B.W.'s Top Twenty Favorite Kung Fu Actors : Twenty to Eleven

Alright, you pious bastards, let's spinning wheel kick off our New Year's Eve festivities here at the Wop with another of my inimitable Top Twenty lists, this time focusing on my favorite performers in martial arts movies, a fast-paced and exciting genre I've been into since the late seventies, thanks to unforgettable Saturday afternoon (and late night) television broadcasts from local channels like WNEW 5, WOR 9, and WPHL17. Keep in mind that this is a list of my favorites, not a pissing contest over whose fighting style is best, or who'd beat who in a real contest, as conjecture of that flavor is best confined to the schoolyard, really. As always, I'd love to see your lists and hear your feedback, so don't hesitate to lay it on me, if you feel so inclined. Right. Now try my double Phoenix Eye...


  20) Cynthia Rothrock  Five time forms champion and holder of seven black belts, Golden Harvest actress and Delaware native, Cynthia Rothrock, is a lot more fun to look at than say, Hwang Jang Lee/Wong Cheng Li, for me. Can't put my finger on it, but she's got that certain something...ahem.


  19) Casanova Wong How about the Korean Tae Kwon Do expert and supreme kicker, Casanova Wong? Check out his undeniable skills in things like Warriors Two (1978) and Tower of Death (1981).


  18) Tan Tao Liang While we're on the subject of great kickers, let's add "Flash Legs" to the mix. The Invincible Kung Fu Legs (1980) and The Hot, the Cool and the Vicious (1976) are good flicks to hunt down for a display of his remarkable abilities.


  17) Hsiao Ho Look for Mad Monkey Kung Fu (1979), Legendary Weapons of China (1982), and My Young Auntie (1981) for Hsiao in a starring capacity, which he most certainly deserved more of, during his long career in movies.


  16) Chiang Sheng  You'll remember "Cutie Pie" as the hybrid venom in Chang Cheh's The Five Venoms (1978), but this acrobatic star also shows off his skills in things like Invincible Shaolin (1978), Crippled Avengers (1978), and Shaolin Rescuers (1979).


  15) Lu Feng  Number one, the Centi-pede! Besides The Five Venoms (1978), you can also check out The Kid With The Golden Arm (1978), House of Traps (1982), and 1981's Masked Avengers for more of this popular member of the Venom gang.


  14) Sammo Hung  You'll most likely recall Jacky Chan's portly Peking Opera mate in his legendary sparring scene vs. Bruce Lee in 1973's Enter the Dragon, but Big, Big Brother has had a gloriously long career in martial arts movies, from Knockabout (1979) and Wheels on Meals (1985) to Pedicab Driver (1989) and Ip Man 2 (2010).


  13) Hui Ying Hung  The lovely and talented Kara Hui figures prominently in the films of Shaw Brothers directors Chang Cheh and Liu Chia Liang, who gave her a start in 1976's Challenge of the Masters. You can admire her skill in movies like My Young Auntie (1981), Martial Club (1981), and 1982's Cat vs. Rat.


  12) Lo Mang Shaw Brothers muscular strongman and long time favorite of Chang Cheh, Lo is best known as The Toad in The Five Venoms (1978), though you owe it to yourself to check out some of his other films, like The Kid With The Golden Arm (1978), Chinatown Kid (1977), aand Ten Tigers of Kwangtung (1979).


  11) Yuen Biao Besides doubling for everybody (yes, even Bruce Lee) in various stunt capacities, Jacky Chan's other famous Peking Opera brother shows off his amazing flexibility and high flying acrobatics in films like Knockabout (1978), The Prodigal Son (1981), Young Master (1980), and Yuen Woo Ping's Dreadnaught (1981).

