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Post by codystarbuck on May 5, 2020 18:06:37 GMT -5
Oh the joys of Japanese television shows! Grew up with Godzilla, Starman, Ultra Man and Ultra Seven and had a VHS tape of Inframan that was totally worn out from watching. What a great movie to enjoy over dinner and drinks (and maybe a small reefer, not that I recommend doing so) with your buddies after a week of work and school and study. Talk about mind relief, Inframan does the job quite nicely. My grandparents used to get a Chicago UHF station (Channel 44, I think) which had a weekday afternoon block of mostly Japanese shows and cartoons, plus the Marvel Super Heroes cartoons. They alternated Ultraman on M, W, F with Johnny Sokko on Tu and Th. Also had Speed Racer. Not too long after I discovered Battle of the Planets/Gatchaman. |
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Post by codystarbuck on May 7, 2020 21:49:25 GMT -5
First, a bit of appropriate music, from a slightly different source... "It's not unusual to get chopped by anyone....." Time for some kung fu fighting and I can't think of a better hero to illustrate that than Wong Fei-Hung. Wong Fei-Hung was an herbal medicine practitioner and legendary martial artist, born in 1847 and died in 1925. His father, Wong Kei-ying was one of the Ten Tigers of Canton, a group of legendary martial artists who were considered to be the most skilled practitioners in southern China. Fei-Hung was no slouch, himself and was a master of the Hung Gua style of kung fu. Ge started a martial arts school in 1863 and a medical clinic in the following years. Fei-Hung lived during the tumultuous final years of the Qing dynasty, when Western powers were imposing trade "treaties" on China and slicing of pieces for exploitation, following the Opium Wars. A series of rebellions and the First Sino-Japanese war ensued and the dynasty eventually collapsed and the Republic of China was established in 1912. During this period, businessmen often hired bodyguards from martial arts schools and Fei-Huyng is believed to have both acted as a guard and trained them. In 1919, his son was murdered by a rival and Fei-Hung stopped teaching martial arts and went into a depression and decline, until his death Fei-Hung's exploits were legendary (read exaggerated) and this makes fertile territory for films. In fact, there have probably been more films about or featuring Wong Fei-Hung as a character than anyone else in Chinese history or mythology/folklore. Many of the films are long lost or have not been seen in the West and I couldn't begin to cover them; but, I will go into a very select few that I have seen and have particular interest in the West. First, of particular note is Kwan Tak-hing, who starred in 77 films about Wong Fei-Hung, between 1948 and the early 1980s.  Tak-hing was from the area where Fei-Hung had lived and he had trained in Peking Opera and was a camp entertainer during WW2, with a price on his head by the Japanese. After the war he began to star in films, mostly as Fei-hun, in a long series. he even played the character in a tv series, in 1976, in his 70s! He was revered in the world of Hong Kong cinema and appeared in a couple of films with Sammo Hung (The Skyhawk, The Magnificent Butcher) and then was in semi-retirement, making a few cameos. Incidentally, the villain in many of these films was actor Shih Kien, who would play Mr. Han, in Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon. Following in Tak-hing's very large footsteps was a rising star who had been doing stunts and bit parts, who took on the role of Fei-hung in what many consider his breakout role. The actor was Chan Kong-sang, better known as Jackie Chan, and the film was The Drunken Master... The film find young Fei-Hung, a mischievous lad, getting into trouble. he first humbles a martial arts teacher, then offends a young lady he tries to woo, to impress his friends and earns the wrath (and a butt-kicking) by her guardian. He is then introduced to them and learns they are his aunt and cousin, who he had never met. His father decides he needs discipline and invites Beggar-So to drill him in martial arts. The teacher is notorious for crippling his students and Fei-hung takes it on the lam. With no money, he tries to con a free meal, at a restaurant, then learns his mark is the ownerr and he is about to get another whoopin, when he is saved by an old drunk, who turns out to be Beggar-So. Beggar-So puts him through grueling training and Fei-hung taps out and runs away again, only to run into Yim Tit-sam, aka Thunderfoot, who whoops his hide, real good. Fei-hung drags huimself back to Beggar-So and starts training in earnest, to face Yim again. Yimis contracted to kill Fei-hung's father and defeats him in combat, when Fei-hung and Beggar-So arrive. Fei-hung takes up the fight, with Beggar-So vowing to stay out of it. Fei-hung must tap into what he has learned to win. The film was the second of a two part deal, after Jackie was loaned out to Seasonal Film Corporation, with the first being the hit The Snake in the Eagles Shadow. That film was directed by the same man as here, Yuen Woo-Ping. Prior to these films, Jackie had worked with director Lo Wei, who was trying to turn him into yet another Bruce Lee. Woo-Ping let Jackie have control over his stuntwork and you see his wild, comedic style develop as he fights with everything, including the kitchen sink. Jackie gets to play comedy here, rather than traditional martial arts heroes and his Fei-hung is an arrogant punk who spends the first thir d of the film getting his butt whooped, the second third training in ways that would make Rocky go, "Eh, that's some tough stuff dere; absolutely!" Then, he dishes out the butt-whoopin; but, he has to tap into the one Drunken style he hasn't mastered, Drunken Miss Ho, which he felt was too feminine. He needs it to defeat Yim and finally gloms onto the mincing technique. Jackie went back to working with Lo Wei, but soon parted ways and went to Golden Harvest, where he spent the bulk of his career, before finally breaking through, in America. Prior to Rumble in the Bronx becoming a US hit, Jackie returned to the role of Wong Fei-hung, in Drunken Master 2 (aka Legend of the Drunken Master)... In this sequel, Wong Fei-hun and his father are traveling on a train, where Fei-hung carries a box of ginseng, to use in medical treatments. he meets an old friend, who was a top student for a military exam and their boxes get exchanged. The friend's box had the Imperial Seal, which a corrupt British consul and his thugs were trying to steal and smuggle out of China, along with other artifacts and items. They send people after Fei-hung. Fei-hung gets into trouble when he discovers the loss of the ginseng and substitutes bonsai, which makes a client sick. The Consul, meanwhile sicks the Axe Gang on Fei-Hung and his father. It all culminates in a battle at a steel mill, where Fei-hung uses industrial alcohol to defeat the Consul's men. Jackie was in tremendous form and director Lau Kar-leung crafted a masterpiece of action, with a legendary battle in a restaurant that just has to be seen to be believed... Just before Jackie returned to play Wong Fei-hung, another, younger actor was making a name for himself, as the hero. His name is Jet Li and the film was Once Upon a Time in China... Tsui Hark directs this masterpiece, which finds Fei-hung caught between corrupt exploitive British authorities, the local militia, and a ruthless gang of criminals. he als meets his "13th Aunt," Yee Siu-kwan, with whom he falls in love. He has three aprentices: Porky Wing, Bucktooth So, and Kai. An opera performer (Chinese opera, which includes acrobatics and martial arts) Leung Foon, arrives and gets caught in the middle of the battle between the local militia and the criminals, as well as the authorities and Fei-hung and his apprentices. By the end, Leung becomes his fourth apprentice. Here, Fei-hung is a wise teacher and healer who helps the oppressed and teaches his skills to others. he comes to the aid of the underdogs and the film is filled with political statements about how the Chinese were exploited under British rule and how Chinese immigrants were treated in the US. The British authorities treat Fei-hung with contempt and disrespect and Fei-hung tries to battle the corrupt system in the courts and then on the streets. His assistants each have a specialty and as the film series progresses they become much like Doc Savage's Five, each a heroic figure in their own right, though often the comic relief. Hark uses extensive wire stunt sequences and the fights have a balletic quality to them, much like the mythic quality seen in Ang Le's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Jet Li is serenely graceful, as he fights with umbrellas and traditional weapons, moving like a dancer as he glides across rooms, rooftops and streets. Li would continue to play Fei-hung in the next two sequels. In the second film, Fei-hung travels to Canton to teach a seminar and is caught between battles between reformers and a xenophobic organization, called the White Lotus Sect, who are attacking foreigners. Fei-hung takes it upon himself to try to protect innocent children, caught in the middle of the fighting. The third film sees Fei-hung battling the henchman of a rival martial arts group, Clubfoot. The central part of the film is a lion dance competition, with rival troupes engaging in fights. Clubfoot is injured in the fighting and treated by Fei-hung, earning his respect and Clubfoot becomes his fifth apprentice. Also in the middle of things is a Russian, who is known to 13th Aunt and who rivals Fei-hung for her affections. He is also out to assassinate a Chinese general and politician. Hung Yan-yan plays Clubfoot and continues as the character in the next two films. Vincent Zhou takes over in OUTIC 4 and 5. 4 is generally considered to be a disappointment, as Hark has less involvement and the loss of Li is greatly felt. Also, the plot repeats aspects of the three previous films. Fei-hung does meet 14th Aunt, the sister of 13th, who develops a crush on him, complicating things. There is another xenophobic sect and another lion dance competition. 5 is a bit more fun and was the first of the series that I saw, at an HK film festival. Here, Fei-hung and his apprentices aid a local fishing village in battling pirates, while also helping refugees obtain travel documents to leave the area, while the British have travel under heavy restriction. Each apprentice gets a chance to shine and Bucktooth So discovers that he is as crack pistol shot. The film got better reviewas, but a lower box office, in Hong Kong. A tv series followed, then, in 1997, Jet Li returned to do Once Upon a Time in China and America, where Fei-hung travels to the United States... The film also marked the arrival of a new director, Sammo Hung. The film finds Fei-Hung, Clubfoot and 13th Aunt traveling to America to visit Bucktooth So, who has opened a new branch of their clinic. It lets Sammo indulge in directing a western, while also highlighting prejudices against the Chinese. The film goes a long way to teach David Carradine how to do a kung fu western. Sammo is a pretty darn good director and his films are usually a cut above the HK average. 1993 saw a slip into the past, with Donnie Yen starring as Wong Kei-ying, Wong Fei-hung's father, with the younger Wong appearing as a child. A healer, Yang Tianchun provides treatment for the poor, by day, then robs the wealthy to help the poor, as the masked Iron Monkey, at night. Wong Kei-ying defends himself against bandits and is suspected of being Iron monkey. he is put on trial but Iron Monkey shows up to disrupt hings. Wong Kei-ying battles him, but he escapes. Fei-hung is held hostage to force Kei-ying to find and fight Iron Monkey. Basically, this is a kung fu Zorro and Yuen Woo-Ping is the director. I watched it, a long time ago (when it hit US dvd and found it a bit light in story, but big on action (same with a lot of Woo-Pings other stuff, compared to Hark or Lau Kar-leung. There are some others, including Jet Li's Last Hero in China, a film he did in 1993, after leaving the OUTIC series, which some view as a parody of that series, with more violence and broader slapstick. In 1981, Gordon Liu (Kill Bill, 36th Chamber of Shaolin) starred as Wong Fei-hung in Iron Club, from the Shaw Brothers studio. Lau Kar-leung directed. Next, we move to the distaff side and check out Michelle Yeoh as the founder of Wing Chun kung fu and also as part of The Heroic Trio. If you think Black Widow is badass, check out Ching, Tung and Chat, aka Invisible Woman, Wonder Woman and Thief Catcher |
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Post by codystarbuck on May 11, 2020 20:37:56 GMT -5
Now, time for a butt-kicking heroine: Michelle Yeoh....  Michelle Yeoh Choo-Kheng was born in 1962, in Malaysia, of ethnic Chinese parents. She studied dance from a young age and attended the Royal Academy of Dance, in the UK, until a spinal injury ended her dance career. In 1983, she won the Miss Malaysia beauty pageant and was Malaysia's representative for the Miss World competition. She did a commercial with Jackie Chan that led to Kong Kong studios offering her an acting contract. In her first film lead role (she had minor parts in Sammo Hung's Owl vs Bumbo and Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars), Yes, Madam, she is teamed up with American martial artist Cynthia Rothrock, as a police inspector and she performed her own stunts in the film.... Billed as Michelle Khan, to better appeal to Western audiences, Yeoh quickly established herself as a popular actress in HK action films. Rothrock was a legit martial artist, but not much of an actress and her film career is mostly limited to Hong Kong, with a few low budget actioners in America. Yeoh was afar better actress, who adapted quickly to cinematic martial arts, thanks to her dance and choreography background. She was also fearless and adapted to doing her own stunts quickly, though she credits other stunt performers with teaching her and watching out for her when overly dangerous stunts were proposed, as many scenes were improvised on the fly. She next appeared in In the Line of Duty, the first in a series of police action films... She might have been stuck playing police inspectors fighting crooks, had it not been for her next film, known in the US as Magnificent Warriors... Yeoh plays a pilot who is supposed to meet up wioth an agent of the resistance, fighting the Japanese invasion, in the 1930s. Instead, she meets up with a con man, though she does eventually find the agent. The film is an action comedy, with heavy emphasis on the comedy, in the early half, before it turns into a more serious action film, when they fight the Japanese. Yeoh's co-star, Richard Ng, was known for the Lucky Stars series of comedies (in which Yeoh appeared, in Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars) and he provides much of the comedy, though Yeoh proved to have pretty good comic timing of her own. The film was meant to jump on the Indiana Jones bandwagon, hence the 1930s setting and the whip, but D & B Group didn't have the resources of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas and the period detail is rather slim. The trucks the Japanese Army uses are very modern and the tanks are American (look like M47 Patton tanks, or a similar model). Still, the film is fun and filled with great action. It is probably her standout of her early career, in terms of breadth of role, compared to her police films. Yeoh finished off the decade with a heist film, called Easy Money, where she plays a wealthy woman who pulls heists out of boredom, recruiting others for the jobs. Basically, it's The Thomas Crown Affair, with Yeoh as Steve McQueen (or Pierce Brosnan; take your pick). That would be it for a few years. Why, you may ask? Well, she got married to the D of the D & B Group, Dickson Poon, a Hong Kong businessman who owns the Harvey Nichols chain of high end