"The Young Master"(1980)d/Jackie Chan

In 1980, Jackie Chan kicked off a long-standing relationship with Golden Harvest studios with tonight's entry, having just come off a disappointing initial Hollywood star bid with The Battlecreek Brawl(1979) and out of a creativity-stifling contract with Lo Wei after Raymond Chow and Wang Yu('Jimmy', not Yung, mind you) finally convinced the angry old man to call off his Triad muscle and let the blossoming young star venture out on his own.For his first feature, Chan assembled an impressive supporting cast that included Shih Kien, aka/ "Mr. Han" from Enter the Dragon(1973), Peking Opera classmate, Yuen Biao, lovely shadow kickstress extraordinaire, Lily Li Li-Li(Clones of Bruce Lee(1978) didn't offer as many Lee's in succession, I'd imagine), and not least of all, Hapkido grandmaster Whang Ing Sik, ruthless and sinister, as always, as the negatively charged obstacle in Chan's path towards martial harmony.Without Lo to hold him back, Chan effectively crafts a period piece unlike any that came prior(and most that came afterwards), injecting a broad range of physical comedy into elaborate fight choreography that includes a historic finale square off with Master Whang that runs upwards of fifteen minutes in length(!) and is entirely unique for the time in that it often resembles a real brawl between the two actors, foreshadowing things to come in Chan's later modern vehicles.Thirty-plus years later, Young Master remains one of Jackie's best films to date, packed full of fists, feet, and folly enough to keep the eyes of any self-respecting kung fu movie enthusiast well glued to the non-stop action, and the smirk-inducing hijinks in between.The whole thing starts out with a critical Lion Dance...

Yuen Biao's benchmark bench skills come up short against Jackie's poleplay.
With top student Lo(Wei Pai) suffering from a leg injury that leaves him out of a competitive lion dance with the rival school, a desperate Master Tien(Tin Fung) is forced to rely on Lung(Jackie Chan) to control the head, instead.Midway through, Lung discovers that the rival lionhead is being controlled by Lo himself, in a treacherous turn to score cash towards a slut from the local brothel he's taken a shine to(Pussy over pugilism?Preposterous!).The broken-hearted Lung stays tight-lipped concerning his elder brother in defeat, and even covers for him when he tries to lay the concubine down on his spacious floor mat(!), but Tien uncovers the fiendish plot and banishes Lo, later sending Lung off to find him after his better judgment takes over.Meanwhile, Lo finds work with the rival school, freeing a career criminal/martial murderer named Kam(Whang Ing Sik) from an enshackled procession to jail on a desolate country road.The authorities identify Lo's white fan and offer reward money for his capture, unaware that Lung also has a white fan in his possession.Mistaken for the man he's been sent to find, Lung crosses paths with the son(Yuen Biao) of the local Marshall, Sang Kung(Shih Kien), who tries to aprehend him using his bench-centered kung fu, and later the Marshall himself, who anonymously helps Lung defeat his own son before springing his identity on him (but after Lung has pimpslapped the son's grill and verbally abused the pair). Hilarious quicksand hijinks ensue with Lung and Sang repeatedly tossing each other into the quagmire, and Lung eventually evading Sang's bracelets and the subsequent arrest.

"You're his 'dumb ape of a father'??!!Ooof!" laments big-mouthed Lung(Jackie Chan).
Lung inadvertently wanders to Sang's home, covered in mud, and asks his daughter(Lily Li) for use of the family rainbox while she goes out shopping.Sang, also dirtier than a hedonist's chastity belt, wanders into the showers, unaware that the man he's been trying to aprehend is on the other side.After some soapy ass-grabbin' slapstick, Lung uses the Marshall's antique pipe as leverage in a prop-heavy fight with the lawman before his daughter returns(Does mistaken identity ever stop being funny?No?Well, have some more, then) and takes Lung out using her billowy skirt to execute shadow kicks on him.Elsewhere, in a greedy instant, Kam, weary of Lo and looking to lessen the gang's loot-divvy by one, frames him during a bank heist.Lung, now free of all criminal suspicion by default, throws himself on the mercy of Sang to release his fellow schoolmate, but to no avail, until he remembers the effectiveness of blackmail through the Marshall's delicate pipe.Reluctantly, Sang agrees to free Lo from the local jail only if Lung singlehandedly apprehends Kam and his gang in the young man's place.After improvising some fabric into a flowing skirt, a disguised Lung humiliatingly defeats Kam's henchmen(Fung Hak On, Lee Hoi San)in the center of town, first mimicking the shadow kicks of Sang's daughter, then pasodoble-ing them like a matador would charging bulls.Against Kam in the countryside, Lung finds himself hopelessly outmatched, as refereed by the rival school's stroke-faced boss(that the overlord was about to cut out of the split when Lung showed up).Kam repeatedly punishes the young fighter with devastating kicks and punches until Lung is accidentally given opium pipe water in between rounds, which transforms him into an unstoppably furious attacker.He carries the bodies of both men slumped over a bo staff back into town, keeping good on his promise.In the end, we see Lung in a body cast as a result of the fight, covered head to toe in bandages, save for two fingers, which he waves bye-bye with.Credits...