"Warriors Two" (1978) d/ Sammo Hung

Sammo Hung Kam-Bo is probably just as important a name in martial arts cinema as anybody else you could think to mention. Being head of the Seven Little Fortunes Peking Opera group with Jackie Chan and Yuen Biao until he was sixteen, working with Shaw Brothers and Bruce Lee, starring, directing, and coordinating action sequences in countless movies dating back to 1977, and even being considered a pioneer in the Hong Kong New Wave of the eighties and crazy Jiang-Shi hopping vampire sub-genre of the era, there's few highs that this portly pugilist has yet to reach. Tonight's review is famous for it's technically authentic depiction of the Wing Chun style of Kung Fu, a close quarters fighting style reputed to be developed by a nun named Ng Mui and later made popular by one of Grandmaster Yip Man's students, a guy by the name of Bruce Lee. You may have heard of him. Wasssaaaaaah!!! Yeah, that bad motherfucker.


"Forget you ever knew me as 'Beardy'. You must call me "Mustachey" now."
After a dramatic formal introduction to Master Tsang (Liang Chia Jen), who's the fourth expert in succession of the secret Wing Chun technique, and Cashier Wah (Casanova Wong), who, we're told, will be the fifth master of the style, we're introduced to a real sinister cunt named Mo (Feng Ko An), who's scheming to be elected mayor after having assassinated the current one, with the help of his cronies, Thunder (Tiger Yang), Master Yao (Dean Shek),  and Iron (Lee Hoi San), among others. Of course, standing in the way of Mo's future misuse of power is the well-respected Master Tsang and his pupils, which include Porky (Sammo Hung), who carries buckets of shit through the streets for a living, since he regularly gets cheated out of his wares. Wah overhears Mo's evil plans and unwittingly lets Master Yao in on his secret, earning him a near fatal beatdown at the hands and feet of Mo's henchmen, only to be saved by Porky in the nick of time. The stubborn Tsang takes Wah in as a pupil, and a lengthy, entertaining and informative training sequence is what follows.


"This is the pressure point dummy. Down here, are the pressure point dummy's impressive genitals...", notes Master Tsang (Liang Chia Jen).
The aloof mayor is warned of the impending danger by Porky, but he laughs off the warning and is set upon in the forest by Mo's henchmen, despite the able Monkey style defense of his bodyguard (Liu Chia Yung), who also perishes in the end. Porky also hides news of Wah's mother's murder from him, but when Tsang himself is later ruthlessly cut down by Mo's assassins, they hand deliver the master's lifeless corpse to the school on a gurney, spurring on a large scale battle that Tsang's young proponents are ill-prepared for. Porky mixes up the names of their foes as mapped out in their revenge plans, but dispatches his spear-wielding opponent just the same, though his female classmate's butterfly swords are permanently negated by Mo's swordsmen. Meanwhile, Wah's victory flushes out Lord Mo, who removes his obviously fake old guy appliance, to reveal that he's really a young, gothy-looking Northern Mantis King who could probably use a V8. Insert obligatory rock 'em, sock 'em martial fight to the finish followed by freeze frame end title, right about here.


"I get all like this when I try to chat up the sweeties!", confesses the mayor's bodyguard (Liu Chia Yung).
Casanova Wong was one of the best cinematic kickers ever (just watch his scene in Game of Death II/ Tower of Death (1981) to see what I mean),  and this movie only helped prove that his top half was also very good, indeed. Feng Ko An displays some serious Northern Mantis technique, as usual, and only some silly wire fu shenanigans in the final reel mar an otherwise excellent appearance from him. Liu Chia Yung is the middle brother of Liu Chia Liang, and his monkey sequence cameo is worthy of note here. Liang Chia Jen, or "Beardy" as he's come to be known, shines as the stoic martial instructor, sans beard, and has several amazing displays in this one. Then you've got Sammo Hung himself, directing, choreographing, acting, doing stunts, pulling off broad physical comedy, and also showing off some top shelf martial skills that fans of his movies have come to expect on a regular basis. This one's a classic all around, and if it's not on your shelves, you've got nobody to blame but yourselves. Four wops, and my strongest recommendation.