department stores. Yeoh retired after their marriage, though it would prove brief, as they separated in 1991. She made her film comeback in 1992 and has never looked back. When she returned, it was for Raymond Chow's Golden Harvest studio, in the 3rd installment of the Police Story series, starring Jackie Chan. That film was known in the US (and subtitled in Hong Kong) as Supercop.... Jackie returns as Inspector Chan Ka-kui, who is seconded to the mainland police force of the People's Republic of China, to help take down a drug lord, Chaibat, who operates from Hong Kong. His Interpol liason, with the Chinese police in Guangzhou Province is Inspector Jessica Yang. She briefs Jackie on their plan. Jackie will "help" break Chaibat's brother, Panther, out of a prison and help him escape, to lead them to Chaibat. He does this, but needs Yang's help and she masquerades as Chan's sister. They earn Panther's trust and are brought into Chaibat's organization. They travel to Thailand. where Chaibat wipes out rival drug traffickers, while putting Yang in an explosive vest. The group then plan a jailbreak in Kuala Lumpur, to get Chaibat's wife out, because she has the codes to Swiss bank accounts, which include evidence against him, asn an insurance policy to keep her alive. Chan's girlfriend, a tourist guide (played by Maggie Cheung) is also there and runs into her boyfriend, undercover and blows it. She is then captured by Panther and Chan is forced to aid them, for real. They intercept a police van in traffic, then a chase ranges across city streets and on a speeding train and a helicopter. This is an amazingly exciting film, with some well placed comedic touches. The action builds throughout the film, into an electric climax, filled with wild stunts and fights. Yeoh grounds the film a bit more, as Jackie can run off the rails a bit and the film was a return to form at the box office, after Police Story 2 proved to be a smaller hit than the original film. Yeoh really shakes up the formula and she gets in on the stunt action, aside from the fights. She has to ride a motorcycle and jump it onto a moving train. She also hops onto a moving van, hangs from it (in motion) and then flips herself up to the roof, narrowly avoiding a passing truck. Jackie dopes his thing and does a stunt where he leaps off a building onto a rope ladder, suspended from the helicopter. He then dangles underneath as it speeds away and they try to shake him off. This leads to landing on the speeding train and a fight with Chaibat's men, with Jackie getting slammed by a railing over the train, where he was legit injured (seriously, as opposed to his usual; injuries). The film was a massive hit in Hong Kong and became an international sensation, though it took time to come to the US, after Jackie's breathrough, with Rumble in the Bronx. Yeoh would star in a spinoff/sequel, called Supercop 2 (or Project S, in some releases)... Despite what the trailer says, Jackie only appears in a cameo. This is all Michelle, as Inspector Yang helps the Hong Kong police deal with robberies committed by ex-military soldiers from the Mainland. One of the suspects is her former lover, Chang. Bill Tung also appears as his Police Story character, Uncle Bill Wong (he was also in Rumble in the Bronx, as Jackie's uncle, who owned the supermarket). Yeoh did a period kung fu drama, Butterfly and the Sword, which was a decent kung fu film, much in the style of the old films, but better production values. That was followed by a film that should appeal to most here. When someone is stealing infants from a hospital the authorities prove powerless and the world turns to Wonder Woman.... ....except, this wonder woman looks like this....  Michelle Yeoh is Ching, aka Invisible Woman, who steals the infants for an Evil Master, who lives below ground. It is eventually revealed that she is the sister of Tung, aka Wonder Woman, who is married to a police inspector, who is unaware of her masked adventures. Ching left her sister behind after failing a test in martial arts training, seeking out the Evil Master to study. She has an invisible cloak, created by a scientist, who she loves, who she has been ordered to murder, but she refuses. Maggie Chung is Chat, aka Thief Catcher, a childhood friend of Ching's. She is a bounty hunter and comes to aid Wonder Woman. The sisters are reunited and the three of them team up to stop the Evil Master and his executioner (with a "flying guillotine"). The film is a mix of superheroes, martial arts and horror, as the Evil master is revealed as a demon. It also swipes from several films, including Terminator. Heroic Trio is an interesting film, with some great action pieces; but, the story is a bit muddled and it is easy to get lost in things. Some of the quieter moments (the relationship stuff) are pretty dull and you start to itch for more action. When people are fighting and stuff is blowing up, it is great; but, when they are in their domestic lives or flashing back to childhood, it drags. The film was a hit in Hong Kong and did well in international markets (though was mostly relegated to dvd in the US, long after its release, in a butchered form). A sequel followed, called The Executioners.... This one is pretty weird and is more of a pure horror film. The world has been hit with some kind of apocalypse and is in turmoil. Uncontaminated water is in short supply and violence surrounding supplies grows. Wonder Woman has retired to raise her daughter but must use her abilities to help and old woman when she is attacked to steal her water ration. Invisible Woman is on the side of the angels and seeks to reform another agent of the Evil Master, Kau, a burnt and twisted hunchback, with no moral compass. Thief Catcher is doing her thing. The group is reunited to save the people from the horror that is out there. The film is okay, but really disjointed, compared to the Heroic Trio and it gets pretty muddled. It also borders more onto horror than action, though there is plenty of that. After these films and Supercop 2, Yeoh got to work with director and choreographer Yeun Woo-Ping in two period martial arts films... Jet Li c0-stars with Yeoh in this film, as two brothers with opposing ideas, must face off in battle. Both were Shaolin, who went out into the world, with Junbao using his skills to help those in need and Teinbao seduced by wealth and power. He joins the corrupt provincial governor to become wealthy off the taxes on the people, while Junbao ends up aiding the oppressed people in a rebellion. Yeoh plays Siu-Lin, who is searching for her lost husband. She ends up joining the rebellion, with Junbao. The film was a sensation, with amazing fight choreography, the Woo-Ping tends to be a bit light on story. However, this fits in well with similar stories of people's rebellions, like Robin Hood. Yeoh then starred in Woo-Pings tale of the founder of the wing chun style of kung fu.... Yeoh is Wing Chun, a woman who runs the family tofu shop. She was nearly froced to marry by bullies, in her youth and learns kung fu to fight them off. She dresses in a masculine style and scares away potential suitors. She si the only one in the village who stands up to the bandits who plague them, led by the brothers Flying Monkey and Flying Chimpanzee (he's the one without the tail.  ). Meanwhile, her childhood sweetheart, Pok-To returns to the village, after years of studying martial arts, to protect Wing-Chun. He mistakes Chamy, a widow whop was saved from Flying Monkey's affections by Wing-Chun, for Wing-Chun. However, he soon aids Wing-Chun and the villagers in fighting the bandits. Pok-To comes to accept her for who she is and she agrees to marry him, after they defeat the bandits. Donnie Yen (Star Wars Rogue One, Iron Monkey) co-stars as Pok-To and the pair put on a thrilling display of "wire-fu", as Woo-Ping continues the tradition of wire stunts which he mastered and brought to the Matrix films and Kill Bill. The story is stronger than many of Yeoh's previous films, adding gender politics to the mix. Yim Wing-Chun is a legendary figure in Chinese history. The basic story goes that a buddist nun, Ng Mui, fled the destruction of the Shaolin temple, during the Qing Dynasty. She allegedly watched a crane and a snake fighting and was inspired to incorporate their movements into her kung fu. She took on young Yim Wing-Chun as a student. She is said to be a tofu merchant who used kung fu to fend off a suitor who tried to force her into marriage. The martial art took her name and was passed on. Master Ip Man became one of the most noted practitioners, teaching the art in Hong Kong, after having been a police officer in Foshan. One of his students was Bruce Lee, who built his jeet kun do style around a base of Wing-Chun techniques. Wing-Chun is a southern style, noted for rapid hand techniques and strong leg kicks, but practiced in a "soft" style, where relaxed composure is the kept. Practitioners are noted for rapid, close quarter strikes and powerful kicking techniques. Donnie Yen would go on to play Ip Man in a series of films. Yeoh was then cast in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies, largely on the strength of her performance in Supercop and it opened up western cinema for her. This stood her well as she was then cast in Ang Lee's classic film of love and martial arts, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.... Lee was able to combine the traditional Chinese period drama, with modern wire work and Western storytelling styles to craft an epic of martial arts action, wire ballet, and a touching love story of both young and middle age. The beauty of the film is staggering and all involved brought their A-game. Chow Yun Fat, who starred in crime films from modern Chinese directors, like John Woo and Ringo Lam, in such classics as A Better Tomorrow, Hardboiled, the Killer, City on Fire and God of Gamblers. He and Yeoh are kung fu masters from Wudang, who have an unrequited love. She was betrothed to his friend, who died; and, out of respect, they do not act on their feelings. Zhang Ziyi is a governor's daughter who seeks to escape her role and be bandit or hero. The film was massively popular in the West and led to renewed and new interest in wuxia (martial) films and period epics, though in China it was received with a mix of criticism over the actors accents, as they speak Mandarin (the Mainland dialect); but with pronounced accents (Chow Yun Fat is from Hong Kong and speaks Cantonese, while Yeoh is Malaysian and Ziyi is from Beijing,; so, none of the leads spoke in the same fashion. Further films and tv have followed; but, I have one last film that is right up this board's alley... Silver Hawk finds Yeoh as a superhero, who is the masked identity of socialite Lulu Wong. Her childhood friend, Richie Man arrives with the local police to track down and capture the masked vigilante, Silver Hawk. As children, the pair studied at a martial school, but, Lulu was taken from the school. Man, at first, doesn't realize that Lulu is his childhood friend. A CEOP of a cell phone company is about to introduce a new model, with a mind control technology hidden in it. Lulu battles to stop him, eventually aided by Richie. The film features Luke Goss, formally of the pop duo Bros, as the villain, Alexander Wolfe. Goss pretty much sucks, but has a good look. Luckily, his henchmen include Michael Jai White (Spawn, Tyson, Black Dynamite) and Bingbing Li, who are great. We get a fight on bungee cords and a battle against an in-line skate hockey team! The film is lightweight fluff; but it's fun and Yeoh has the charisma to keep you interested, even if Goss is too weak, as the villain. It's far more fun than the other big Hong Kong superhero film that came before, Black Mask, with Jet Li. This at least revels in the absurdity of the whole thing, rather than attempt to be an ultra-serious film. That covers Michelle Yeoh's catalog of awesomeness. Next time, a look at the "ballet of bullets" that make up the best of John Woo. Come on back for a whole lot of Chow Yun Fat. |
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Post by codystarbuck on May 12, 2020 14:47:21 GMT -5
John Woo Yu-sen was born in 1946, in Guangzhou, China. His parents were Christians and fled persecution by Mao's forces, relocating to Hong Kong. Woo's father was a teacher, but had TB and could not work and his mother worked as a construction laborer. The family lived in abject poverty and Woo suffered from medical conditions and required surgery on his spine. he had difficulty in walking until the age of 8 and, as a result, has one leg shorter than the other. The family lost their home in a fire; but, was able to relocate due to relief aid. Young John was intelligent but shy and escaped into the movies, especially the French New Wave and the films of Jean-Pierrer Melville. In 1969 he was hired as a script supervisor at Cathay Studios and by 1971 was an assistant director at the Shaw Brothers Studio. His first feature film was Young Dragons, which features action sequences choreographed by young Jackie Chan. The film was a violent crime story and was picked up by Golden Harvest and released, setting Woo on the path to becoming one of Hong Kong's top directors. He directed some traditional period kung fu films and modern fare, then struck gold with Money Crazy, directing comedian Ricky Hui and Richard Ng (of the Lucky Stars series of comic films).
Woo experienced a career setback by the 80s, with a couple of films performing poorly. He fell into depression over the lack of control over his films. Tsui Hark (Once Upon a Time in China) came to his rescue with funding to produce a crime drama, A Better Tomorrow...
This was Woo's career-defining film, which garnered him international acclaim and also altered the course of Hong Kong cinema, launching what is known as the "Heroic Bloodshed" genre of crime films. Woo adapted his love of Melville's existential crime films of the French New Wave into his work, a trend that would continue.
The film stars Chow Yun-Fat, Ti Lung and Leslie Cheung. The film was Yun-Fat's breakout role and his chaarcter became an icon to film fans, with people like Quentin Tarantino emulating his style, from the film. The film tells the story of two brothers, one a part of a triad, the other training to be a police officer. The criminal, Ho (Ti Lung) encourages younger brother Kit (Leslie Cheung) in his career, but keeps his own a secret. Ho's father is aware and pleads with him to go straight. He decides to do that and his next job will be his last. Ho works for a counterfeiting gang and his friend Mark (Chow Yun-Fat) works alongside him. He and a rookie member of the gang go to Taiwan for an exchange, but are doublecrossed and Ho and the rookie flee the police. The triad tries to kidnap Ho's father, to ensure his silence and the father is mortally wounded in a fight. Kit learns of Ho's criminal occupation, as his father dies, pleading for him to forgive his brother. Ho turns himself in and serves 3 years in prison. Mark kills the leader of the Taiwanese gang and his bodyguards; but, is wounded in the leg and crippled. Ho goes straight and works for a taxi company, but he runs into Mark and sees that he is now a gopher for the rookie, Shing, who has risen in stature in the triad. mark tries to convince Ho to return to the triad and take over, but he refuses. Kit will have nothing to do with Ho, blaming him for his father's death and his criminal past holding back Kit's advancement in the police. Shing tries to pressure Ho into returning to the triad and eventually learns that Shing is the one who betrayed him to the Taiwan gang. Mark and Ho steal a tape of the printing plates and take Shing hostage, using him to bargain for money and an escape boat. A gun battle ensues and Kit arrives on the scene, Mark is killed and Ho is out of ammo, but, Kit has Shing. Shing boasts that money and power will free him and Kit hands Ho a revolver and he shoots Shing, then handcuffs himself to his brother so he can bring him in, along with the evidence against the triad.
