Knockabout (1979) & Dreadnaught (1981)

This week, a look at a couple of new Eureka Classics Blu-rays that are released today. First up is Knockabout, an early example of Hong Kong’s kung fu comedy craze, and the first film to star Sammo Hung (who also directed it) and Yuen Biao together.

Bryan Leung Kar-Yan is Dai Pao, while Yuen Biao, in his first leading role, is his brother Yi Pao. They’re are a pair of low-grade grifters who would happily rip each other off if the chance arose. They do enjoy the odd success – like conning a gold dealer who is equally greedy and gullible, but they pick the wrong mark in Old Fox (played by Lau Kar-Wing in a not terribly convincing grey wig).

Outwitted by the older man, they seek revenge by attempting to beat him up. This is another bad idea and results in him giving them both black eyes. Sensing that learning a mastery of kung fu could come in handy whenever their scams fail, they offer to become his students. Old Fox is reluctant but eventually relents, enlisting the brothers to help him in his struggle against some longstanding enemies.

Old Fox really is far from the kindly and virtuous master that we usually meet in kung fu movies, as the brothers will soon discover to their cost.

The balance between comedy and martial arts tips in favour of the former for much of the movie with Yuen Biao and Leung Kar-yan making for a highly likeable double act.

The role of Yi Pao was intended to launch Yuen Biao into the kind of stardom that his fellow Peking Opera School pals Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung were already experiencing after box office hits like Drunken Master and Enter the Fat Dragon.

Biao did go on to enjoy a long and successful career, without ever reaching the heights of his two ‘brothers’. His acrobatic cartwheels, kicks and backflips are a true joy to watch here, and Sammo Hung’s Beggar putting him through his paces with a skipping rope is one of the great martial arts training sequences. Sammo, incidentally, is predictably good in the role of the jovial beggar, a man with a pet monkey and some kiss ass monkey kung fu moves. As for ‘Beardy’ Leung, despite having never studied any martial arts, he looks pretty accomplished in his fight scenes.

The cast are all in good form actually, Karl Maka’s memorable cameo as Captain Baldy being only one of many highlights. The movie is a delight which keeps getting better and better. Its ferocious finale is one of the longest in Hong Kong action movie history and entirely justifies its length.

Next up, another kung fu cult favourite, this time one directed by Yuen Woo-ping, the legendary action choreographer of The Matrix, Kill Bill and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Yuen Woo-ping plunges us straight into the action here with an eruption of mayhem in a teahouse, which leaves a number of police officers and the wife of a fearsome criminal dead.

That criminal, known as White-Fronted Tiger (Yuen Shun-yee), seeks out an old pal who lets him hide out with a theatrical troupe he is involved with. It’s here his path crosses with Little Gueng (Yuen Biao), a laundry worker who is scared of dogs; scared of the men who refuse to pay their laundry bills; and even more than a little scared of his domineering big sister – who beats him up because he’s so hopeless at collecting debts. Needless to say, even though he doesn’t know the true identity of the troupe’s newcomer, he’s terrified of White-Fronted Tiger. Worse still, the psychotic wrongdoer takes an immediate dislike to him.

Maybe Gueng’s best pal Leung Foon (Bryan Leung Kar-yan) can persuade his master Wong Fei-hung (Kwan Tak-hing) to teach the fearful young man the fighting skills required to take on the man that Gueng calls Painted Face.

Nobody could ever accuse Yuen Woo-ping of being scared to shift tone. Dreadnaught begins like a Chinese version of a spaghetti western, then switches into slapstick mode soon after. There is some superb physical comedy on display, such as Gueng demonstrating his unorthodox kung fu method of drying laundry – later referenced by Joel Schumacher in Batman Forever – and also some less amusing broad Hong Kong humour, although I did laugh at one visual gag involving some incompetent police officers drawing the wrong conclusion about a dead man covered by a blanket.