"Movement number eighteen...praying mantis overindulges on strawberry preserves..."

"Project A"(1983)d/Jackie Chan

The first visible signs of Hong Kong martial arts movies evolving into viable international action hits can be seen in tonight's review, the first of several movies that would feature all three Peking Opera stars, Chan, who wrote, directed, and choreographed the fights while performing all his own most treacherous stunts himself(though Mars doubles for him in spots), the rotund Sammo Hung, who also choreographed fights and stunts while directing in an uncredited capacity here, and acrobatic Yuen Biao, who also earned a choreography and stunt credit on the groundbreaking film, also known as Pirate Patrol.While the Shaw Brothers set the standard with their incredibly intricate sets and cost efficient productions in the seventies, Project A would raise the bar to a height that the former genre giants found great difficulty in matching, effectively signalling a permanent changing of the guard at the top.Though a period piece on a truly epic scale like this would certainly have broken the American market at the time for Chan(this unfounded credit I give you Americans, you must cherish and protect always), it wouldn't be re-released here until well after Jackie had finally achieved recognition over a decade later.I've heard some crazy talk from jaded action fans who've been weaned on a steady diet of the film's wirework and greenscreen-driven successors that involves words like "boring" and "overrated" when discussing tonight's entry, but to these and any detractors of the movie's effectiveness or historical importance, I say:Had you seen the film in 1983(as I did, courtesy of a rental VHS from Happy Sound in Chinatown), you'd be singing a different tune entirely.This one's packed to bursting with jaw-dropping fights, life-gamble stunts, physical comedy, and adrenaline pumping action from start to finish like no movie had ever showcased before it.Go ahead and stack it up against 48 Hours(1982), I triple dog dare you.Onwards.

You're a silly, silly man, Jackie Chan.
Somewhere between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century(In HK film, the more vague the timeline, the better), the Hong Kong Marines and Police Force find themselves at competetive odds, while the port's ships have been under siege by a particularly foul army of pirates, as led by San-po(Dick Wei), a privateer as tattooed as he is malignant.Cue: Glass-smashingly/chair-breakingly elaborate bar fight between both services to the tune of a nearby victrolla that jumps off when the cocky young son of a police captain named Hong Tin-tsu(Yuen Biao) dumps his lager on the lid of one Dragon Ma(Jackie Chan), a young Marine, resulting in the consequent arrest of all the seamen, who are released just in time for a suicide mission to topple the pirates, the titular 'Project A'.Before any of them can become martyrs, two of their ships are sunk, forcing the entire force to disband and integrate into the police, leaving them at the mercy of prickish Hong, who teaches them how to take sixty second showers and how to avoid live grenades in the field, among other things.Meanwhile, the pirates have allied with local gangsters, who, in turn, have approached Fei(Sammo Hung), a chubby hustler, about procuring a hundred rifles illegally for the scurvy sea dogs, when the gangster's club is suddenly raided by Hong, Dragon, and associates.Cue: Window-shatteringly/table-pulverizingly amazing ruckus with men swan diving off of balconies, through tables, and into walls and steps.Afterwards, when the police captain demands that the men release their collars, Dragon turns in his badge, weary of the corruption roadblocking any true justice to be had.Fei, an old friend of Dragon's, divulges the arms deal info to the ex-cop, and both men sabotage the exchange, with several double-cross attempts to follow.

