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