There are also elements of the buddy movie, while the final third of the film strays into serial killer territory – and it is bizarre that a movie with cross-eyed cops and men with weird hair sprouting from unsightly facial warts also manages to feature a genuinely unsettling scene when Leung Foon clashes with White-Fronted Tiger.

Consistently entertaining, Dreadnaught also marked the final time that Kwan Tak-hing portrayed Cantonese folk hero Wong Fei-hung – a man also portrayed onscreen by Jackie Chan and Jet Li. The actor bowed out on a high on what is said to have been his 77th time in the role. No, that’s not a typo.

Tak-hing, who was in his mid-seventies during filming, even features prominently in the film’s standout scene, a long brawl between two Lion Dance teams that brilliantly showcases Woo-ping’s virtuoso choreography skills.

This Eureka Classics releases of Knockabout and Dreadnaught are their UK debuts on Blu-ray, both in brand new 2K restorations.

Special features on both include limited edition O-Card slipcases featuring new artwork by Darren Wheeling [2000 copies]; reversible sleeve design featuring original poster artwork; new feature length audio commentaries by Frank Djeng & Michael Worth, and new feature length audio commentaries by Mike Leeder & Arne Venema, plus collector’s booklets featuring new writing by James Oliver.

For more on Knockabout, click here.

For more on Dreadnaught, click here.

Mr. Vampire (Made in Hong Kong #2)

Friday saw freezing temperatures in my part of the world (-7 overnight) and the next morning I woke up sneezing incessantly. This lasted throughout the day and into the night but luckily disappeared after about twelve hours although the sneezing had been so severe that my ribs hurt like hell for some time afterwards. At least I could be thankful it very likely wasn’t Covid related.

It was time for something that might just be fun entertainment. The dafter the better and 1985’s Mr. Vampire suited that bill ideally. Directed by Ricky Lau, this is an influential horror/comedy/kung fu hybrid from the golden age of Hong Kong cinema that I hadn’t watched since it was featured as part of Channel 4’s Chinese Ghost Story season in 1990.

The rules here are different from those you have learned in Western vampire movies. Vampires become harmless if you stick a special talisman to their foreheads. Twin dabs of blood on the forehead also incapacitate them, as does an eight-sided mirror. They’re blind and so can’t locate you if you hold your breath. If bitten by one, you can be saved by sticky rice. Not a mixture of sticky and non-sticky rice. Only pure sticky rice. That rule is very important.

I should also point out that the vampires resemble zombies as much as they do Count Dracula. And they hop!

A Taoist priest, Master Kau (Lam Ching-ying) is given the task of supervising the re-burial of a businessman’s father, the idea being that the improved feng shui of a new tomb will bring prosperity to his family who are still alive. Together with his bumbling assistants, Man Choi (Ricky Hui) and Chou Sheng (Chin Siu-ho), Kau exhumes the corpse but the body shows few signs of decomposition despite having lain underground for years.

Realising that it must be a vampire, Kau relocates the coffin to his house for further study. Due to the incompetence of Man Choi and Chou, the vampire breaks out and his first victim will be his own son, Yam.

The local police become involved. Led by Yam’s nephew Wai, who is another incompetent, they are of limited use. Wai, like Man Choi and Chou, is more interested in Yam’s daughter Ting-Ting. To impress her, he arrests Kau, framing him on a charge of murdering his uncle. With the only man knowledgeable enough to combat vampires behind bars, the whole situation spirals out of control with yet more hopping vampires, a conniving but seductive ghost and even a cave-dwelling gorilla.

The comedy is obviously far from subtle. And if you’re looking for scares, you might as well watch Hotel Transylvania. The walls in the prison look as solid as cardboard and occasionally the wires are visible in some of the stunts. Whether Kau’s grey monobrow is supposed to look fake, I have no idea. But all of this adds to the madcap fun.

Ricky Lau, on his directing debut, keeps the action moving briskly. There’s some impressive kung fu action, especially from the amazingly acrobatic Lan Ching-Ying. Best of all, Mr. Vampire has a great ensemble cast, although special mention must be made of Lam Ching-ying as the indomitable Master Kau.