K.T.F.O.ed by a bicycle tire, how humiliating for you.
The empty-handed gangsters put the squeeze on Fei, who gives up Dragon, leading the thugs to chase the former officer and the Admiral's daughter, Winnie(Isabella Wong), all over town, up steep brick walls, jousting on bicycles, and finally, handcuffed and hanging from one of the hands of the Kowloon Canton Railway Clock tower, from which Dragon plunges sixty feet through several awning canopies to the ground(you'll want to see this a few times, believe me) head first.After overhearing the Colonel negotiating guns for the hostages(the Admiral included) that were taken by the gunless pirates with Mr. Chow, Dragon(remember him?Yeah, he survived that clock tower fall earlier as evidenced by the single take of him getting up and walking away moments later.Drink that all in for a second, would you) confronts the Colonel, arguing that men who are as morally bankrupt as the pirates and gangsters will never fear the police force if they are corrupt, themselves.Good point.Dragon then accepts all responsibility for the upcoming rescue attempt/ pirate base dismantling so long as the Colonel okays the Marines return to full strength for the ressurected Project A.Dragon infiltrates the pirate base masquerading as the top hat-and-monacled Chow while Hong waits in the wings with his men at the ready.The sneaky Fei dons pirate garb and tags along, with designs on helping his old friend and blagging some pirate treasure along the way, if he can help it.When Mr. Lee(Lee Hoi-San) recognizes Dragon from the fight in the clock tower, it sets off a frantic finale of fights, dynamite-explosions, and a tremendous three-way battle between Dragon, Fei, Hong, and San-po, the pirate king, the result of which you'll have to experience when you snag a copy of this highly recommended kung fu classic for yourselves.

Clock tower fall, take three.Go ahead and let go again, Jackie, we're rolling...
Before we wrap up tonight's review, I wanted to take a moment to thank those of you who've been regularly checking in during Chan-uary, making this one of the biggest months the site has experienced, traffic-wise, in quite a while(and traffic's always choice 'round these parts, don't you know).We'll have to try and pull off some different themed months in the future, no?In any case, we'll be tornado-kicking Chan-uary into the history books with one last entry to come, so keep your eyes peeled for that martial morsel, grasshoppers.Detail-attentive fans of cinematic pugilism will instantly recognize Dick Wei, who plays the main antagonist/inked-up sea dog, as the old master soaking in the cauldron at the outset of Chang Cheh's Five Venoms(1978).It'd be four years before Chan would reprise his Dragon Ma role in attempting a sequel, Project A II(1987), which, for the record, was also an enormous hit, winning two HKFA's for best choreography and editing, while netting over 30 million HKD at the box office.I'm sure we'll tackle that one sometime in the future, but as for tonight's review?Essential viewing, and top five all-time material, without question.Four Wops.

What your favorite action star's wet dreams are made of.

"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!"

"Wheels on Meals"(1984)d/Sammo Hung

Tonight's feature is a legendary Sammo Hung modern action/comedy filmed on location in Barcelona, Spain, that unites all three Peking Opera classmates, Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao, and Sammo himself(rocking a drip kit, ferchrissakes!) for the third time to date, after Project A(1983) and Hung's own Winners and Sinners(1983); also on board are former Miss Spain, Lola Forner, Herb Edelman, fellow "Lucky Stars" Richard Ng and John Shum, Black Belt Magazine's 1981 Fighter of the Year, Keith Vitali, and Basque/Blackfoot kickboxing champion, Benny "The Jet" Urquidez, who, with Chan, provides a fight sequence towards the end of the film that many rank high on their all-time favorite movie fight lists.Add to the mix a wacky banana-yellow fast food restaurant on wheels, kidnappings, a motorcycle gang, inherited legacies, a mental hospital, trademark mind-blowing car chase, and a knock down, drag out finale set in a freaking castle, and it's not difficult to see why this one, which dates back for me to a stickered up Video World rental VHS under it's alternate title, Spartan X(more about that later), is still such a wildly popular entry in the Chan filmography.According to Chan, Golden Harvest switched the order of letters in the title to avoid the recent bad luck the studio had experienced with movie titles that started with 'M'(!).Unhampered by the usual difficulty when filming in Hong Kong, Sammo enjoyed full compliance from the Spanish authorities while shooting, even during the intricate car stunts.For those of you who like your kung fu without so much long white eyebrows and elaborate sets in it, this one's got slapstick and jump spinning wheel kicks in a modern setting, though most of the actors' brightly colored eighties-wear here looks like somebody fused an episode of Punky Brewster into a taping of Dance Party U.S.A.It just adds to the laughter you're bound to encounter, trust me on this one.