"Look at these bulging veins!I'm having an acute myocardial infarction!"
Chan would revisit the concept of using berserker strength to tip the odds in his own favor again in the finale of Liu Chia Liang's Drunken Master II(1994), even injecting a similar sense of comedic realism when the final reel ends(his character ends up retarded from drinking industrial alcohol in Drunken, and broken everywhere but two fingers in bandage-wrapped mummy-style traction in Young).Young Master also marks the first of many instances where Chan provides vocals for the theme song, in this case, "Kung Fu Fighting Man", himself.He followed this hit up with a sequel, Young Master in Love(1982) aka/Dragon Lord, after the film surpassed all previous box office records held by Bruce Lee, establishing Chan as Hong Kong's top draw.His second bout with the director's chair(after Fearless Hyena(1979), which we just took a look at), a perfect introduction to real Chan-man fare for newcomers to his often-imitated style of action film.In my estimation, the only thing missing here is a training sequence of some great degree of difficulty, or form display on a dramatically lit stage, to showcase the techniques he was going to ride to ultimate victory, the kind that viewers had come to expect from kung fu movies of the era.But I'm not gonna punish the movie for going against the grain; on the contrary, it stands as one more three Wop Jackie Chan kung fu movie on the scale.As we've seen thus far in Chan-uary, he's got quite a few of these in his filmography, and the month's not nearly over, just yet.Highly recommended.

"Heaaaavy metaaaal or no metal at aaaall, all wimps and posers leaaaaave the haaaaaall!"

"Way of the Dragon"(1972)d/Bruce Lee

We haven't even gotten to the big yearly day of L-tryptophan intake, and I've already irresponsibly slacked most of the month away, but I assure you, folks, it's only because I'm busy beating on your mother's uvula with me yahzick.And so we come to the very first Bruce Lee review here at the Wop, skipping over Big Boss(1971) and Fists of Fury(1972) just to get to his third film; the global box office record breaking 'fish out of water' martial epic as written, co-produced, overdubbed, directed by, and starring the Little Dragon himself.Hell, he even helped compose the soundtrack with Joseph Koo.Is there anything that Lee, the single most familiar martial arts icon in the world(don't listen to these 98 pound weakling sand-grilled nerds with their played out Chuck Norris crap on the interwebs tubes), born Lee Jun Fan in San Francisco on November 27th, 1940, couldn't have accomplished, had he not suddenly perished on that fateful July 20th in 1973?From a martial artist's perspective, few things get the adrenaline flowing like one of Bruce's cat-like kiais that accompany his powerful techniques, almost too fast to be caught on camera, if you can believe that, and though kung fu movies have long since evolved into a more intricately choreographed ballet of brutality, Lee remains no less impressive with age, some forty years down the line.For his directorial debut, which was released in the U.S. as Return of the Dragon in 1974 to cash in on the success of his Enter the Dragon(1973) effort, Bruce enlisted the skills of Hapkido grandmaster Whang Ing-Sik, heavyweight kickboxing champion Bob Wall, and his sensei, eighth degree Tang Soo Do black belt and middleweight karate champion, Chuck Norris, in his acting(ahem) debut.Rounding out the cast here are Lee regulars, Nora Miao, Wei Ping Ao, and Bruce's lifelong friend, Unicorn Chan.