Lam had previously worked as an action choreographer, and assistant to Bruce Lee on movies like Fist of Fury and Enter the Dragon, as well as appearing in a string of Shaw Brothers chopsocky movies. His performance here will be his most fondly remembered. Deservedly so.

On its original 1985 release, Mr. Vampire proved a real blockbuster at the Hong Kong box-office. It also spawned a cycle of sequels and countless rip-off jiangshi (hopping vampire) movies, though none of them are said to have matched the original.

The movie was released last summer by Eureka Masters of Cinema. For more on Mr. Vampire click here.

Tarantino, Rolling Thunder, Chungking Express & The Cocteau Twins

By Hong Kong standards of the time, Chungking Express was well represented at film festivals across the globe. In 1994 it travelled to Berlin, Toronto, New York, Chicago and London. That November it was invited to Stockholm, where it was joined by Kevin Smith’s Clerks, Derek Jarman’s swansong Blue and Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, which won the festival’s Bronze Horse Award.

Chungking Express did though blag a FIPRESCI prize, while Faye Wong picked up the Best Actress Award, the corresponding award going to John Travolta.

Quentin Tarantino made a personal appearance at the festival to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award. This strikes me as at least a little strange as he’d only made two feature films at the time – albeit they were two exceptionally good ones.

The festival circuit was heaven to Tarantino, scooting around the planet, meeting fellow film fanatics and cramming in as many movies as he could see. The one he adored most in Stockholm was Chungking Express. Well, it wasn’t going to be Blue, was it?

Around this time he was toying with a plan to distribute some movies along with producing partner Lawrence Bender. The films the pair had in mind to release were to range from hard to find exploitation classics to newer, hip and underseen movies that could benefit from the Tarantino Seal of Approval. An imprint was set up in conjunction with – cough, cough – Miramax, named Rolling Thunder (after the 1977 cult favourite) and the first release was Chungking Express.

Here, QT motormouths his thoughts on the film, gives us some background detail on Kar-wai, and draws some parallels between Kar-wai and the French New Wave, which many reviewers of the time were also doing. Tony Rayns, for example, compared Chungking to Godard’s Bande à part (Band of Outsiders) and as Quentin points out that’s where the name of his production company came from.

Feel free to play the Tarantino drinking game – every time he says ‘alright’ knock back a shot. Alright?

Set in the hyperactive, neon drenched cityscape that is Hong Kong, Chungking Express is both written and directed by Wong Kar-wai. It consists of two complementary stories, both concerning cops recently involved in break-ups.

The first is a sweet and sour tale that stars Takeshi Kaneshiro as He Qiwu (Cop 223), who has been dumped by his girlfriend May on April Fool’s Day. ‘So I took it as a joke. I’m willing to humour her for a month.’

Qiwu is very briefly drawn into the world of an enigmatic woman played by Brigitte Lin, who is never seen without cheap sunglasses and a blonde wig. The cop is too caught up in his own problems to ever suspect that May could be the type of woman who could kidnap a child, and be majorly involved in a drug smuggling ring. In fact, he’s more interested in pineapple rings and has become obsessed with buying a tin of them every day that will expire on the 1st of May. At which point he believes he can move on and maybe find someone new.

The second, and longer, story stars Tony Leung as Cop 663, a regular at the same snack bar that his fellow officer frequents.

He had imagined that he and his flight attendant girlfriend (Valerie Chow) would stay together for the long haul but instead they have recently changed course. Luckily, you might assume, he immediately catches the eye of new assistant Faye, a girl with a boyish pixie cut – that reminded some of Jean Seberg’s hairstyle in Breathless – and a dream to travel to California, which is why we repeatedly hear The Mama and Papas’ Californian Dreamin’ throughout this segment. The lovelorn policeman fails to pick up Faye’s interest in him, though.