"Ménage à trois???!!!"
Thomas and David(Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao) are two expatriated Chinese roommates who peddle fast food out of a tricked out yellow van they like to call, "Everybody's Kitchen(or 'Cocina Para Todos', since they're in Spain)", in the center of Barcelona.Thomas takes and delivers orders viz skateboard, while David, a nearsighted/goodhearted nerd with awful fashion sense and a father who's flipped his lid in the local nuthouse, cooks them up on grills inside the vehicle, which has been equipped with an automated control panel complete with Atari 2600 level sound effects for when the benches, seats, and awnings slide out.Occasionally, they're forced to display their kung fu skills, like when a multicultural dirt bike gang(they're everywhere, the bastards) tries to ruin their business with exhaust fumes and loud engine buzz.Their friend Moby(Sammo Hung) is a rotund Chinese secretary(with a jheri curl) to Detective Matt(Herb Edelman), who's behind the monetary eight ball to some unsavory types and in going into hiding, turns the business over to his assistant.While Moby plays private detective in the office, his very first client strolls in, unbeknownst to the oblivious fatso.Meanwhile, a beautiful young whore named Sylvia(Lola Forner) who's been purloining the pockets of her tricks, seeks refuge with our two spring roll-slinging heroes, who she repays by rapaciously jacking their dough, then making off with the vehicle(and wallet) of the adulterous Italian stereotype-ah who-ah shares the building-ah with them.She gets into a fender bender with Moby, who's seeking a woman who worked as a maid for the estate of a man named Mondale and her twenty-something daughter who stands to inherit his vast fortune and property.She falsely gives him the Italian's information and jacks his wallet before driving off.This broad is good.

This thug(Keith Vitali) wasn't looking for a glass of water, so David(Yuen Biao) gives him a pitcher instead.
It isn't long before Mondale's nephew(Jose Sancho) is sending out blazer-sporting miscreants(Benny Urquidez, Keith Vitali) to hunt down the heir and her mother, who happens to be a nymphomaniac institutionalized with David's father(!), and kidnap them so that Sylvia's inheritance is transferred to Mondale instead.Moby takes David and Thomas out for drinks at a disco so he can ask for their help with the case, but they hoodwink him into shouting anti-Spaniard sentiments to the mostly Spanish crowd.When the boys next encounter Sylvia, she's being pursued by Mondale's thugs, who prove to be tougher than they originally expected.There's a death-defying van chase all over Barcelona, then a hideout in a mountain of smelly stumblebums, and a showdown at the asylum which leaves Thomas, David, and Moby temporarily defeated and the girl and her mother abducted back to the villain's sizeable castle.The martial trio bands together to infiltrate the fortress and rescue the women, but all three eventually get themselves captured through every silly fault of their own.At the dinner table, Mondale loses face, cuing a battle royale between his two henchmen and the boys, with Moby himself squaring off against the head honcho, who proves to be quite an adept fencer, indeed.Meanwhile a Muay Thai flying knee from Thomas nearly sends his opponent out a castle window in defeat after a tense battle that saw the thug-in-braces(and visible flak jacket) kicking out a row of candles with a single kick.Elsewhere, David's dizzying acrobatics prove mostly ineffective against his hard-kicking foe, so he simply smashes a pitcher off of his dome, rendering him unconscious.In the catacombs, they find Moby barely holding off the attacks of Mondale's foil, until they combine skills and force him to concede.We then see the boys working the food beat again, first dropped in on by Sylvia, now a limo passenger, who asks for waitress work for the summer, then Moby, who asks the boys to help him on an Eskimo case.They kick him in the ass.Freeze frame.