The film is filled with stylish scenes and a terrific soundtrack. There is violence and bloodshed; but, there is also real human emotion and drama which grounds the story. Some have criticized it for glorifying gangsters; but, it does show the destructive nature of Ho and Mark's criminal life, despite the stylish clothes and rich surroundings. Kit stays the course and proves to be a heroic police office and Ho tries to go straight for him. Much of it is shot at night, adding the noirish quality to it, while gun battles are often shot with slo-motion, as bullets fly out and cartridges rain on the ground. Everything builds to an epic ending, which earned Woo a place alongside Melville, Peckinpah, George Roy Hill, and the legends of Hollywood.
Woo followed up with a sequel...
All three principles are back, with Chow Yun-Fat playing the twin brother of Mark, Ken. Ho is offered an early parole if he will spy on his former boss, who a retiring senior police official wants to take down, before retirement. He is reluctant until he hears that Kit is undercover on the case, knowing that Kit's wife is expecting their first child. He agrees to protect his brother. Ho is still friends with the criminal, Lung, and helps him escape to New York, but the man suffers a breakdown after his daughter is murdered. Ho discovers Ken, who left Hong Kong and runs a restaurant in New York. he enlists his aid to break Lung out of an institution and nurse him back to health. Assassins are hunting Lung and American mobsters are trying to extort Ken's restaurant. A shootout ensues and Ken and Lung are cornered, when Lung recovers his sanity. They kill the remaining mobsters and Lung learns that a new boss is running his gang and sent the assassins. he vows to destroy his gang and he and Ken return to Hong Kong and link up with Ho and Kit. Together they plan to wipe out the rival, Ko, in his mansion. Kit's wife goes into labor when he is fatally shot. ken gets him to a phone and he is able to name his child, before dying. Lung, Ho and Ken then team up and battle the triad in the mansion, killing all while also receiving potentially mortal wounds. The police official and men turn up to find the three surrounded by dead men and tells his men to lower their weapons, as Ho remarks that he shouldn't retire just yet, as he still has work to do.
Woo and Tsui Hark were at odds during the filming and editing and both split, with Hark directing a third film in the series, while Woo went onto his nexrt project, a direct homage to his inspiration, Jean-Pierre Melville...
The film features Yun-Fat as Ah Jong, a hitman who accidentally blinds a woman during a hit. His guilt drives him to perform one more job, to finance an operation to restore her sight. Meanwhile, Danny Lee is Li Ying, a cop who witnesses Ah Jong's hit. he becomes obsessed with the hitman after he aids a child, wounded by a stray bullet. Ah Jong is betrayed by his bosses and goes gunning for them, ultimately teaming up with Li.
The basic plot is an homahe to Melville's Le Samourai, where Alain Delon plays an existential hitman who carries out a killing, but witnesses, including a female piano player, give conflicting statements. The hitman later escapes with the woman's help. It also homages Martin Scorcese's Mean Streets, in a scene of the wounded Ah Jong, in a church. There is further influence from the Japanese film Narazumono, where Takakura Ken plays a hitman who is tricked into killing an innocent and takes out his vengeance on his bosses. A surprising influence on the film is Antonio Prohias' long running Spy vs Spy, from Mad Magazine. Woo loved the relationship of the black and white spies and patetrned Li and Ah Jong around them, as being on opposing sides, yet ultimately sharing a friendship.
The film was a modest hit in Hong Kong (in part due to political events in China overshadowing, including the Massacre at Tiananmen Square but a massive one in the West (highest grossing HK film in America, since Enter the Dragon) . it became highly influential as everyone from Luc Besson to Quenton Tarantino copied the visual style and plot elements. Besson's Nikita, borrows the existential crisis and visual flair, while Leon (The Professional) borrowed the hitman who aids an innocent. Tarantino references the film in Jackie Brown and borrows elements for his other films. The "Mexican standoff" between Li and Ah Jong was a tribute to The Wild Bunch and has been swiped by Robert Rodriguez, whose El Mariachi trilogy is greatly influenced by The Killer (and the original Django). Comic books were quick to jump on board and the gun battles of the film became standard in both crime comics (especially Brian Michael Bendis' work) and superhero/vigilante stuff. In many ways, Ah Jong is the child of Golgo-13, the anti-hero of the long running Japanese manga, about a hitman who kills for the highest dollar. Ironically, Golgo-13 was first filmed in live action in 1973, starring Narazumono's Takakura Ken as Duke Togo, aka Golgo-13. The character was played, again, in 1977, by Sonny Chiba, in Operation Kowloon.
The film has several versions of dubbing and subtitles, with the earliest featuring ludicrously bad translations, which led to some critics referring to it as a camp comedy, which it is most certainly not.
Woo followed up The Killer with Bullet in the Head.
Tony Leung, Jacky Cheung and Waise Lee as three friends, Ben, Frank and Paul (respectively) who are part of a gang, in the late 1960s. Ben becomes engaged and Frank throws a reception for them, after taking out a loan. Ringo, a rival gang leader, turns up and causes a fight. Ben and Frank go after Ringo and Frank kills him. The two approach Paul for help and he suggests fleeing to Saigon, where there is money to be made smuggling to the South Vietnamese. The pick up a consignment to deliver to a Vietnamese ganglord, only to have the goods destroyed by a VC suicide bomber. The authorities arrest them, in relation to the bombing and torture them until the real planners are uncovered. They meet Luke, a hitman for the ganglord, who is in love with a singer that the boss has kidnapped and forced into prostitution. The floor plan to break her out and escape to Hong Kong. Things go awry and the girl is wounded and their boat is attacked by the ARVN and the VC. The girl dies and the men are taken prisoner by the VC and tortured, who then take the gold they had stolen from the ganglord, and intel documents he planned to sell. They are forced to kill other prisoners but break out, thanks to an attack by the Americans, led by Luke. During the escape, Frank is wounded and Paul shoots him to prevent the VC from finding them. Luke puts Frank on a medevac chopper and Paul runs off and Ben chases. Paul comes to a peacful village and massacres the residents while stealing a boat. Ben tries to save a child and both are shot by Paul. ben is saved by monks and ends up back in Saigon, where he encounters a disfigured Luke and a heroin addicted Frank, who survived the headshot. He returns to Hong Kong, where he finds that his wife has had a baby. Paul has set himself up as a businessman and Ben confronts him, leading to a climactic fight.
The film was intended as a prequel to A better Tomorrow; but, the falling out with Tsui Hark meant it wouldn't happen. he reworked the story into this, incorporating his reactions to the Tiananmen Square Massacre, which led to criticism and lower box office in Hong Kong and the Mainland. The film fared better internationally and is considered to be Woo's strongest film, on an emotional level. It was shot in Thailand and Hong Kong, but period detail is poor, as hairstyles, clothes and weapons were far too contemporary for 1960s Saigon. Hark would do his own prequel in A Better Tomorrow 3, which he directed.
Woo then directed a caper film, with Chow Yun-Fat and Leslie Cheung, Once a Thief...
The three principals were orphans, raised by a crime boss and mentored kindly police officer. They pull off a heist and are double crossed and plot their revenge.
The film is lighter in tone and invokes 60s caper comedies more than action films, though there is plenty of that. The visual style owes much to The Pink Panther and Topkapi.
Woo finished off his Hong Kong career with one last Heroic Bloodshed epic, Hard Boiled....
Chow Yun-Fat is police inspector "Tequila" Yuen, who in the opening scenes breaks up a gun smuggling operation, though several officers are killed. Meanwhile, rival gang member Johnny Wong recruits Alan, a skilled assassin, as he moves in on the triad. Alan is an undercover cop and he leads Yuen to Johnny's weapons stash, below a hospital, where a massive siege ensues.
The film is another emotional drama, with heavy violence and an epic battle at the end. This time, Chow-Yun-Fat gets to be a heroic cop, instead of a sympathetic gangster. The film cemented Woo as a hot property internationally and Hollywood came calling, leading to bigger budgets, but less satisfying films (though Face Off has plenty of good stuff). Woo deliberately made a film that glorified the police and was heavily influenced by Bullit and Dirty Harry. It debuted at Number 3 in Hong Kong and played the Toronto Film Festival, in 1992, where it received a massive audience response. It is one of Woo's best reviewed films in the West, with a strong mix of the action and the drama.
I'll leave Woo's American career for you to discover, as I feel it fell below the standards of his Hong Kong films. It seems he never had the support he did at home and his films are greatly compromised, with Mission Impossible 2 being the biggest at the box office and Face Off being the best reviewed and success with audiences. In 2008, Woo returned to Hong Kong to film the two-part epics, Red Cliff and The Crossing, both dealing with Chinese history. he has been developing an unrealized epic about the Flying Tigers, in WW2, but has been unable to realize the project. His most recent film was Manhunt, a remake of a Japanese film, done as a tribute to Takakura Ken, who starred in the original.
Despite a relatively middling run in Hollywood, John Woo has been a massive influence on both Hong Kong and Western Cinema and his name became revered among film fans, of the 90s. I first encountered discussion of his work in Film Threat magazine, in an article about the films that Quentin Tarantino cribbed for scenes and characters in Reservoir Dogs (particularly A Better Tomorrow 1 & 2 and Ringo Lam's City on Fire) and Tarantino's own discussion of Woo and Chow Yun-Fat would lead to those films becoming hot properties in video stores. It took time, but Hong Kong films started filling up the foreign film and action sections of Blockbuster and its ilk, with Tsui Hark's period epics (including the Once Upon a Time in China series and Chinese Ghost Story), John Woo's Heroic Bloodshed films, and Jackie Chan's action comedies (after Rumble in the Bronx became a hit), which paved the way for others. Woo was a stylist on par with Michael man, Martin Scorcese and Jean-Pierre Melville, who also had his finger on the pulse of masculine friendships, which often led his films to be interpreted as homoerotic, a label which Woo says reflects more the perspective of the viewer, rather than any intention on his part. His films brought Chow Yun-Fat to Western audiences, leading to work in such films as The Replacement Killers, Bulletproof Monk, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Next, we will look at the action films of Jackie Chan, as he goes from yet another Bruce Lee wannabe into his own phenomena. See his struggles with Hollywood and how he turned a Hollywood failure into the start of a long running series. Chan has done a ton of film, so I will be hitting the real highpoints, as I have seen them, as there are still films I have failed to hunt down. We will also look at the curiously haphazard releasing in the US, following the success of Rumble in the Bronx. Then, we will finish off with Jackie's "brother," Sammo Hung and some of the HK comedies in which both were involved.
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Post by codystarbuck on May 13, 2020 23:12:06 GMT -5
Chan Kong-sang was born in 1954, in Hong Kong. His parents had fled the mainland, during the Chinese Civil War and worked as domestics for the French ambassador. He failed his first year in primary school and was withdrawn, by his parents. His father emigrated to Australia, to work in the American embassy and young Chan was sent to the Chinese Drama Academy, where he was trained in the art of Peking Opera. The children were indentured at the school for 7-10 years and were taught martial arts, acrobatics, music, dance and acting and then performed for audiences, with the payment earned going to payback the teacher for their upkeep. Chan was adopted by his master, for the period of his training. After his time was up, he reunited with his father, in Australia and attended college and worked in construction. He was mentored by a foreman, named Jack and the workers took to calling him Little Jack or Jackie and the name stuck and became his professional name when he began acting: Jackie Chan. While in the Peking Opera School, Jackie was part of a performing troop, known as The Seven Little Fortunes (or Lucky 7, in some accounts). Two of the other members were future HK stars Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao, with whom Jackie would later work in several films.
Jackie began appearing in film as an extra, as a child, then was working as a stuntman by the age of 17, in some of Bruce Lee's films, especiallt Enter the Dragon. By 1976, he was starting to get lead roles, as he was one of several performers who was tapped to be the "next Bruce Lee." Sammo Hung also worked on some of Bruce's films and is the stout fighter that Bruce faces in the opening sparring bout, in Enter the Dragon (Sammo taps to an arm bar). One of his first starring roles was in The New Fists of Fury, where Jackie's personality was largely buried. However, he was later cast in The Snake in the Eagle's Shadow, with Yuen Woo-Ping directing...
That would follow with Drunken Master, also with Woo-Ping directing, and similar scenes of unorthodox training and comedy, as Woo-Ping gave Chan the freedom to play the comic, which he was not allowed under director/producer Lo Wei. Jackie was loaned out to Woo-Ping and was back working for Lo Wei, before eventually breaking with him and going to work for Raymond Chow, at Golden Harvest, where his greatest movies would be filmed. Most of Jackie's kung fu films were somewhat run of the mill. His first one to really start demonstrating his skills as both comic and action hero was Young Master...
Jackie also directs for the first time, in this story of a student who screws up a lion dance competition and must find an errant student to redeem himself. This is where comedy really came to the forefront of his work. Jackie was a big fan of the silent comics and incorporated much of their physical style in his work, later homaging directly comics like Harold Lloyd. His Peking Opera brother Yuen Biao also appears here.
Jackie came to the attention of Hollywood, the first time, and was cast in the film Battle Creek Brawl and the first two Cannonball Run films. Hollywood didn't use Jackie well, though he at least was fun in the Cannonball films...
Jackie did a few small roles (cameos, really) in a couple of HK films, soon after. Fantasy Mission Force was done as a favor to help quell a triad dispute that grew out of Chan leaving Lo Wei to go to Golden Harvest. Jackie is barely in the film. He has a bigger role in brother Sammo Hung's comedy Sinners & Sinners, the first of the Lucky Stars comedy films...
Jackie teamed up with his brothers Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao to do the period action comedy Project A, where Jackie plays a police sergeant, who is trying to stop pirates who are operating around Hong Kong waters. Yuen Biao is another officer who puts Jackie and his men through tough training, while Sammo is a street hustler who tips Jackie off to weapons trafficking in the police force and helps lead Jackie to the pirates.
This is where Jackie really started to mix stunt performances within his action films, with large stunt pieces at the center of things. The fights are tremendous and the comedy is pretty entertaining, though it nearly killed him. He recreates Harold Lloyd's scene of hanging from a clock tower, then drops to awnings slung below. He hits the first and starts twisting as he breaks through, then hits the second at the wrong angle and twists more and lands on his head and shoulders. He survived, but it was a close thing. The film was a hit (Jackie also directed) and set the template for how his career would develop, across the 80s. The film also included comic and stunt outtakes, which became a trademark of the closing credits of Jackie's films. Here, they show how the clock tower drop went wrong, in slo-motion.