This is quirky stuff, not a million miles away from some of the indies being made in America at the time and Faye Wong gives a startling performance. She also plays an important role in the soundtrack, singing a cover of The Cranberries’ worldwide hit Dreams, renamed here as Dream Person.

Like QT, The Cocteau Twins were big Chungking Express fans and Faye Wong was a big fan of the Cocteaus, repeatedly mentioning in interviews that they were an influence on her sound along with a number of other Western acts like Bjork and Tori Amos, in addition to more local performers like Taiwanese folk singer Teresa Teng.

Originally from Bejing, Wong had moved to Kong Kong and began a singing career in the latter half of the 1980s. In 1991 she spent six months in New York, and when she returned to Hong Kong her music would become more eclectic. By the time of hooking up with the Cocteaus, she was a major star in Asia.

This meeting of East and West could have benefits for both, potentially helping the Cocteaus make inroads into the lucrative East Asia market, especially Hong Kong and Taiwan, while it would also lend some extra credibility to Wong, and further mark her out from her more mainstream Cantopop rivals, Wong being highly critical of the commercial Hong Kong pop scene of the mid-1990s.

A snippet of her version of Bluebeard was also included in the Chungking soundtrack, where it was renamed Random Thoughts ( Wu Si Lyun Seong), and this became the title of her album of 1994, which also contained a further Cocteaus cover in Know Oneself and Each Other (Zi Gei Zi Bei).

Here’s Random Thoughts, which you could argue adds the square root of hee-haw to the song, but certainly demonstrates that Wong possesses an exceptionally enchanting voice.

On the Hong Kong edition of the eighth and final studio album of the Cocteaus, Milk and Kisses, the band included two versions of Serpentskin, one sung by Elizabeth Fraser, and one where Fraser duets with Wong.

Wong later recorded an acoustic version of Rilkean Heart (Reminiscence) for her 1997 eponymous album, and Robin Guthrie and Simon Raymonde wrote a new song Yu Le Chang (Amusement Park), especially for her.

‘[We] thought it might be a fun thing to do, as her voice seemed to be in a similar range and style to Elizabeth’s,’ Simon Raymonde explained in The Quietus, discussing their work together. ‘I think it was an interesting collaboration and while it probably didn’t work out as we might have imagined, I think musically and sonically it all worked out fine.’

Here’s that aforementioned duet, Serpentskin.

Enter the Fat Dragon & The Incredible Kung Fu Master (A Sammo Hung Double Bill)

Enter the Fat Dragon (1978): Directed by Sammo Hung
The Incredible Kung Fu Master (1979): Directed by Joe Cheung

An absolute icon of Hong Kong cinema, Sammo Hung has acted with Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Donnie Yen and many other martial arts superstars as well as directing, producing and working as a fight choreographer.

Here he stars as Ah Lung, a young pig farmer who, on the order of his father, is told to move to Hong Kong to help his uncle run his food stall.

Lung is a Bruce Lee fanatic and strives to copy the great man in as many ways as possible. As you can imagine from the title, though, while Lee was a sinewy powerhouse of a man, Lung has the look of someone whose nearest encounter with sport is maybe chucking a few darts down his local. He gets called variations of Fatty by just about everyone he comes across.

He’s also clumsy, headstrong, naive and has a truly terrible bowl haircut but looks can be deceiving. Lung is surprisingly supple, he can kick beyond his height and he packs the kind of mightily hard punch that can send an opponent across a room.

He’ll need these skills as he’s about to come across two different sets of thugs, one lot who refuse to pay for their meals at the food stall; another with connections to a highly eccentric (and pervy) antique dealer Professor Pak, a man with a hairstyle that makes Lung’s look like a high fashion cut.

Although the title riffs on Lee’s biggest success – and Sammo was the first opponent of Bruce Leed in that film – the plot here is as close to Way of the Dragon and Game of Death as it is to Enter the Dragon. The climax, for instance, is surely a nod to Game of Death, with Sammo taking on three opponents possessing distinctive fight skills one after the other.

