fiction design throughout the ‘30s and early ‘40s.

Next up: Nosferatu