Jackie did a couple of more Lucky Stars cameos and Canonball Run 2, before teaming again with his brothers on the comedy Wheels on Meals...
Jackie and Yuen are a pair of friends, living in Barcelona, who run a lunchwagon business. They go to visit Yuen's father, in a mental institution and meet Sylvia (Lola Forner), the daughter of another patient. Yuen and Jackie are smitten, but chicken out at the thought of asking her out. Later, they run into her on a night street, where she is posing as a prostitute to pick pockets. They invite her to their apartment, but nothing happens. In the morning, they find her and their money gone. meanwhile, Sammo is Moby, a detective's assistant who took a case while the boss was out, to find Sylvia. She is the heir to a fortune and criminals are hunting her to get it. He runs into Jackie and Yuen and Sylvia is kidnapped by the criminals and the three team up to rescue her.
The film is light slapstick fun, with some action scenes to jazz things up, until the big rescue at the end. Jackie faces off against the chief henchman, played by undefeated karate champion Benny "The Jet" Urquidez, in one of the best martial arts fights on screen. Jackie actually toyed with the idea of fighting Urquidez for charity. The story goes that someone showed him films of Urquidez's fights and Jackie quietly dropped the idea!
Jackie did his last Hollywood film, for a while, with The Protector, where he plays a cop. The experience was dissatisfying to him and he felt he could do better than the Hollywood script for the same subject. This led to the launch of the police Story franchise...
Jackie is Chan Ka-kui (Kevin Chan in US dubbed versions), a young police officer who is part of an undercover operation to nab crimelord Chu Tao. At the opening of the film, the police are spread through a hillside shanty town, where Chu Tao is making an exchange. The police are spotted and the crooks take off and chase ensues, rouight through the shacks of the shanty town, down the hil. Chu Tao and his men try to escape on a double decker buss, with Chan hanging off the back, via an umbrella handle. Chu Tao is arrested and then Chan is both reprimanded for the destruction, then presented to the media as a model officer. he is assigned to protect Chu Tao's secretary, Selina, who is to testify. She doesn't believe she needs protection, so Jackie fakes an atatck to convince her he is needed. It works, but she later discovers the ruse and tapes over a confession which is played in court and embarrasses Chan, as it sounds like they are having sex. Chu Tai is released and decides to kill Sylvia and Jackie, but they escape and go to a shopping mall he owns to download evidence from an office computer. Chu Tao's gang catches up with them and a massive battle rages throughout the shopping mall, before Jackie takes down Chu Tau.
This film was also writen and directed by Jackie and is one of his best, mixing action, drama and comedy well. The stunt pieces are unbelievable, with the opening crash through the shanty town, the bus stunts and then the climactic battle in the mall. Jackie leaps off a balcony and catches a pole and slides down, snapping of light strands along the way, before crashing through a glass roof. Jackie shredded and burnt his hands doing the stunt, the worst of several injuries from filming the final battle. Again, the mishaps are show over the credits.
Maggie Cheung begins her stint as Chan's long suffering girlfriend, May. The actors came back for a sequel, where Chu Tao is released from prison and his men harras Chan, before he takes them down. It's not as satisfying as the first and lacks the real stunt masterpieces of the first. That was followed by Police Story 3, aka Supercop, discussed previously in the films of Michelle Yeoh. the 4th films was shown in the US as Jackie Chan's First Strike...
Jackie is working with the CIA to hunt down nuclear thieves, who have stolen missiles with active warheads. Maggue Cheung did not appear in this one; but, Bill Tung did appear as Uncle Bill Wu, Jackie's superior and mentor. The film is big on the stunts and furniture fights, but is not particularly deep. It's mostly Jackie playing at being a comedic James Bond. It's fun enough, but neither the thrillride of Supercop or the emtional piece of the original film. It would prove the end of the series, until 2004, when Jackie returned in a reboot, New Police Story, then a second, Police Story 2013. Both of these films are darker and more serious in tone.
Rolling back to the 80s, Jackie did Project A 2, without Sammo and Yuen, who were engaged in another film. Jackie is again dealing with pirates and he again stages homages to Buster Keaton, as well as the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera.
Around this time, Jackie did the first of his rip-offs of the Indiana Jones films, where he plays an adventurer, in modern times, known as the Asian Hawk. The first of the films is Armour of God...
I'll get to the title, seen in the trailer, in a minute. Jackie is a treasure hunter who secures a sword from an African tribe, which is sold at auction to Count Bannon. He is reunited with an old friend, Alan, with whom he was part of a pop group (so Jackie can sing in the film). Alan's girlfriend, Lorelei, has been kidnapped by a religious cult and he needs Jackie's help to get her back. The group wants three remaining pieces of the Armour of God, which Bannon hands. He agrees to loan the pieces to Jackie, to help rescue Lorelei. Jackie, Alan and Bannon's daughter, May, travel to Yugoslavia to find the monastery where the cult resides and free Lorelei.
Jackie again directs and there are some really spectacular stunts. The opening battles with the African tribe see them sliding down steep hills on shells sleds and the fight in the monastery is both wild and brutal. A stunt at the end sees Jackie do a bas jump off a cliff and freefall to intercept the envelope of a hot air balloon. He is wearing a parachute (disguise as a backpack, in case he missed, but, he hit it on the side and is seen in the outtakes rapelling down to the gondola. However, that wasn't the stunt that nearly killed him. There is a scene where Jackie jumps from a monastery window to a tree branch, which was a fairly mundane stunt for Jackie. However, the branch broke away and Jackie fell down to the hill below and cracked his head on a rock. he was rushed to a hospital where they found a cranial hemorrhage and had to drill into the skull to relieve the swelling. Jackie's hair was cut for the operations and was missing some bone, after, but completed filming, when he had recovered. Thus, as you can see in the trailer and easily spot in the film, Jackie's hair changes from longer to shorter in several scenes and changes length within scenes, due to only partially filming them before the accident.
The film was a big hit and spawned a sequel Armour of God 2: Operation Condor...
Here, Count Bannon asks Jackie to locate a secret bunker in the Sahara, where his unit hid gold, during WW2. The gold is being hunted by the granddaughter of the man who hid it and some arabs, who are working for a man in a wheelchair, who was one of the German soldiers, from the base. Along the way, Jackie also picks up a young Japanese woman, who is travelling in the Sahara. Together, Jackie and the two women fight for the Nazi legacy.
Operation Condor is great fun, with some wild fight and stunt scenes and plenty of comedy. Once they locate the base, a series of amazing stunt fights ensue, with even the two women getting in on things, using German steel helmets top batter thugs. Jackie fights over catwalks and storage tanks, but the big setpiece is an aerial battle in an operating wind tunnel (which is there, for some reason). Jackie and opponent at trapped against steel shutters, then launched through the air, striking at one another, until the end.
After Jackie became a sensation in the US, Dimension Films released Operation Condor to theaters in 1997, 6 years after its initial Hong Kong and world release. It was a hit and Dimension then released the first film to home video as Operation Condor 2: The Armor of God, ignoring the actual titles (and spelling) and release sequence. Both films were re-edited and dubbed (with Jackie dubbing himself) with footage cut (15 minutes from Operation Condor and 9 minutes from Armour of God). This is part of the confusion of US releases for Jackie's films, as rights were spread across several companies and some of his early films were released in cheap versions, as were some of the films where he only did cameos, but were marketed as if he was the star (to be fair, that was done in Asia, too).
Jackie, Sammo and Yuen Biao were reunited in Dragons Forever, which revolves around strife at a chemical plant...
Benny Urquidez is also back as one of the thugs and Sammo again directs, as he did on Wheels on Meals. All of the films with the 3 Dragons are worth seeing.
Twin Dragons has Jackie in a dual role, inspired by Alexandre Dumas' The Corsican Brothers, and possibly the similar Jean-Claude Van Damme film, Double Impact, which also drew from Dumas. It's a modest action comedy, notable for hot directors Tsui Hark and Ringo Lam, though it is not one of Jackie's better films. Generally speaking, his best films are directed either by himself or Sammo Hung. Jackie's have the better stunts; but, Sammo makes them look much better and the characters tend to be more fully developed.
Jackie would star in City Hunter, based on the Japanese manga..
Australian martial artist Richard Norton (The Octagon) is the villain and the film is another action/comdey, with its main draw being a fight sequence that is a spoof on the Streetfighter video game.
Jackie would also star in the more serious Crime Story, around this time, inspired by an actual kidnapping...
Jackie returned to Wong Fei-hung in Drunken Master 2, which I previously covered, but followed it up with the film that finally allowed him to break into the American market on his own terms: Rumble in the Bronx...
Bill Tung, from the Police Story series, is Jackie's uncle, who owns a supermarket in the Bronx, which he is selling, ahead of his wedding and retirement. Jackie comes for the wedding and to help transition the sale to a woman, played by Anita Mui. A motorcycle gang comes in and smashes up the store and Jackie takes them down, leading to a series of battles with the gang. Meanwhile, one of the gang members stumbles across a diamond deal that went sour and is hiding out with stolen diamonds. The hoods are after him and Jackie gets in between. After Jackie confronts the gang and earns their respect in a wild warehouse fight, they team up to stop the hoods and rescue Nancy, one of the gang members whose wheel chair-bound little brother befriends Jackie.
This film made Jackie a star in America, as it is filled with wild stunts, funny comedy and a pretty decent story to hold everything together. There are some in jokes as Jackie does a training kata on a wodden practice dummy, after a comic scene in Wheels on Meals, where Yuen Biao does a workout on it, while Jackie does one blocking move then waves his hand at the dummy and moves on. Bill Tung is pretty much playing his Uncle Bill Wu character from the Police Story series and Jackie is a cop (called Jackie in the US dubbing, but Ma Hon Keung, in the HK version) Jackie broke his ankle jumping onto a hovercraft, during filming and had to cover his cast with a sock, made to look like a sneaker. The film was shot in Vancouver and there are a couple of times you can see mountains on the horizon, which would be impossible in The Bronx.
The film cemented Jackie as a worldwide superstar and his older films would soon be released in the US, with new dubbings by Jackie, in theaters and on home video. Suddenly, just about everything he had done was released on video, to varying degrees of quality.
Jackie's last great HK action film would be Mr Nice Guy, shot in Australia, with Richard Norton back as the villain...
Jackie is a tv chef who comes into possession of a video tape, shot by a reporter, of a crime lord. The criminal wants it back and his men attack Jackie on several occasions, before a battle in the man's mansion, with Jackie secured by bungie cords and knocked around, until he figures out how to use the spring to his benefit, and a big stunt piece on a giant mining truck. Sammo Hung directs,o the film looks better than usual.
Jackie had one more film, Who Am I? that saw video release, but is nothing special. From here, Jackie would mostly work in Hollywood, though he still did films in Hong Kong. Most are derivative of previous work or current trends, with one notable exception.
Jackie plays a general during the Chinese Revolution, under Sun Yat-Sen. This is a serious historical epic and finds Jackie demonstrating his dramatic skills to great effect.
Next, a look at the films of Jackie's brother, Sammo Hung. Despite his rather large size, Sammo is actually quite the acrobat and ,artial artist, probably the better of the two, between Jackie and Sammo (Yuen Biao is no slouch, though he never quite rose to the star level of Jackie and Sammo). We will trace his career as an actor, though he will often direct his films and note how he, too, added comedic touches to kung fu films, while also doing his own stunts. However, his films will be more grounded than Jackie's.
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Post by codystarbuck on May 15, 2020 23:21:05 GMT -5
Less celebrated in the West than his "brother," Hung Kam-bo nevertheless carved out an extesive film career as astuntman, fight choreographer, director and actor, using the name Sammo Hung. The name was a nickname bestowed on him, based on a classic Chinese manhua (comic) character, Sanmao, a poor orphan boy with only three strands of hair (meant to illustrate malnutrition, due to poverty). Unlike Jackie Chan, Sammo came from a film family. His grandfather was a noted director (Hung Chung-ho)and his grandmother was the first woman martial artist in Chinese cinema (Chin Tsi-ang). His parents worked as wardrobe artists in the local film industry and he was mostly raised by his grandparents. At the age of 9, he was enrolled in the Chinese Drama Academy, where he was the eldest of the Seven Little Fortunes, which included Jackie Chan and Yuen Biao. In China, Samma was known a Da Goh Da (Big, Big Brother or Biggest Big Brother, as Jackie Chan is known as Da Goh, or Big Brother ). At the age of 14, he was tapped to perform stunts in a film, which led to further roles as a stuntman and actor, which earned him money he shared with his younger "brothers." He quickly moved up the ranks at the Shaw Bros. Studios, working as an extra, stuntman, fight choreographer and action director. he then went to Golden Harvest and became a leading actor and director. He was part of the new wave of Chinese action films, replacing the traditional Mandarin-language kung fu epics with Cantonese dialects and a greater use of comedy. This further blossomed into action/comedies, with wild stunts, gunplay, and slapstick.
Most of Sammo's early work was in the background or behind the scenes. One of his first really high profile roles was as the poor schlub who gets his butt kicked by Bruce Lee, at the beginning of Enter the Dragon....
The first thing that should be apparent is that ASammo was never going to win awards for his physique. Even at his best shape, he was a bit on the burly side and when he was 16, he suffered an injury that left him bedridden for an extended period of time, during which his weight ballooned. However, as you can see in those scenes, he is agile as a cat and could do just about anything acrobatic. This would becopme a defining physical trait in his films. along with his comedic timing and physical comedic skills. If Jackie idolized Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton, Sammo invoked a rather more athletic Oliver Hardy.
1977 saw Sammo star in his first film, Shaolin Plot..
Sammo's the bald guy, with the guillotine blade. He's also the fight choreographer. With his next film, he is both star and director: The Iron-Fisted Monk...