The film parodies Lee movies while also paying homage to him – and Hung was a friend of Lee. It also parodies the Brucesploitation trend that I mentioned in my previous post and, through a family friend, Lung is invited to take part as an extra in one of these movies which is called Death Appointment. Critical of the arrogant star and his lack of Lee-style skills, he ends up going head to head with him on the movie set and shows him how to should fight like the great man.

Lung is hugely likeable throughout and the fight sequences often dazzle. My personal highlight being Lung seeing off some troublemakers at a fancy do while blootered – a nod to Drunken Master I would guess.

The humour throughout does regularly veer towards the ‘so bad it’s good’ variety and there’s even a pratfall involving a banana skin. It’s also spectacularly un-PC. Pak has three personal bodyguards, each one as I pointed out earlier, having mastered a different fight style. There’s a local who specialises in kung fu, a Westerner who is expert at boxing and kickboxing, and then there’s an American who is a karate seventh dan, clearly based on Jim Kelly, the blaxploitation star who appeared in Enter the Dragon. He’s played by Lee Hoi Suk.

If this kind of thing offends you, go elsewhere. It’s not the only incident that would be unlikely to make its way into any modern-day movie.

At it’s best, though, Enter the Fat Dragon is highly amusing with some of the best fight choreography of any kung fu comedy. This is up there with Hung’s best work such as Winners & Sinners and My Lucky Stars.

The Incredible Kung Fu Master, which stars Stephen Tung Wei, Philip Ko and Hoi Sang Lee alongside Hung isn’t as good. The first half drags and the funniest thing about it is the comedy dubbing that accompanies it, most of the characters sounding like they were auditioning for some third rate English drawing room drama from the 1940s which they had no chance of ever securing a role in.

The pace does pick up when Sammo as Fei Chai, a martial arts master who also runs a little wine shop in the countryside, takes on Sei Leng Chai aka Kung Fu Ching as his pupil. Played by Stephen Tung Wei – who also appeared briefly in Enter the Dragon as Bruce Lee’s young student – he is put under enormous pressure by a hard taskmaster.

Watching the gruelling training scenes is great fun, especially if you’re relaxing with a coffee and slice of cake – I guess my calorie intake is much nearer Hung’s than the average martial arts maestro.

The climax features a battle between Ching and a troupe of acrobatic Manchurians while Fei Chai takes on former town bully Yeung Wai (Lee Hoi Sang) with Ching joining in halfway through the fight.

Fantastic stuff that just about makes up for the lacklustre first forty-five minutes or so.

* Another martial arts movie titled Enter the Fat Dragon will be released soon. I’ve read that it is remake of the 1978 film, although lead actor Donnie Yen has stated that it is not ‘necessarily’ a remake, while co-director and producer Wong Jing explained that ‘The title doesnt really matter. Many film titles could be recycled for new projects.’

Drunken Master & Police Story (A Jackie Chan Double Bill)

Drunken Master (1978): Directed by Yuen Woo-ping
Police Story (1985): Directed by Jackie Chan

People have asked me if I consider watching Jackie Chan movies as a guilty pleasure. Answer: Certainly not the Hong Kong made movies that he made his reputation with. And these are two of the very best films belonging in that category.

Like many films in a similar vein, Drunken Master focuses on the relationship between an apprentice and master albeit with a twist, the master here being a straw haired and red nosed senior citizen who is far too fond of Chinese wine.

The apprentice Wong Fei-hong, aka Naughty Panther, is played by Jackie Chan. He’s a talented fighter though one who requires far stricter self discipline if he is ever to achieve his potential. A prankster who drifts through life never far from mischief, Wong is highly likeable, and has a good heart. For example, when he discovers that a local man has been ripped off by an arrogant businessman, he promptly beats up the swindler, whose father then complains to Wong’s own father, Wong Kei-ying.

This influences Wong Senior’s decision to send his son off to study with Beggar So (Yuen Siu-tien) a man renowned equally for the extremity of his training techniques and his love of liquor.