Insert risotto allo zafferano con petto d'anatra here.
Tang Lung(Bruce Lee) arrives in Rome(I swear this had no bearing on the Wopsploitation rating) to aid his friend's niece, Chen Ching Hua(Nora Miao), whose restaurant has been singled out by local mafiosi who've been using intimidation to try and force her to sell out to them.Chen, expecting one of her uncle's lawyers instead, is initially unimpressed by the naive bumpkin from the country, who's wary of banks and having difficulty with expressing himself in Italian and English to the point that he can barely order food or resist the advances of local prostitutes.At the restaurant, the workers clumsily practice karate out back to pass the time, since the gangsters continually frighten off potential customers, and even they don't think too much of Tang at first, or see how this small yokel could possibly improve their predicament.That is, until the thugs show up to do some more bullying in his presence, forcing him to take them out back, and humble them with his Chinese boxing.All comers are quickly immobilized by the the little man's fists, feet, bo staff, and dual nunchaku, from the obligatory soul brother to the Roman version of Wolfman Jack, amidst the cheers of his former detractors and skepticism of the unfortunately named Uncle Wang(Wang Chung-Hsin).The mob boss(Jon Benn), not a man easily swayed by speed-of-light spinning hook kicks, gets his flamboyantly garbed, effeminate lieutenant, Ho(Wei Ping-Ao), to send a gunman to dispatch the restaurant's new hero, but Tang nullifies his gun with wooden throwing darts and breaks his neck for his efforts.Tang warns the boss that he'll get serious if the thugs don't leave his friends alone, to which the boss responds by sending a message that he'll have Tang killed if he doesn't leave Rome pronto.Tang is unwavered by the criminal's empty threats, of course.

When wielding nunchaku in Rome, Tang Lung(Bruce Lee) knows the importance of malocchio.A good wifebeater doesn't hurt either.
The earlier gunman, now sporting a nifty neckbrace, is sent to Chen's apartment to snipe Tang, but receives more comeuppance from the proud Chinese.Chen gets kidnapped by the goons, but Tang and the boys quickly arrive on the scene to rescue her, with Tang jump kicking a ceiling light(!) and cracking his massive knuckles in the boss' face to illustrate his previous point.Ho calls on two of his friends, an American(Bob Wall) and a Japanese(Whang Ing-Sik), both of whom are martial experts, to handle the syndicate's problems, but their language barrier escalates into a fight that's only broken up by the arrival of Colt(Chuck Norris), the karate champ from America that happens to be the other American's sensei.Tang and company are lured to the country nearby to the Roman colosseum by Ho, where they are set upon by the two foreign experts, neither of which proves much of a match for Tang.While Ho goads him to give chase, the other workers exhaustedly fight the two karatekas until Uncle Wang surprises them with a knife to the kidneys, explaining that the boss had paid him well for his treachery.At the ancient arena, Tang encounters Colt instead of Ho, and the two men warm up together, achknowledging that they will battle to the death, with a small feral kitten watching in the wings.At the outset, Colt's powerful strikes overwhelm the small fighter, who increases his own quickness and fluidity to best the American, breaking his arm and one of his legs in the process.When Colt refuses to give up, Tang snaps his neck, sadly draping his gi over his battered, lifeless body out of respect, turning, and once again giving chase to Ho, who tries to sneakily escape.Meanwhile, Uncle Wang, who's shanked up all his nephews for cash, tries to shiv Tang, but gets shot along with Ho by the angry don, who arrives by car, only to see that his latest plan is another failure.Before he can shoot the tiny Chinese bane of his criminal existence, the authorities arrive and take him into custody.At the graveyard, Tang and Chen pay their last respects to their dead friends before the young man bids her adieu, finally returning home.Waaaaaaaassssssssaaaaaa!!!

"Your-ah Chinese Boxing is ah-squashing the ravioli!", says Chef Boi Ahr Di(Wang Chung-hsin).
It should also be noted that Yuen Biao also makes an early cameo here as one of Bruce Lee's whipping boys.Lee would go on to star in Enter the Dragon with Nora Miao again, ironically, his last completed motion picture before dying the same year.Unicorn Chan, who also appeared in Fists of Fury with Lee, would also meet a tragic end in a 1987 car accident in Malaysia, while Chuck Norris would again play a villain in his next movie, 1973's awful Slaughter in San Francisco, which is often packaged as a starring role for the wooden Irish/Cherokee actor of little renown, instead of the terrible Don Wong vehicle it really is.Norris wouldn't get his marquee turn until four years later with Breaker! Breaker!(1977).Lee's only directorial effort is an even-handed affair, with nice cinematography and excellent pacing that leave one pondering what he would have gone on to do should he have lived a longer life.On the scale, Way earns three solid Wops, and deserves its place on woprophiles' shelves as an exciting kung fu exercise and cult classic.Recommended.

...And with four rapid-fire kicks to the facepiece, Bruce Lee makes a Chuck Norris joke out of Chuck Norris.