(Warning, some nudity in the trailer, and the opening stages of a scene that leads into a rape)
The story revolves around a young man sent by the Iron-Fisted monk to train at the Shaolin Temple, to defend himself against the Manchus. A Mancho officer is terrorizing the area and rapes a woman who commits suicide. The Monk convinces Sammo to teach the workers at a dye plant kung fu, in order to defend themselves and throw off their oppressors. Sammo mixes humor, politics and drama into this action fest; however, he did cut part of a rape scene because he felt it was too violent for release, showing that he wasn't afraid to make hard decisions, rather than just go with exploitive work. he had been quickly elevated to the director role after time as a fight choreographer and action director, where his imagination and discipline impressed his bosses, including studio head Raymond Chow.
Sammo's next film would prove to be his breakthrough film, as a star: Enter the Fat Dragon...
Part of the inspiration for this came from Game of Death, where Sammo acted as fight coordinator for the reshoots, after Bruce Lee's death. Bruce was doubled for scenes in the film and footage of his actual funeral was used within the film, as his character fakes his death to fight the criminals that plague him. At the same time, the whole Bruceploitation phenomena was going on, where cheap knockoffs were made with Bruce lookalikes, with names like Bruce Li and Bruce Le, with just about every variation except Bruce Leigh.
The film has Sammo playing a pig farmer, Ah Lung, who idolizes Bruce and gets into trouble. He is sent to the city to work for his uncle, in a restaurant. The restaurant is beset by thugs, look for protection money and the film takes on a satire of Return of the Dragon (aka Way of the Dragon). Sammo both plays loving tribute to Bruce and sends up his mannerisms, while also spoofing the knockoffs. Plus, his size made him an absurd double for Bruce, yet he gets his physical style perfectly. Again, Sammo also directed.
Sammo next worked with Yuen Woo-Ping to do a sort of companion to Drunken Master, with a continuation of the Beggar So character who trains Wong Fei Hung (Jackie Chan) in that film. The same actor was set to play him, but died suddenly and the role was recast. The film is Magnificent Butcher...
Sammo is Butcher Wing, a student of Wong Fei-hung. His master is out of town when the wife of Butcher's brother is kidnapped by the student of a rival teacher. Butcher is falsely accused and the brother (who had not seen Sammo, since childhood) meets Beggar So, who trians him and takes him to fight Butcher. the truth comes out and the three work to free the hostage wife.
GHong Kong films tend to have a loose story, with much of the action and story improvised on the set. The film features co-drection from Woo-Ping and Sammo, with both the innovative fights involving props, Sammo's physical and character-based comedy and the action which seems all the more amazing, given Sammo's size. Seeing a burly guy flipping around like a circus performer is quite a sight.
By the 1980s, Sammo was a respected actor and director, a major star. He used this status to get work for his former classmates, as well as those from rival Peking Opera schools. He also apepared with brothers Jackie Chan and Yuen Biao , in the films Wheels on Meals, Project A, and Dragons Forever. Sammo directed all but Project A (which Jackie directed, though Sammo directed parts of it). You could immediately spot his influence as the scenery and the composition was more artistic than Jackie's direction, as he focused more on the action and stunts. As a fight director, Sammo moved things from the traditional stylistic period films to more modern settings, in urban environments, with more realistic combat. He was also creating a new generation of stars, working with the likes of Korean actor/martial artist Casanova, Michelle Yeoh, brother Yuen Biao, and Lam Chi-ying.
Sammo would help create one of the biggest comedy franchises in Hong Kong, the Lucky Stars films, featuring Sammo, Richard Ng, Charlie Chin, Stanley Fung and John Shum. The first film was Winners & Sinners...
(Richard Ng is the smaller guy, with the thinner mustache, blowing the bubbles off the sleeping woman, John Shum is the guys with the Larry Fine hair, Stanley Fung is the guy with the fuller mustache, Charlie Chin is leading man-type). The group all meet in prison and start a cleaning business together, when they are released: 5 Stars Cleaning. A 6th convict, Jack Tar (James Tien) resumes his criminal career , counterfeiting US and Hong Kong currency. The group are Teapot (Sammo), Curly (John Sham), Exhaust Pipe (Richard Ng), Vaseline (Charlie Chin), and Rookie (Stanley Fung). Curly's sister, Shirley, aids them in their business and the others lust after her, though she develops affection for Teapot (naturally; it's good to be the director!). A case of stolen counterfeit currency ends up in their van and they crash a party thrown by Jack Tar, which brings crooks and hapless quintet together, with a massive brawl in the climax. The films are light slapstick and character comedy, often bawdy, rather like a Hong Kong "Carry On" series (the long running British comedy series, with actors like Kenneth Williams). Jackie Chan has a small role (practically a cameo) as a police CID inspector, on the trail of Jack Tar and does a roller skating stunt that looks like would have resulted in death in several places.
The next film in the series is My Lucky Stars...
John Shum (who was a political activist and busy with that) was replaced by Eric Tsangm as Roundhead. Jackie has an even smaller role, here. Jackie (Muscles) recruits his buddies to stop a yazuza gang, in Japan. A crooked cop flees to Tokyo to join the yakuza group and Muscles and Ruicky (Yuen Biao) go after him. Ricky is captured and Muscles must go into hiding. He contacts his superiors and requests his friends be recruited, as the corruption runs deep in the HK police. The supervisor tries to recruit the petty thieves an low-wage workers, then frames them for a bank robbery when they won't cooperate, forcing them to help. They are assigned a police woman, code-named Swordflower, who becomes their object of lust. They are reunited with Muscles and use stolen counterfeit money to get into the yakuza HQ, within an amusement park, where they fight a running battle.
Same basic formula, but new characters (much like the Carry On series)
The third film is Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Stars...
Michael Miu joins as the brother of Charlie Chin and takes over his spot. The gang is tasked with watching over an actress with information on a criminal gang, while Ricky and Swordflower set a trap for assassins (Jackie turns up towards the end, too). More of the same as the guys lust after the hottie and get into trouble, then kick butt in the finale.
Sammo turned over directing reins in the 4th film of the series to Eric Tsang and only produces and has a minor supporting role. in fact, most of the group are only in cameos and the kung fu action is significantly less. The film was Lucky Stars Go Places and it mixed the styles of their films and the rival Aces Go Places series, which sang had directed (about a master thief and martial artist and his bumbling sidekick). Sammo's character invesstigates international arms trade and stolen diamonds and is refused help by the lucky Stars and has to recruit a new gang. Aces Go Places co-star Karl Maka has a cameo as his character, whose wife grew up with Sammo and whose embrace of him at police HQ leads to him getting the wrong idea.
The series continued with returns of the Lucky Stars, Ghost Punting, and How to Meet the Lucky Stars. Return was co-directed by Staley Fung and featured most of the group back, except Sammo. Ghost Punting brought Sammo back as both actor and director. The final film sees the gang back in action, with Sammo along as an actor.
Rolling back, just a bit, Sammo also starred and directed the film Warriors Two, which was his tribute to the Shaw Bros. kung fu films...
Sammo would help launch a horro craze with the film Encounters of the Spooky kind...
The film features vampire-like creatures who are fought by Taoist priests, using magic and charms. These films would spawn the Mr Vampire series, which Sammo produced and directed one installment. It would also lead to the film Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain...
The film finds an Army deserter, in a mystic mountain, who encounters vampires and has to be rescued by a Taoist priest. He trains the deserter and they team with others to defeat this ancient evil. Tsui Hark directs and the film mixes Hollywood special effects with traditional kung fu action and a Chinese fantasy novel, creating a truly modern fantasy epic that has everything and the kitchen sink. The film would prove influential in Hong Kong (spawning films like Chinese Ghost story) and America, where it inspired John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China. Sammo would revisit this world in 2001, in The Legend of Zu...
Tsui Hark once again directs.
Back to the 80s, Sammo was helping create a new subgenre of female action films, with the likes of Cynthia Rothrock, Michelle Yeoh, and Cynthia Khan. He also covered similar ground as Jackie Chan, when he stared his Asian Hawk series, with Armour of God. Sammo stars in and directs Eastern Condors...
Basically, it's an Asian Dirty Dozen, as an American Army officer recruits a group to go into Vietnam and destroy a secret American bunker, filled with weapons. En route, they find out the mission was aborted but it is too late and they parachute in and link up with Cambodian guerrillas. They find themselves betrayed and captured, dumped in a POW camp, where they are forced to play Russian Roulette, before escaping and completing their mission.
The film follows on the heels of American fantasy action films where we get to win the Vietnam War, such as Rambo and Missing In Action. The Russian Roulette scene is straight out of The Deer Hunter. Still, visually, it is one of Sammo's best, as he adds touches from John Woo, while still bringing a little bit of comedy, but plenty of drama. The film was done after Sammo parted with Raymond Chow and formed his own production company, Bo Ho Film Company. Bo Ho produced the films, while Golden Harvest continued to distribute.
Sammo still starred and directed comedies, such as 1989's Pedicab Driver...
The film is set in 1930s Macau, where Sammo runs a pedicab taxi service and falls in love with a beautiful bakery worker, who has a lecherous boss. He must win her heart and fight the boss' thugs.
As he transitioned into the 90s, Sammo was producing his own films, though they were modest successes, at best. A high point was reuniting with Jackie Chan to direct Mr Nice Guy, one of Jackie's better post-80s films. Sammo soon found himself in Hollywood, at the end of the decade, starring in a pilot for a tv series that was surprisingly popular, leading to the tv series Martial Law, where American actors got a weekly dose of the portly hero kicking butt and making Chuck Norris look like a nancy boy. He even had a crossover with Walker.
The 200s saw Sammo back in Hong Kong, still making movies though no longer the big box office star. He transitioned into more of an elder statesman and film icon and even got a rare chance to play a villain, opposite Donnie Yen, in SPL: Sha Po Lang (aka Kill Zone)...
Sammo was even reunited with Jackie Chan in one of his Hollywood films, Around the World in 80 Days, as he played Wong Fei-hung.
Steve Coogan co-stars as Disney all but throws Jules Verne out the window and instead turns the story into a film to appeal to Chinese audiences. Jackie's no Cantinflas, nor is Steve Coogan David Niven; but, then again, THERE IS NO BALLOON IN JULES VERNE'S AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS!!! Everyone always gets that mixed up with 5 Weeks in a Balloon.
That pretty much wraps up the highlights of Sammo Hung, though there are plenty of other films to explore from Da Goh Da.
Next a look at some other notable HK action films, including their ripoff of La Femme Nikita, Brandon Lee's early starring role, more Chinese horror, crime films from Ringo Lam and the HK films of a Japanese manga hero: Crying Freeman. After that, a peek at Gordon Liu and some of the Shaw Brothers films, though I have barely scratched the surface of their catalog, compared to Golden Harvest and the films of the 90s and early 90s. We will also look at a few from Taiwan, as the 70s kung fu craze brought all kinds of choppy films to local theaters and television.