Little old wine drinking So is a difficult taskmaster and several times a desperately unhappy Wong attempts to escape from his clutches. Eventually succeeding, the outside world unfortunately proves far crueller and the young man suffers humiliation when pitted in a fight against a killer for hire known as Thunderleg (Hwang Jang Lee).

‘You could study all your life and still never beat me,’ Thunderleg taunts him after displaying his superior skills, before making him crawl through his legs. ‘Killing a nobody like you would only sully my reputation.’

This acts as a catalyst for Wong to fully devote himself to perfecting his kung fu prowess with the help of Beggar So – which is fortunate as Thunderleg will soon be hired to kill Wong’s father.

Luckily it’s not long before Beggar So teaches the younger man the secrets of the Eight Drunken Gods, a martial arts technique that involves some degree of intoxication. To fight in this way requires equal parts boozed up stagger and martial arts swagger and makes it almost impossible for an opponent to anticipate what is coming next – and usually involves imbibing some bevvy during the course of the rumble.

Yes the plot is predictable and about as substantial as a prawn cracker and the humour is broad (trouser splitting and very bad comedy teeth for starters) but the choreography is spectacular and all achieved without the aid of wires or CGI.

While watching Chan, you might one minute think of Buster Keaton, the next of ballet or Golden Age of Hollywood musicals – only with kung fu clashes rather than elaborate song and dance routines.

It may not be the greatest martial arts film ever made but it is very possibly the most enjoyable.

In the wake of Bruce Lee’s early death in 1973, Hong Kong studios had tried their hardest to find a successor, or at least maybe con the public into thinking their movie had some connection to the dead star. A Bruce Le appeared and a Bruce Li, Bruce Lea and Bruce Lai, while film titles followed the cash-in trend. There was Enter Another Dragon, Enter Three Dragons and The New Game Of Death. And that’s just for starters.

Some producers attempted to push Jackie Chan as the man to take on Lee’s mantle but as Chan has explained, he never wanted to be the next Bruce Lee, only the first Jackie Chan.

Watching Police Story, you’ll see why I earlier mentioned him resembling Buster Keaton as much as Bruce Lee .

One of the most enjoyable 1980s action films from anywhere on the planet, the plot of Police Story, it would have to be admitted, is really just an excuse for breathtaking sequences with some of the best choreographed stunts you’re ever likely to see.

Chan Ka-Kui (Jackie Chan) is assigned to protect state’s witness Selina Fong (Bridgett Lin), who risks being murdered if she’s located before the trial begins of crime lord Chu Tao (Chor Yuen).

Chan kickstarts his film brilliantly with a shootout between cops and Chu’s gang that builds towards a car chase that obliterates a mountainside shanty town. This sensational sequence is directed with a high-octane pizzazz, and ends with Ka-Kui’s attempts to arrest Chu and his henchmen on a hijacked double-decker bus, an umbrella coming in very handy as he does so. But I should say no more.

Throughout the film, viewers may wonder how Chan could top the opening. He does during a climactic confrontation between Ka-Kui and the same men inside a shopping mall, that by the end of proceedings, is almost reduced to rubble. Amazing stuff and local glaziers must have been kept busy for weeks afterwards. Like Nick Lowe, Jackie Chan obviously loves the sound of breaking glass.

I won’t be the first reviewer to note that the middle of the film does sag at times. As in Drunken Master, the comedy elements are almost as childish as the set-piece stunts are ingenious. There are pies in the face, fart jokes and Jackie standing on dung and accidentally breaking into a little moonwalk while he attempts to wipe it from his shoes.

During the action, though, you have to be glad that Chan never went down the Bruce Lee clone road.

Police Story became a massive success, especially in East Asia and, according to Chan’s autobiography, it’s his favourite of the films he’s made although Drunken Master edges it for me.

Here’s the trailer for Police Story 1 & 2 from Eureka:

The above is a mash-up of a couple of reviews originally written for Louder Than War.

For more on Drunken Master click here, and here for more on Police Story.