"A Fist Full of Talons"(1983)d/Sun Chung

For kung fu flick fans, here is the holy grail of Billy Chong movies, bar none.Though it probably isn't the best of director Sun "Avenging Eagle" Chung's forty or so efforts in his storied career, it is clearly Chong's apex movie offering, packed with great kung fu, and more than one "Holy shit!" moment, but we'll touch on that more a bit later.The title eluded me for years before I could find a copy anywhere, ironically turning up as half of a double feature dvd marketed towards the hip hop crowd with a terrible washed out print that looks as though it has spent the past thirty years sitting in a sun-drenched Arizona storefront window.Hopefully I'll stumble across a nice Region 3 remaster one of these days, but for now, this'll just have to do, I guess.Try to ignore the hella goofy-sounding title that Eternal Films borrows from maestro Sergio Leone to ridiculous effect, Sun's ever-moving camera is used to optimum effect here with plenty of his signature mid-fight crane shots that both bring the viewer headlong into the action and isolate the star against his overwhelming surroundings, proving that though his days with martial giants, Shaw Brothers, may have been over by 1983, he still had plenty to offer filmgoers.For once, Billy Chong is paired up with a villain of equal or greater skill,in 10th degree Hapkido black belt, Whang Ing-Sik, who had previously worked with stars like Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Angela Mao.The level of fight scenes is notably higher here than in any of Chong's previous films, but sadly, would be his last movie for six years.

Even washing a horse requires ample acrobatics,as Ching I Ming(Billy Chong) demonstrates.
At the outset, the Chinese have already wrenched governmental power away from the Manchu, forming a republic in their absence.Never ones to admit defeat, the Manchu scheme to regain control one region at a time under the leadership of Nai Sin(Whang Ing-Sik) and his six Tigers, who are searching for the patriotic Ding Wei Chung(Pai Ying), a mysterious tenant of Ching I Ming(Billy Chong)'s father.Ching attempts to connect with Ding, washing his horse(even the droopy bits) and waiting on him hand and foot, but Ding shuns the young man's friendship.While Ching is failing at making new friends, he has no problems in making enemies, engaging Manchus on sight with his comrades, beating them to a pulp, and cutting off their signature queue ponytails.Along the way, his violent activism attracts the daughter of a local sheriff, known only as Eagle Girl Ma(Hilda Liu Hao-Yi), who keeps birds of prey as pets.During a fight with some of the Tigers, Ding's horse is stolen by an unscrupulous young beggar, but Ching notices the man trying vainly to sell the animal in town and steals it back for his father's tenant, who has gone missing.

Ching doles out haircuts to Manchus, willing or otherwise.
Ching returns Ding's horse to him, convincing him to train him more thoroughly in the national fight against the Manchu, culminating in a dazzling sequence where Ching lights thousands of candles on a massive Buddha statue as Ding attempts to stop him and extinguish the candles.Meanwhile, Eagle Girl Ma has sent her eagles out to look for her love interest, also helped by Young Beggar who's had a patriotic change of heart.The Manchus beat the beggar to death in interrogating him for Ding's whereabouts leading to a martial battle between Nai and Ding,where Ding is mortally wounded.Ching arrives in time to rescue the official and assist in his fight.Nai proves too powerful for Ching to defeat alone, forcing the young man to use the crevices and crannies of the enormous Buddha to his advantage, but even this is insufficient for victory.Eagle Girl Ma joins the fight,and when Nai's leg armour seriously wounds the girl, her pet eagle swoops into the battle as well.With Nai focusing on Ching's attacks and Ma's feigned offensive, he is blinded by the eagle(!!), which he rips in half(yeah,real eagle ripped in half...on camera in slo-mo.Holy shit!) as Ching executes a flying double front kick to the back of his skull, killing him, and winning the day for the republic.I'll give you a second to catch up here.

Chiang Tao and Whang Ing-Sik aren't only treacherous Manchu bastards, they know how to accessorize, too.
Though Chong was finished with movies for the time being, Sun Chung continued directing,with titles like Lady in Black(1987), City War(1988),and Angel Hunter(1992) under his belt.He even tried his hand at horror with Human Lanterns(1982),which we'll examine at a later date.This would prove to be Whang Ing-Sik's last major screen appearance as well, after roles in everything from Way of the Dragon,Hapkido,and When Taekwondo Strikes in the early seventies to memorable turns in Jackie Chan's The Young Master(1980) and Dragon Lord(1982).In spite of the wince-worthy mondo moment that ends the film, this one delivers action by the fistful and scores three big ones on the ratings scale.You'll probably find it on an inferior disc in a clearance outlet for a buck or two, unless you score big with an Asian special edition, in which case, I'll be highly jealous of you, indeed.

Yeah.Exactly.Holy shit!