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Post by codystarbuck on May 16, 2020 21:14:17 GMT -5
So, these will be a bit random; but are some great HK films. Or at least, some decent, notable ones, in a few cases. Hong Kong was always quick to jump on popular genres and imitate (or outright steal). When Luc Besson's Nikita took the world by storm, Hollywood was quick to put out their own (decidedly) lesser version, Point of No Return. Then, there were two different tv series that had little to do with the film, other than the name and a chick with guns. Well, Hong Kong can play that game, and give us a crazier chick. Their film was called Black Cat (and, sadly, no, neither Linda Turner nor Felicia Hardy)... The film stars model Jade Leung as Catherine, a wild woman who accidentally kills a truck driver and shots her way out of a police station. She is recaptured and has a "black cat" microchip implanted in her brain to bring her under control, for use as an unwilling assassin for the CIA. The basic premise follows Nikita, but the romance is decidedly weaker, the violence is noticeably higher, and the style not as original. Director Stephen Shin wanted to do a straight remake; but, the worldwide rights were held in Hollywood; so, he did the same basic film, with a pretty threadbare script and typical HK action film violence. I read about the film in Bey Logan's indispensible reference book Hong Kong Action Cinema.....  ... which made we want to see it. I spotted a vhs edition available to order in Previews and ordered it through my comic shop for more money than it was worth. It's not bad; but, it isn't particularly imaginative, either. Leung makes a good lead, but her paramour is a pretty weak character and the best stuff is in the opening act. It did well enough for a sequel and at least 2 more films, in later years. It won Jade Leung the Best Newcomer Award at the Hong Kong Film Awards, in 1992. As long as you aren't expecting the artistry of Nikita, it is a decent action film. The film desperately needed a director of the caliber of a John Woo, Ringo Lam, or Sammo Hung (preferably Woo, who was a bit more in tune with this kind of story). Around this time frame (just a little before, actually) another newcomer was making waves; first in America, in a tv movie and then in his father's old stomping ground of Hong Kong. That newcomer was Brandon Lee, son of Bruce, who appeared in a Kung Fu tv movie, where he was Kwai Chang Cain's son (sent to kill him), which was supposed to be a pilot for a tv series. A series came much later, but not this one. Brandon got an offer to do a film in Hong Kong and took it. The film was Legacy of Rage... Laying it on a bit thick, there! Brandon plays Brandon Ma (HK cinema tends to use the name of the actor in a lot of these things), a regular joe with a girlfriend and two jobs. His best bud is a drug dealer, who lusts after his girl. He frames Brandon for the killing of a cop and gets him sent off to prison for 8 years, while he steals his girl and marries her. oh, and she was pregnant with Brandon's kid. So, Brandon is a little peeved when he gets out of jail and gets a little testy with his buddy's gang and the man himself. Not gonna lie, Brandon wasn't really ready for a starring role, or, at least, not without a better director to help him learn to develop a performance; but, for an action film, he knows what to do and does it. His charisma goes a long way to forgiving his level of craft. The story is a solid foundation for the action and Brandon excels in the physical stuff. He was far better in Rapid Fire and by The Crow he had really found "it" and became a real actor. Sadly, we all know what happened. He shows promise, here, but not mastery. Next is a film Quentin Tarantino knows as well as A Better Tomorrow: Ringo Lam's City on Fire. Chow-Yun Fat is an undercover cop who is due to be married but is forced to take over an undercover operation to nab some violent jewelry thieves. he finds himself caught between rival police inspectors (his boss and a CID inspector). His boss sets him up with guns to sell to the gang, which Chow thinks is dangerous; but, his boss is trying to show up his rival. Meanwhile, his fiance gets POd when he postpones the wedding and delivers an ultimatum. Chow is torn between loyalties as he builds bonds with the criminals, which happened before and is why he didn't want the assignment. The gang get caught in a robebry and have to shoot their way out, then are trapped at their hideout and a gun battle ensues. This film and A better Tomorrow cemented Chow as the leading action star, particularly after continuing to work with the ascending John Woo. Danny Lee plays one of the gang and the pair would follow up with The Killer, with John Woo. There isn't much uplifting in this film, but it is a terrific crime film, with strong characters. Chow and Lam followed up the film with Prison on Fire.... Tony Leung is a advertising designer sentenced to 3 years of imprisonment for manslaughter, after throwing a robber onto a street and under a bus (he was robbing the store of Leung's father). There, he meets Chow, who befriends him. Togetehr, the men get through daily life in prison, while Leung also deals with his girlfriend leaving for England. Added to the mix is a brutal, corrupt guard, who wants Leung to act as an informant and uses another prisoner to harass him. A hunger strike, over the price of cigarettes, breaks out and it all erupts in violence. Again, strong male bonds and an explosive situation make a gripping film. Lam would do a third film, School on Fire, without Chow. Next, we turn to a romantic comedy film, with liberal doses of horror, from producer Tsui Hark and director Ching Siu-tung: Chinese Ghost Story. Leslie Cheung stars as Ning Choi-san, a tax collector who is too timid to get any money out of anyone, which pays his expenses and salary. he is forced to take shelter in an old, abandoned temple that people fear. He meets a beautiful woman and falls in love. After meeting a Taoist priest, he learns that the residents of the temple are ghosts. He returns and finds that it is true and learns how the woman, Nip Siu-sin ended up as the thrall of the Tree Demoness. Ning appeals to the priest for help and he fights to free Nip's soul and fails, leading to her being pulled into the Underworld. Ning and the priest descend into the underworld to find and free her and defeat the Demoness. The film is a delightful romance, as well as a showcase for kung fu wire work, horrific demons, and some great effects. By this point, HK had a top effects house, Cinefex Workshop, who had rpovided effects for Hark's Zu: Warriors of the Magic Mountain. They are in fine form here. The story is based on elements from severl stories in Pu Sonling's 17th Century colelction, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. Hark had tried to sell it to tv, without luck, but turned it into a groundbreaking film, here. Many folkloric horror/kung fu films would follow, with similar effects and monsters. British film critic/historian and novelist Kim Newman (Anno Dracula, The Man From the Diogenese Club) likened it to classic Universal horror in presenting a fully realized world for the characters to inhabit. Cheung also starred in Ronnie Yu's acclaimed romance/horror/kung fu film, The Bride with White Hair.. The film borrows a bit from Romeo and Juliet, despite being inspired by a 20th Century Chinese novel. Leslie Cheung is a taost priest and Brigitte Lin is an orphan raised by wolves, then adopted by conjoined twins who rule an evil cult. Cheung is part of a group that leaves the Wudang Mountains (home of a large complex of Taoist temples and legendary seat of the masters of the Taosit martial arts (Tai Chi Chuan and Qigong) to defeat the cult. The two meet and fall in love. Lin leaves the cult for her lover and they return to Wudang to find his compatriots slain. The Taoists blame Lin and her lover turns on her and she flees, then transforms into a white haired, manic killer. Eventually, the leader of the cult is revealed as the real murderer and the lovers reunite to defeat him/her. Hong Kong would also produce the first attempts to try to adapt the popular Japanese crime/martial art manga Crying Freeman, which owed much to the revolution in Hong Kong cinema. In Japan, they produced an anime series; in Hong Kong, two live action films were produced: Killer's Romance and Dragon from Russia... The films were done by two different studios with different casts, yet both adapt, loosely, the initial manga story of Crying Freeman. In the original, potter Yo Hinamura is a rising star of the art world when one of his clay pots is used to stash incriminating photos by criminals. Yo discovers them and the criminals demand their return. Yo refuses and is captured by the 108 Dragons, the top Chinese crime syndicate and brainwashed into being their assassin. He has a post-traumatic stress release of tears after he kills, leading to his name (Freeman is his code name, as a joke, since he isn't free). He commits an assassination that is witnessed by Emu Hino, who refuses to help identify the man. Freeman goes to kill her and she is ready for it, but asks him to make love to her first, as she is a virgin. She reveals she didn't aid the police and Freeman falls in love with her and lets her live. Eventually she becomes his wife and he becomes leader of the 108 Dragons, with all mention of previous mind control forgotten. The films follow the basic story, in two different settings, replacing the Japanese Freeman with Chinese actors. Killer's Romance is generally considered quite good (I've only recently found it on Youtube, but haven't watched it yet), while Dragon from Russia seems to be more of an action film than Killer's Romance. The manga would also be developed by a Canadian company, with Mark Dacascos (it's okay). The top directors and actors of the Chinese New Wave would soon answer the call from Hollywood, leading to a new generation of stars to emerge by the end of the 90s, though without as much innovation in the films. Many of the HK directors and actors would find mixed results in Hollywood and return home to try to recapture lost glory. Next, we will look at some of the films of Gordon Liu and what I have seen or know of, from the Shaw bros. Studio. Plus, a few odds and ends, including the Water Spider Assault unit....  |
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Post by codystarbuck on May 16, 2020 21:28:24 GMT -5
ps Forgot to mention Chow Yun-Fat's other great starring role: God of Gamblers
The film is a mix of comedy and drama, as Chow is a legendary gambler who is injured and reverts to a childlike state, where he is aided by a young man who idolized Chow' real identity (but he is ignorant that the man child is the legendary gambler). He displays gambling talent and the Samaritan exploits it. Others are looking for Chow, and his girl if killed when a rival attempts to rape her and she falls over a balcony. The rival tries to hunt Chow down. It all comes to a head in a big gambling match, then a shootout.
This one has Chow at his best, as he gets to play all sides of his personality, from action hero, to suave charmer, to comedian.
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Post by codystarbuck on May 17, 2020 22:22:58 GMT -5
We will finish up with Hong Kong kung fu and action films for the comic fan with what is decidedly a sampling. From the late 1960s to the early-mid 1980s, there was a massive explosion of kung fu films, in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. At their height, the Shaw Brothers Studio was starting a new picture every nine days! Their cinemas featured a new film every week! So, if I miss some favorites, its only due to sheer numbers and having only seen a select few of these and heard of a select few more. We will start with some select films from the Shaw Brothers.
The Shaw Brothers began making films in 1924, in Singapore. They took up their own distribution and cinemas, after frustrations with others. This led to an empire that produced distributed and viewed their own films (Hollywood used to work that way, until the studios were forced to divest themselves of theaters, after anti-trust suits). When the Japanese took over Singapore, they were forced to film pro-Japanese propaganda. After the war, they returned to their own films. In 1957, Sir Run Run Shaw started Shaw Brothers, Ltd, in Hong Kong, with a studio on 850,000 sq ft of land (on an island, remember), they geared up and started producing films. The Shaw Brothers didn't just produce kung fu films. The produced all kinds of films, from dramas to comedies, period films and modern and one many prestigious international awards with their productions. In the 1960s, they became noted for bloody, violent, period martial arts dramas that emphasized brotherhood and loyalty, under the direction of writer/director/choreographer Chang Cheh. One of his early notable films was The One Armed Swordsman....
A servant dies, protecting his master, who promises to train the servant's son in kung fu. he does so, but the poor boy is belittled by his wealthier colleagues and leaves the school. he falls for a capricious girl, who cuts off his arm when he ignores her, while fighting bullies. He falls off a bridge, onto a boat, rowed by a peasant girl, who nurses him back to health. He is depressed at the thought of never progressing in martial arts until the girl shows him a half-burnt kung fu manual left to her bny her father. The young man learns to master the sword with only one arm. He lives a contented life as a farmer, until he hears that his former master's school has been attacked by rivals and he goes to aid him and finds the students and master slaughtered. he defeats the killers and walks away from the school, returning to his more peaceful life.
The film made a star of Jimmy Wang (Wang Yu), and he returned for sequels, though he split with the Shaw's and found himself banned in Hong Kong and went to Taiwan to work in films there.
Chang Che continued in this line, with films like Golden Swallow, The Assassin, and more. Chang Cheh was the most prolific and successful director for the Shaw Brothers, often using actors Ti Lung and David Chiang. Probably his greatest film and one that would put him together with a group of actors, known as the Venoms, was The Five Venoms.
The master of the Poison clan fears his methods are being used for evil (can't understand why...). he dispatches student Yan to try to find his 5 other students, the Venoms, and learn which he can trust to help locate a fortune to protect the clan. he must learn which to trust and which are evil, plus their identities, as they hide under masks. Lots of kung fu mayhem, some blood, some intrigue.
The real breakthrough for the Shaws, in the US was the 5 Fingers of Death, starring Lo lieh...
This was the film that outsold Bruce Lee in America and launched the kung fu movie craze here. Basic story-rival schools, master killed, student seeks vengeance, chopping and socking, yadda-yadda-yadda. Lo Lieh would go on to portray a martial arts villain that found a new generation of fans, thanks to Quentin Tarantino and Kill Bill. That villain is Pai Mey.
Pai Mei is based on the legendary figure Bak Mei, a Shaolin master who betrayed the temple. His style of kung fu centered around swift hand movements and he mastered the technique of retracting hos gonads into his body (which is an Asian myth, also associated with sumo, by Ian Fleming). He came to the screen first in the film Executioners from Shaolin.
Pai Mei betrays the Shaolin Temple to the Manchus, as they conquer China and begin the Qi Dynasty. A young student escapes and joins a troupe that opposes the Manchus, secretly, as well as a woman who uses Crane Style kung fu. They wed and have a son who they train in Tiger and Crane style kung fu, to one day defeat Pai Mei and the Manchus. He grows to manhood and seeks his vengeance. Pai Mei is formidable and his secret is trapping his opponents in his groin when they try to strike the vulnerable area, only to find nothing there. The hero must tap into his mother's style to defeat the evil master.
Pai Mei is probably the greatest villain in kung fu films, apart from from actor Shih Kien, who played villains in the long running Wong Fei-hung series and Mr Han, in Enter the Dragon.
Pai Mei returns in Abbot of Shaolin...
Similar story, but the hero has friends. Pai Mei is back one more time in Clan of the White Lotus..
Gordon Liu is back as the hero, who must find the way to defeat Pai Mei. Liu would go on to play Pai Mei in Tarantino's Kill Bill (Part 2).
Liu is our other big subject as he was one of Hong Kong's biggest kung fu stars and starred in some of the best films of the era.
36th Chamber of Shaolin was directed by Lau Kar-leung, who had been the fight choreographer under Chang Cheh. He introduced more realistic king fu in his films, after the more stylized and mythic kung fu of Chang's filsm and kung fu films, in general. Here, Liu is a revolutionary who escapes death at the hands of the opressor, finding sanctuary in the Shaolin temple. He studies and masters the various disciplines, climbing towards the 36th, which will unlock the secrets to free his people. This is one of the finest kung fu films you will find, with more realistic acting and fight scenes and a stronger story. it would lead to two sequels, Return to the 36th Chamber and Disciples of the 36th Chamber.
Liu would also star in Heroes of the East (aka Challenge of the Ninja and Shaolin vs Ninja, though there is a Taiwanese film of that same name). Here, a Shaolin student fights against a ninja clan...
He would also co-star in the more comedic My Young Auntie, which also featured a strong female fighter in Kara Hui.
A young female martial arts champion marries an old man, to help keep his estate out of the hands of his greedy nephews.
There are some gimmick films, with bizarre weapons, like The Flying Guillotine...
and Master of the Flying Guillotine...
The same weapon would turn up in The Heroic Trio.
Taiwan had its own film industry, though budgets were usually smaller than Hong Kong and the films more derivative. Sometimes, they made up for it with gonzo action, like in Robert Tai's Ninja, The Final Duel...
Heh, those ninja; they're wacky! Tai also gave us Mafia vs Ninja (which would have been awesome if it had featured Brando vs Lee Van Clief!) and Shaolin Dolemite, with Rudy Ray Moore...
That trailer should be sued for violating truth in advertising laws.
There's a whole world of kung fu films to explore, from the Shaw Brothers, Golden Harvest and more. Check out the Wu Tang Collection channel on Youtube for a whole bunch of films; some good, some Shaolin Dolemite! Many of the Shaw Bros. films are there. in various forms, if not in their entirety (and the authorized versions are usually available to rent or buy on there).
Finally, I wanted to look at one other Hong Kong star and director, who made a couple of hits that became big in America: Stephen Chow.
Chow was born and raised in Hong Kong and studied acting, when watching Bruce Lee's The Big Boss made him want to be a star. He worked in tv and films, developing a mostly comedic style, with many homages to his hero, Bruce Lee. There are compilations of his comedy on Youtube...
The film Fight Back to School was inspired by 21 Jump Street and has Chow as a police officer, who must go undercover at a school and falls in love with the guidance counselor. By the way, I had a math teacher who could hit a person with an eraser from across the classroom. Use to lob them otno the tops of their heads. Ah, the old days, when teachers could smack around students! Made men out of 'em!...
...except the women.
Chow's big break here was the international success of Shaolin Soccer, which was picked up for uS distribution by Miramax...
Personally, I think the film is better in Chinese, with the subtitles; the timing is better.
