I got Jami a trio of what are supposed to be the best Sammo Hung films, the portly childhood pal of Jacky Chan, who is a favorite of ours already in such collaborations as Wheels on Meals, Project A, and Dragons Forever. First to be viewed was this one, which Sammo was making at the same time that Jacky was working on the immortal Drunken Master, and it can hold its head up in that exalted company. Sammo (in a distractingly awful monk-like bald wig - why?) plays a somewhat buffoonish seller of rice cakes (that is, he is at the beginning, but gives it up after a pair of his "friends" manage to "scam" (or so the subtitles said, although it didn't seem to be a scam, more an unwise bet) him out of his entire stock. He goes to the bank for advice from "Cashier Hua" (what was he called before he got the job, I wonder), who will be our other Warrior, and who is played in his debut by the delightfully named Korean actor/martial artist Casanova Wong, who (rather unkindly) points out that he would've eaten the stock anyway. On Hua's advice Sammo's "Fatty" Chun takes up a job transporting literal shit, which will be safe both from scamming and eating. This is just a preamble before the plot gets going: Sammo is a student of (famous, actual) Wing Chung teacher Leung Tsan,
who is a noble and peace-loving man, who can also beat the shit out of anyone. Early on we see that he has a regular table at restaurant that is taken by a group of soldiers who seem new to the area, and while his niece, who is with him, is ready to fight them, he calmly disengages and takes her away. Meanwhile, Cashier comes back to the bank after work to return a banknote he accidentally had in his pocket (demonstrating his unimpeachable character) and overhears a plot to kill off the mayor by Mr. Mok and his band of henchmen, who include the rude soldiers from before. Cashier runs to warn the mayor but is headed off by a man who works for him
who listens to the news, asks the dreaded question "have you told anyone else about this?" and then takes Hua off to a remote location where, he says, the Mayor will meet him in private. Of course, Mok and his henchmen show up instead (in broad daylight, so presumably this is the next day). Hua puts up a good fight but is pretty badly beaten up by the time he runs off into the trees with them in hot pursuit. He collapses in front of Fatty's house, and is whisked away by Fatty to be nursed back to health at Leung Tsan's school. Meanwhile the bad guys, unable to find Hua, murder his mother (with whom he is said to be close) to flush him out. As he recovers Hua sends Fatty to give her a message, but when he discovers her dead he tries to protect Hua as long as possible. Fatty also tries to warn the mayor and his bodyguard that somebody's trying to kill the mayor, but they don't believe him until... they are surrounded in the middle of the countryside by the same group of baddies. Realizing his fatal error, the bodyguard puts up a good fight (we've already had three great fight sequences and there are more to come!) but alas, he and the mayor meet a predictable fate.
Hua recovers and Fatty reveals his mother's death, and Hua is desperate to fight the baddies, but Fatty convinces him that first he needs to learn Wing Chung from Leung Tsan. Leung doesn't want to take Hua on as a pupil (realizing that Hua will use the skills to take revenge) but Fatty more-or-less tricks Leung into taking on Hua as a pupil. Then we get the usual montage of Hua learning to kick ass, including pole skills
(smashing olive pits on the ground, hitting a pendulum through a small ring) and fighting those weird wooden-poles-with-chair-legs-coming-off-them that we've seen Jacky practicing his skills on in many a movie, only with the added wrinkle that there are two of them and they're on little rails and can come at you. Oh, and there's also blindfolded fighting that will come in useful later.
MEANWHILE, Mok and crew are worried that Leung might be a problem, so they ambush him in his favorite restaurant (his predictable routine is his undoing) and, while he puts up the most valiant fight (even with his foot in a bear trap) he is eventually dispatched, and his body bought to his school and dumped in front of his appalled pupils. Then they are dispatched, mainly by Ho's three worst henchmen, one of whom has skin of iron,
another of whom is called "Tiger" and is a spear expert. Well, almost all are: Hua and the niece escape and Fatty feigns death by daubing the blood of a fellow student on his face.
Well, they regroup and basically the entire rest of the film is one fight sequence after another. Standouts are when Fatty, who is supposed to be fighting one of the unarmed henchmen but gets the name wrong and ends up with Tiger, lures him into the dark bamboo and uses skills learned in the training sequence of reacting with his other senses than sight and manages to beat Tiger to death. Yes, this one is definitely more violent than the contemporary Jacky Chan vehicles. There's a significant amount of (incredibly lurid) blood spattered in the course of this movie and a very high body count. Alas it will include the niece (whom we recognize from the Jacky film Young Master, and who wields dual blades very impressively) - after all, it's not Warriors Three - before the denouement, when we discover that the seemingly old Mr. Mok has been wearing a mask all along, and is actually young and looks like a vampire
(and seems to be able to float like one). It takes both Sammo and Hua teaming up to take him down
(Sammo takes the punishment, Hua deals it out, including one incredibly impressive leap-across-a-table-while-turning-360-degrees kick that I would have sworn required wires, but (we saw in the accompanying documentary) was 100% real (Casanova was hired for his amazing kicking and jumping skills)). NOW who's going to be mayor?
The documentary revealed that the fights really did use a style called Wing Chung that apparently was (a) comparatively simple and direct, (b) invented by a woman and considered "feminine" but that didn't seem to worry any of the men involved in the film, and (c) very cinematic. So everyone involved took several months training to pick up the moves (and when interviewed, bemoaned the fact that nobody does their own stunts any more so action stars aren't really good at Kung Fu, but at the same time conceded that it's nice that you can use pads these days and don't have to spend weeks in the hospital after the film wraps!). Overall, solid entertainment, and an excellent print, crystal clear and incredibly vibrant - Arrow is clearly the Criterion of pulp cinema.
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