"My fist's got first dibs on your grill and ribs, Buh-buh-buh Benny the Jet!", says Thomas(Jackie Chan).
Strangely enough, the aforementioned VHS copy of tonight's review, which was nominated for a Best Action Choreography award in the 1985 HKFA's, turned out to be the only format with Jackie's signature blooper reel during the credits left intact, apart from the later Japanese laserdisc release.A year later, all three friends would reunite for My Lucky Stars and Twinkle, Twinkle, Lucky Stars, both semi-sequels to Winners and Sinners.Not my favorite three showcases for the actors by a long shot.Forner would appear with Chan again in Armour of God(1987), while Urquidez would again square off against him in Dragons Forever(1988).Though the duo's dynamic show of pugilist skill is certainly praise-worthy, I'm kinda left flat by the other two final fights.I've seen Yuen Biao defy gravity on many occasions throughout his career, his match with Vitali just seems lazy and uninspired, and the same goes for the brief Hung duel afterwards.That's probably me just spoiled by decades of quality fight features, but I'll do that if you aren't careful.Other than my slight chafe, this is mostly flawless martial arts action with enjoyably silly comedy that you'll probably dig.On the scale, each star merits a Wop for his performance, for an impressive total score of three Wops.Highly recommended.

What's with the Chinese fire drill, guys.

"Spiritual Kung Fu"(1978)d/Lo Wei

The screenshots for tonight's review come from my dvd burned from an original Chinese language print, letterboxed VHS original I snagged out in Manhattan's Chinatown in the early eighties, though I'd never hold such trivia over anybody's head.But I suppose you could say I was a hardcore Chan-man fanatic while you were somehow impressed by Chuck Norris' non-acting and clunky fight choreography on a cable box in your parlor with a bag of Taco-flavored Doritos sitting on your belly and a two liter of 7Up resting against one of your Nike Cortez.And you'd probably be right.Watching Jackie in any of his pre-Yuen Woo Ping movies, while he was under contract to Lo Wei's production studio, is tantamount to seeing Clint Eastwood in Tarantula(1955) or Lee Van Cleef in Beast from 20,000 Fathoms(1953), in that you can sense bigger and better things on his horizon with untapped skill and presence beginning to shine through.This and 1979's Dragon Fist are probably his best efforts under the old man, who was also responsible for Bruce Lee's earliest successes in the early part of the decade.Chan also provides the fight choreography here, which was fairly innovative at the time, but compared to the rollercoaster ride movies he would later produce, it wouldn't be outrageous to hear people call this boring stuff.As it stands, there's a helluva lot of Jackass-style buffoonery, dime store skeletons, poverty-level special ghost effects, and surprisingly good fights on board here, enough to keep you from crashing the fuck out midway through at least, I'd ponder.

This unsuspecting poultry is about to become an ingredient for a Hungry-Chan dinner.
Ye-lang(Jackie Chan) is a mischievous student at the Shaolin temple; when he isn't being naughty, he's being punished for being naughty.The peace-loving monks usually come up with tasks for the young man to do that border on sadistic, whether its balancing a bench with a bowl of water on the end around his neck and two bowls full in his hands while his equally naughty classmates throw him food on the sneak-sneak, or wielding a giant calligraphy brush to stroke tiny, intricate characters on paper.When he's given temple guard duty, a mysterious man in ninjutsu threads breaks in and steals the "seven deadly fists" manual, with every intention of mastering it and using it for evil, as is usually par for the course.Ye-lang is appropriately punished for not performing his job along with the other students who allowed the unspeakable theft, which, it would seem, knocks the yin and yang of the universe off balance, causing a cosmic counter-occurence, where an ancient lost training manual for "five style fist" is unwittingly stumbled upon by...yeah, you know who.The book is protected by five pasty-faced ghosts with magenta wigs, each topped by a toy rubber animal that coincides with the forgotten style kung fu that they've mastered, and white leotards and hula skirts(like some experimental Chinese jazz musical off-off-Broadway or something), who manage to frighten the bejeezus out of just about everyone in the temple with some pretty low-brow holy x-ray paper and plastic skeletons, save for Ye, who's graduated from catching live frogs, snakes, chickens, and eels for a stew and stuffing them into his drawers for safe keeping, loosens his sash and takes a hearty piss(!) on the spirits as they're hiding behind a bookcase in the corner.After being wedgied and grab-assed like a Riker's Island blow up doll by the gaudy-looking ghosts, he bullies them into teaching him their potent styles of kung fu, by apparently tearing open his frog buttons to reveal the manual, the home of the ghosts themselves, tied to his chest.I'm warning you, I'll sweat all over it, guys...you know I will...Come to think of it, that'll probably come in handy later in the film, because...