The film sees a top soccer player who throws a game and is permanently crippled, as a reward. His rival became wealthy while he fell low. he encounters Stephen Chow and witnesses his Shaolin kung fu skills and wonders if they will work with soccer. Chow reunites his Shaolin brothers, who are working in low end or pointless jobs. Togetehr, they become the Shaolin Soccer Team. They enter a tournament to become champions of China, where they will face Team Evil, controlled by the man who paid the coach to throw the earlier game. Team evil uses steroids and other scientific advantages to cheat and the team must summon the spirit of their kung fu to win. It also features a touching romance between Chow and a shy young woman who makes sweet buns at a bakery. She is bullied by her boss and hides bad skin behind her hair. Chow helps her find her true beauty as he is taken in by the Tao of her baking skills, which are in true harmony.
The soccer games are a blast as they first play pick-up games against thugs and progress to professional teams, most with some kind of theme. It's like pro wrestling on a soccer field. One team looks like pirates, with mustaches and goatees, but is portrayed entirely by women (in some cameos). The Shaolin goalie wears the Bruce Lee tracksuit, from Game of Death and looks like Bruce and uses his trademark mannerisms.
Chow followed up the film with Kung Fu Hustle...
Two petty crooks aspire to join the legendary Axe Gang and pose as members to extort money in a slum, only to be beaten by the landlady. They inadvertently anger the real Axe Gang and a battle between the gang and the residents breaks out.
The film is wonderful, mixing dance routines with kung fu, slapstick comedy and more. Chow does his Bruce imitation in the climax and the slum residents are masters of various forms of kung fu, done in tribute to classic films, such as The 36th Chamber of Shaolin and the films of Bruce Lee. Check out these scenes, where Chow adds a bit of Chuck Jones action to his film...
Probably an Acme Billboard!
So, that wraps up Hong Kong, though there are tons of films to explore, such as the Ip Man series, with Donnie Yen as the famous wing chun master, who taught Bruce Lee (though it's pretty fast and loose with history) and all kinds of action films from the glory days of the 80s and early 90s. You could spend forever watching the kung fu films of the 60s and 70s, if you have a mind to.
Next time, we go from Hong Kong to Italy, for a look at Terrence Hill and the Trinity comedic spaghetti western films. See the laziest western hero ever, with the fastest hands, as well as his rather large brother, bambino (Bud Spencer). Watch as they turn a bunch of pacifists into butt-kickers, when faced with bandits.
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Post by brutalis on May 18, 2020 7:49:24 GMT -5
You certainly hit all the highlights of the Chinese Kung Fu heroic's codystarbuck as I saw nearly ALL of them at the drive thru cinema all night marathon's (from sundown to sunup) of Shaw Bro's and Golden Harvest films every Friday and Saturday night with my dad in the mid to late 70s. For me they were the closest to actual live action comic books I had ever seen. Then the 80's and the mom and pop Video stores provided me with the next wave of John Woo and Cow Yun Fat criminal Gun-Fu craze. Have tons of those on VHS (now obsolete[sob] dangit) and buy them up on DVD cheaply whenever I find them. Really creative and crazy wild fun to be found in both decades of movies. Everyone needs to see many of these "classics" at least once in their life to appreciate just how wonderful they are. |
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Post by codystarbuck on May 18, 2020 18:24:59 GMT -5
In the 1950s, the Western was king. The two reel oaters gave way to big western epics, with John Wayne and others dispensing justice, slugging down whiskey and spanking women when the mood struck them. By the 60s, there had been some alterations, with a truer picture of the west in some, while tv was covered by western heroes. In Italy, they loved this stuff and introduced their own westerns, often shot in Spain. These became known as the "Spaghetti Westerns," which often featured hard men facing even worse villains. The king of these was Sergio Leone, who tapped into several stories from Akira Kurosawa samurai films, with somewhat neglected Hollywood actor Clint Eastwood starring in them. The success of these films brought a whole host of imitators, though usually with the same formula; an American actor leading an Italian (or European cast) in an ultra serious western, with plenty of killing. Now, once you get enough of these kinds of things, someone is going to come along and poke at the tropes and cliches. That man was Enzo Barboni and he did it with a film called They Call Me Trinity....
Trinity (Terrence Hill)is a lazy gunfighter/bounty hunter, and outlaw, riding around on a travois, while his horse does the work. He comes to a station where a pair of bounty hunters are abusing a Mexican prisoner. He takes the man away and kills the bounty hunters in short order. They arrive in town to find a large, burly guy as the sherrif. Turns out he is Bambino (Bud Spencer) Trinity's older brother. Some thugs come to take a prisoner and wind up dead, in short order. Trinity and Bambino catch up and learn that Bambino took this job to hide out, but he doesn't like bullies and a local land baron is harassing a bunch of pacifists (Mormons, not Amish), especially with some bandits. Bambino and Trinity ride out and are welcomed by them and protect them from the bandits. They end up teaching them to fight and the group defends itself from the outlaws.
Essentially, the film is a mix of the Man With No Name films of Leone, The Magnificent Seven, and a bit of silliness. Terrence Hill was born Mario Girotti, to a German mother and an Italian father (a chemist). he grew up in Saxony and survived the bombing of Dresden, during the war. He started acting at the age of 12 and grew into supporting roles, with his most prominent being in Luchino Visconti's The Leopard. He did films in Germany and returned to Italy. He started working in the spaghetti westerns and was teamed up in one called God Forgives....I Don't! with an ex-swimming champion, Carlo Pedersoli. He swam for Italy in the 1952 and 1956 Olympics, bud did not medal. Leaving behind swimming, he put on weight and transformed into a large, bearded, stern-looking man. As was common practice, cast and crew adopted American names to better sell the film internationally. Girotti became Terrence Hill and Pedersoli became Bud Spencer.
They Call Me Trinity marked their first foray into deliberate comedy in a western, as previous efforts had been relatively serious (Hill starred in Django, Prepare a Coffin, taking over the role of Franco Nero's gunfighter, from the original). They both hit on their particular styles in theis film. hil is easy-going, almost laconic, as he just kind of drifts along, encountering situations and then moving on. Spencer is gruff and serious and considers his brother a fool and usually finds himself in trouble because he tries to extricate his brother. They make a great contrasting pair and play well off each other. Trinity has fast hands, when he wants to use them and the film has him using rapid gunplay. Spencer also has fast hands, though mostly due to fast cuts. he can usually be seen with something bigger, like a shotgun, or just his skillet-sized hands, as he backhands people.
The fight between the Mormons and the rustlers is beyond cartoony, which is part of the charm of this series of films. In many ways, Trinity and Bambino are Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam, if they were partners (well, maybe Nasty Canasta).Trinity just goes along, minding his own business, until someone cause trouble for him. Then, they soon wish they hadn't. Bambino explodes in physical violence, instead of verbal tirades.
The film was a box office smash and spawned a sequel, plus copies, with lookalike actors (just like every other western was called Django in different markets, there were a bunch of non-cannon trinity films and They Call Me films).
The pair are reunited in Trinity is Still My Name....
The film begins with Bambino walking through the desert, carrying his saddle. He spots 4 convicts cooking beans and steals their horses and food. Then, later, Trinity comes along and takes the rest of what they've got. he arrives at the family home to find Bambino bathing and is told to bathe, himself. They sit down to diner with their parents and the convicts show up and try to take their revenge, but Maw catches them with a shotgun and runs them off, after robbing them. Paw fakes dying to get the boys to promise to work togetehr and they ride off. They aid a pioneer family and go into town. trinity cheats at cards to get them a financial stake and deals with the cardsharp he cheated. After a nice dinner, they are involved in a con, claiming to be federal agents. They get involved with dealing with outlaws and gun runners, while continuing to encounter the pioneers.
More fun from the boys, with a great scene as Trinity faces the card sharp he cheats, in a gunfight.
This film outdid the previous one and cemented Hill and Spencer as the top comedy draw.
In 1973, Hill co-starred with Henry Fonda in the film My Name is Nobody...
Henry Fonda is Jack Beauregard, an aging gunfighter looking to retire to Europe. he kills some men who try to ambush him at a barber shop and the barber's son asks if anyone is fast than Beauregard and the barber says "Nobody!" He encounters a down and out bum, catching trout then moves on to an old gold mine, where he finds his friend, Red, dying. He gives the name of the town where to find the killers, then dies. Beaureguard goes there and encounters the bum again, who has been sent to deliver a basket to him. he regales Beauregard with his knowledge of his past, then tosses out the basket, which explodes. The bum says he is just Nobody and wants to see Beauregard take on all 150 of the Wild Bunch. The film leads to just such a climax, as they are involved in a stolen gold operation and the man at the center of it believes Beauregard is after him.
Sergio Leone produced the film, but did not direct. He had worked with Fonda on Once upon a Time in the West and he came on board for the film, which was mostly shot in the US. Hill continues the same basic character as in the Trinity films and gets some great comedy scenes, including a reprisal of the gun slapping scene from Trinity is Still My Name, plus the addition of beating the tar out of thugs with a spinning boxing dummy.
There is some controversy as to who directed what in the film. Tonino Valeri is credited, but, he had a falling out with his cinemaphotographer, who left the film. Leone took over for a day, when Valeri was sick and also shot some second unit. John Landis worked as an extra and claims Leone directed the epic battle with the Wild Bunch. Some believe Leone directed the opening scenes and carnival, as well as the battle. Regardless, it's an excellent film.
Hill and Spencer made several films together, not only comedy westerns but also more modern films, such as Who Finds a Friend Finds a Treasure and Go For it (both shot in Miami and both directed by Sergio Corbucci, who drected the original Djamngo), as well as Miami Super Cops (directed by Sergio's brother Bruno), where they are a pair if FBI agents, posing as Miami cops, to find some thieves. Previously, they starred in the film Crime Busters (sometimes called Two Super Cops) as police partners. By himself, Hill mad Super Fuzz, with Ernest Borgnine, where he is a cop who gets caught in nuclear waste and gains super powers.
Hill went on to star in a live action film, based on Rene Goscinny and Morris' Lucky Luke comic...
Lucky Luke comes to Daisy Town and becomes the sheriff, where he faces the Dalton Brothers (of decreasing size and increasing meanness). Hill also directed. The film is pretty entertaining; never a laugh riot, but pleasant fun carried by Hill's charm and Roger Miller voicing Jolly Jumper. A tv series followed, though only 8 50-minute episodes were shot after Hills son Ross was killed in a road accident.
Hill and Spencer starred in 20 films together, some better than others but they are always a great pair. Spencer died in 2016. Several of their other films can be viewed on Youtube.
Next, some more serious Spaghetti Westerns, as we look at the films of Sergio Leone. See how he turns a samurai film into a trilogy about a Man With No Name, then follows that up with an epic confrontation between gunfighters.