Better to be pissed off than pissed on:Movement number one, novice Ye-lang(Jackie Chan) pisses on Five Style Fist ghost sifus.
The stolen seven deadly fist manual turns up in the mitts of the diabolical Luk(James Tien), who's perfected the style with full intention of restoring dignity to his family's name by becoming the master of the martial world.Naturally, Luk cannot achieve this without handing out some serious martial beatdowns to the competition, so he does so, every chance he gets.Meanwhile, back at the temple, Ye offers himself as an escort for the hot-to-trot daughter(Mo Man Sau) of a visiting Wu Tang master.He questions whether she's really a girl(!!), then gets his monkey ass handed to him when he tries getting fresh with her.Embarrassed by the prospect of getting housed by a chick, he improves his technique further with the aid of the martial spectres, enough to defeat the fiesty girl and administer a hearty spanking to her wushu-proficient ass.Her father has the nerve to up and mysteriously die, when Ye suggests that he leave the temple to do some detective work on the unsolved murder.The head monk tells Ye that he cannot leave until he's proven his mettle with two tonfa batons against the eighteen lohan priests, all wielding bo staves(one of the better tonfa v. staff displays ever committed to celluloid, I'm here to tell you).Fifteen breath-taking minutes or so later, Ye is on the case.Luk challenges the orphaned girl to a pugilistic square off when Ye jumps in to help out, getting Pwnd instead.The monks recognize Luk's vicious style as the one from the stolen manual, and arrange more fisticuffs between the two, which Ye emerges victorious from, drawing Luk's father(!!!) out from behind his monk disguise and into the fray.With the help of the five ghosts released from the manual tied to his chest, mid-scrap, Ye is able to pulverize the old bastard into the afterlife with leopard fists as his unearthly sifus hold him in place.Afterwards, Ye mistakenly steps on the manual, causing the ghosts to attack him as he jumps into a mid-air freeze frame.We hear the "Goodbye....goodbye" lifted directly from the ending of Close Encounters of the Third Kind(1978).

Snake-style fist says, "Ssssssss.....sssssssss....ssssssss."
Stickler for detail I no doubt am, I added the original Cantonese trailers found at the beginning and end of several of my VHS as extras on my custom disc.There are previews for Fearless Hyena, Half a Loaf of Kung Fu, and an outrageous trailer for To Kill With Intrigue that incorporates a terrible dated pop soundtrack in a miserable pony-tailed period piece where Chan gets his face burned and his ass repeatedly kicked by a sadistic kung fu honey before barely outlasting his final opponent in the final reel.The misleadingly hip trailer is pretty amusing.Yeah, I'm a goober like that.I dug the hell outta this one growing up though Chan's propensity to consistently outdo himself once he'd achieved international superstar status sort of leaves it undeservedly buried in the back of the minor classics closet.Wei would follow this up with three more Chan vehicles(Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin, Magnificent Bodyguards, and the silly, incoherent Half a Loaf of Kung Fu) all in the same year, and one in the next(Dragon Fist).James Tien, who co-starred in Bruce Lee fare early on, has never looked better than when he's been choreographed by the Chan-man here.On the scale, it merits two wops, and comes recommended for Jackie Chan completists and lovers of kung fu movies everywhere.Hunt it down!

Don't you love when guys call out what they're hitting you repeatedly with?In this case it'd be...dragon fist!Dragonfistdragonfistdragonfist!