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Post by codystarbuck on May 19, 2020 20:12:01 GMT -5
So, you're a Hollywood actor; but your career isn't going the way you want. You've worked with all the greats: Th Creature from the Black Lagoon, Francis the Talking Mule, and Tab Hunter. You've got a well rated western tv show, where you are playing a character that feels 10 years younger than you actually are. So what can you do to turn things around? How about starring in an Italian movie?  Sergio Leone was born in 1929, in Rome, to one of the pioneers of Italian cinema, Vincenzo Leone (aka Roberto Roberti)and a silent film actress Edvige Valcarenghi (aka Bice Valerian). GHe grew up around film sets and eventually abandoned law studies to work in the film industry, first as an assistant to Vittrio de Sica, then as a screenwriter and assistant director (Quo Vadis, Ben-Hur). An illness led to him stepping in for Mario Bonnard, to complete the film The Last Days of Pompeii, which led to his first directorial feature, The Colossus of Rhodes... Rory Calhoun looks just like a greyhound puppy, standing on its hind legs! By the way, Moloch was a Canaanite god and Rhodes is a Greek island. Don't look to Hollywood for history lessons (or Roman studios, for that matter). Since the peplum or "sword & sandal" films were waning, Leone made the smart move to writing and directing a western, base on Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (itself based on Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest. Actor Richard Harrison, who had done several Italian films, suggested a young actor to Leone for the movie: our struggling actor, Clint Eastwood. The movie is A Fistful of Dollars,,, Clint plays The Man With No Name, a drifter who comes into a lawless town, where a gang war has destroyed the lives of the citizens. The Stranger finds himself a victim of the thugs of one of the gang, as they spook his mule. He first learns of the gangs from a saloonkeeper, then goes and extracts payback for their prank. he then uses the incident to get both sides bidding for his services as a gunman and plays bothsides against each other. Along the way, he aids a woman who has been, essentially, a prisoner of one faction, as well as the saloonkeeper. The fight rages back and forth until the stranger is nearly killed, but faces down the gang in a showdown, where he uses his brains to beat them. The film is a landmark in both the western genre and cinema, in general. It is a minimalist tale that uses visuals as much as dialogue to tell the story and gives you mysterious characters, but never gives them a past. Eastwood had been criticized in Hollywood for delivering his lines between his teeth; but, Leone puts it to good use, here. Much of the film is improvised, as Leone would have a bare bones script and much of the scene would be devised on set, giving the performances a spontaneity lacking in many films. Eastwood is the lone American in an Italian production, shot in Spain. His lines were done in English, then dubbed in Italian, for that market, and everyone else dubbed for America. For Eastwood, it was a chance to play a deeper character than Rowdy Yates, who was an old school white hat hero. The Man With No Name isn't a White Knight, nor is he a black hat. he is a Grey Gunfighter; someone with virtues and vices. He works for his own interests, which just happen to coincide with those of the innocents here. His hands are fast, his brain cunning, but he isn't invincible. He barely survives torture by the Rojas gang and is outnumbered and must resort to a cunning, but very chancy plan. The film was an international smash and, despite earlier Italian westerns, is credited with inspiring the Spaghetti Western genre. Suddenly, everyone wanted to do westerns and they all patterned them after Leone. One of the elements that helped elevate the film, aside from Leone's mastery of using the camera to hide the budget, was the music of Ennio Morricone. Morricone and Leone had actually been classmates, at one point. He wrote and conducted classical music for theater and radio, then television and film. Here, he is experimental, mixing in instrumentals, choral pieces, and sound effects from the film. He used odd instruments, like the jews harp and the Fender electric guitar. His score was unlike traditional themes and incidental music; he created sonic environments that matched and accentuated the emotions on screen. His music is as much a character as Eastwood is. The success of the film led to a sequel, For a Few Dollars More... This time, Leone has a script written by Luciano Vincenzoni, which he doesn't like and has rewritten by Sergio Donati, while adding his own touches in the writing stage and more during filming. Eastwood was convinced to return after they rushed a print out to show Eastwood how Fistful looked. Charles Bronson was approached to co-star, but declined. Instead, Lee Van Cleef signed on to play Col Mortimer, a bounty hunter. The plot find the Man With No Name working as a bounty hunter, as is Col Mortimer. A notorious murderer, rapist and bank robber, escaped from prison and is planning on robbing the Bank of El Paso, where there is a million dollars. The Man teams up with Mortimer and infiltrates the gang. Throughout things, we see that Indio is haunted by a woman who shot herself, rather than be raped, after he had killed her husband. In the climax, Mortimer faces off with Indio but loses his weapon. The Man provides his and Mortimer kills Indio. he gives the Man the money and rides off, after revealing he was the brother of the dead woman and was only seeking justice for her. Again, Eastwood and Leone, joined by Van Cleef create a masterpiece of cinema. Characters have layers and no one is entirely good or evil. Van Cleef makes an interesting addition, with his cold eyes, rugged face and cool demeanor. He calmly smokes his pipe as he kills. He's an expert with a longarm and uses a long barreled Colt revolver, matched with a detachable buttstock to give him range beyond a standard sidearm. Eastwood's Man is still a pistolero, fast with a handgun, but not exactly a marksman. Indio uses drugs to bury the dreams of the dead woman and his gang includes a hunchback, played by Klaus Kinski. Indio is played by Gian Maria Volonte, who played Ramon Rojo in Fistful. He was also noted for social dramas and for the French crime film Le Circle Rouge, from Jean-Pierre Melville (starring Alan Delon). Unlike most films, Morricone composed the music first and Leone played it on set during shooting, to match the mood. Throughout the film, the tune of a pocket watch is used for emotional effect and is enhanced by the score. Eastwood, Va Cleef and Leone returned for a third film and Eli Wallach, who had played the bandit leader in The Magnificent Seven, is here as Tuco. By the way, the trailer has it wrong; Eastwood is The Good, Van Cleef is The Bad, and Wallach is The Ugly, per the film. Tuco and the man called Blondie run a scam where Blondie turns in Tuco for the bounty on his head, then saves him from the hangman's noose, by shooting the rope, from a distance, with a rifle and scope. He and Tuco reach the end of their association and Blondie leaves him behind, in the desert, but he is able to walk to a town and survive. he finds Blondie, as Confederate troops move in. meanwhile, a mercenary bounty hunter, named Angel Eyes, learns the new name of a man who has stolen a shipment of gold and hidden it. he kills the man who revealed it and the man who paid him, after the target offered more money to kill the patron. Tuco forces Blondie to march across the desert, without water, until they encounter a runaway coach, with dying Confederate officers in it. One man speaks of gold and Tuco goes to get him water, in exchange for the location of the gold. When he returns, Blondie has gotten the location and the man has died. Now, Tuco must keep Blondie alive to find the gold. He takes him to a mission to be healed, which turns out to be run by Tuco's brother. They leave, wearing Confederate uniformas and run into what looks like a Confederate patrol, until the men brush off the road dust to reveal blue uniforms. Blondie and Tuco are taken to a prison camp, where they meet Angel Eyes, who they know. He tortures prisoners while musicians play to cover the noise. Tuco is tortured for the location of the gold. The pair escape and must get past a battleground to get to a cemetery, where the gold is hidden. Blondie makes Tuco dig, at gunpoint, then Angel Eyes turns up. In the end, the three face off. Here, Leone surpasses the previous two films and creates one of the greatest epic westerns ever. He blows a few details. This is set during the civil war, yet Tuco and Blondie use cartridge revolvers. Most pistols were "ball and cap," where a pistol ball was loaded at the barrel end of the cylinders, after a powder charge had been inserted and a percussion cap was fitted on a nib, at the hammer end. The hammer would strike the percussion cap and ignite the black powder charge, which fired the pistol ball down the barrel. They were slow to load, which is why they generally had six shots (the Le Mat had 8 shots, plus a shotgun cartridge) and produced heavy smoke. Eventually, smokeless cartridges were developed, which contained powder, bullet and percussion cap in one package, but they weren't in common use until after the Civil War. Also, this is set somewhere in the West, in desert country and the heart of the fighting in the Civil War was in the Deep South. Most of the fighting in the West centered around Missouri, while Texas was mostly attacked on the coastal areas, not the interior. There were Confederate incursions from Arizona into New Mexico, early in the war; but, by 1862, they had been driven out of Arizona. Leone is trying to mix two different periods, though he mostly gets away with it. Morricone really outdoes himself here, crafting his most recognized music, especially with its mixture of instrumental, choral and sampled sounds. The title them is an epic unto itself, as we can see and hear, here... okay, here's the real thing.... Leone wasn't done with the western, yet. He had one more epic to film, though without Clint Eastwood. However, this time, he was able to get Charles Bronson, as well as Jason Robards and Henry Fonda, playing a rare villain. The film was Once Upon a Time in the West. Claudia Cardinale, Jack Elam and Woody Strode co-star. A railroad tycoon hires a gunman to intimidate a man off land that has the only water source in the area. The gunman kills the man and his children, to grab the land for himself. A woman turns up as the man's wife and inherits the land. meanwhile, the gunman framed a bamndit for the killing. Also arriving in the area is a gunfighter with a harmonica. A group of gunmen open the film, waiting at the station for someone to arrive. The train pulls away, revealing Harmonica, who kills the entire group. Frank, the hired gun, kills the railroad baron and takes over his operation. Cheyenne, the bandit, tries to clear his name and befriends the widow and they, in turn, encounter Harmonica, who has his own reasons for wanting to face Frank. The film is an epic of the truest sense. Three different men converge on this one spot and a woman is caught between them all, but plays her own hand. So much of this film has been stolen by others, such as Sam Raimi's The Quick and the dead, which homages both it and a Fistful of Dollars (and featured Woody Strode in his last role). Fonda is especially good as a truly evil villain, in a role he almost never got to play. Bronson is mostly silent through much of the film, his eyes portraying his emotions. Robards gets the comical stuff, yet is deadly in his own right and Cardinale proves that she is the equal to any of them. Morricone creates themes for each of them, from the comical sauntering theme for Robards, to the haunting harmonica notes for Bronson. Morricone had one more picture in him (after producing a few, like My Name is Nobody), Once Upon a time in America... The film stars James Woods and Robert Deniro as lifelong friends, who built an criminal empire. We see them go from street kids, committing petty crimes, to real life gangsters, through Prohibition, to buying politicians to ensure loyalty. through it all, the see the changes in America. Rather than a tale of the Italian Mafia, this is a story of three Jewish crooks, who go on to the big time. The film also features Elizabeth McGovern, Joe Pesci and Burt Young, and a very young Jennifer Connelly as McGovern's younger self (as flashback scenes show us the boyhood of the gangsters). Connelly was so young that she had an adult body double for a scene where her naked body is glimpsed by the boys. The film has some tremendous scenes and a great story and characters; but, it is overly long, complex, and loses the narrative at times, forcing you to sit through some dull scenes and work out what is happening and where the film is in the timeline. it pulls a twist that is pretty hard to swallow and just kind of limps across the finish line, after a very long race. He had somewhere between 8 and ten hours of footage and his first cut was over 6 hours long. he wanted to release it in two 3-hour parts, but the failure of Bertolucci's 1900 prevented this. He edited it down to over 4 hours for showing at Cannes, and then down to 3 3/4 for European release. The American studio edited it down to 2 1/3 hours for theatrical release, without Leone's invovlement. Eventually, the European cut was released on vhs and dvd. Leone had been offered the Godfather but preferred to do his own gangster film, resulting in this. It is meant as a loving tribute to the genre, but he is less successful than he was with the western. Still, it's Leone and the visuals are memorable and there is much art throughout. Morricone did the music and included pan flute from Zamfir (before the tv commercials). Leone died in 1989, of a heart attack, leaving several unrealized projects, including Don Quixote, an epic of the Siege of Leningrad and a planned tv mini-series about a Colt revolver that passes through several hands, illustrating each story along the way (imitating Anthony Mann's Winchester 73). He had also planned an American western, to be shot in the US, called A Place only Mary Knows. It was to be an homage to the great American writers of the post-Civil War period, like Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Edgar Lee Masters, Stephen Crane and Margaret Mitchell, with Richard Gere and Mickey Rooney. Next time, a few of the other more notable Spaghetti Westerns, including Sergio Corbucci's Django, which would inspire Quentin Tarantino and create a film career for Robert Rodriguez. |
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Post by codystarbuck on May 22, 2020 0:30:21 GMT -5
So, Leone's A Fistful of Dollars touched off an explosion of spaghetti westerns, even though there had been earlier Italian and European westerns. Despite theose films, it was the style he brought to it that set the industry on fire. So, of course, the imitators came out. Now, many of the directors didn't have Leone's visual flair or storytelling skills, so the bulk of them relied more on capturing and even one-upping the violence. Most used the formula of an American star and European cast, though not always. Several Italian actors either built a name in the westerns or solidified their box office power with a turn in them. We'll look at a select few, because, like kung fu films in Hong Kong, there were a tone of spaghetti westerns, before all was said and done (and because there are a bunch I have never seen). These are ones worth seeing or notable for various reasons. First off, one with a home grown star.
Director Duccio Tessari had worked with both Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci (who we will get to, in a minute) in the pelum or "sword & sandal" films that followed in the wake of the Hollywood Biblical and Roman epics. He saw the success of Fistful and thought he could do that and worked on a story, which he filmed as A Pistol for Ringo...
Despite what the title suggests, this is not a film about a birthday present for a Beatle. The film finds a gunfigther, Ringo, arrested for manslaughter. While he sits in the hoosegow, awaiting trial (and the hangman's noose), a group of bandits, on the run from a posse, whole up in the ranch house of a former major and his daughter, keeping them as hostages. The girl is the fiance of the local sheriff and he must back away. He approaches Ringo with an offer to go free and a percentage of the stolen money if he will infiltrate the gang and save the hostages. Ringo does this, but appears to betray the sheriff. Complicating things are the bandit leader's woman and one of the gang, who makes advances on the daughter. Will Ringo rescue them, or is he just out to escape with the money?
The film stars Montgomery Wood, according to the trailer; but, in Italy, he was known as Giuliano Gemma. He was a stuntman who was upgraded to starring roles and plays Ringo (he also appeared in Visconti's The Leopard). His stuntman background meant that he could do most of his own stunts, which gives this a lively feel. Also, Tessari wasn't afraid to include humor and this is a bit lighter than most spaghetti westerns, though not as much as Terrance Hill's films. Ennio Morricone provides the score, as he did for Leone. The film did quite well at the box office and spawned a whole Ringo series, with star and director (whole cast, actually) back for the sequel, The Return of Ringo.
The film is loosely inspired by the latter part of Homer's The Odyssey, which puts it on a higher story plain than the average spaghetti western. The actors are playing new chaarcters and this Ringo was a soldier, in the Civil War, believed dead, but returned home to find his wife surrounded by others, outlaws.
There were more Ringos, though with other actors and directors, following the Italian tradition of calling different films by titles of previous successful films, even if they are unrelated. There was even a Ringo musical! It tanked, but it existed. That one probably should have gotten Mr Starkey.
Next is the Sabata Trilogy, starring Lee Van Cleef (well, two out of three), as a gunman who foils a bank robbery, starting with the first film, Sabata (the English translation of the Italian title is, "Hey, Buddy...that's Sabata. you're finished!")
Sabata is a mercenary and bounty hunter/gunman who teams up withe a banjo-playing drifter and a tramp to put a wrench in the works of a bank robbery that was set up by the leaders of Daugherty, TX, so that they can buy up the land that a coming railroad will need, and make a huge profit. Van Cleef plays the character pretty much like Col Mortimer and Angel Eyes, in the Leone films, with icy calm and a cynical tone. The film is also notable for gimmick firearms. Sabata carries a long-barreled Colt, as did Angel Eyes and Col Mortimer, but also a Winchester rifle, with a barrel extension that he attaches to it, to give it greater range and accuracy (though the construction, in the film, would make it less accurate than a solid barrel). He also carries a four barreled Derringer, which was something made up, fr the film. What's more, it has three more barrels built into the grip! More than likely, he'd blow his own hand off; but, remember, James Bond was also big on the movie screen.
Yul Brynner takes over for the first sequel, Adios, Sabata...
Sabata is hired by a guerrilla leader to steal a wagonload of gold from the Austrian Army, in Mexico, but finds it filled with sand. He teams up with other gunmen to steal it back from an Austrian colonel. The film features a whole Avengers of gunfighters, with special talents. The film was originally title "Indio Black, You Know What I'm Going to Tell You....You Big Son of a....", but was marketed as Adios, Sabata in the uS, based on the success of the original Sabata film. Ironically, the reason Brynner was cast in this was that Lee Van Cleef had turned down the role, because he was filming The Magnificent Seven Ride, where he was playing Brynner's character, Chris Adams. As can be seen in the trailer, the gimmick firearms continue, with Sabata's Winchester rifle firing seven shots.
Van Cleef returned for an honest to goodness Sabata film, with The Return of Sabata...
Here, Sabata intends to steal money back from a robber baron. His gimmick weapon is a real one, a palm pistol which fired 7 shots.
All of the films are the product of director Gianfranco Parolini, who also started the Sartana series, with If You Meet Sartana Pray For Your Death...
That film had been a huge success and spawned 4 official sequels and a bunch of films that slapped the name on them. Parolini didn't get to direct the sequels, but producer Alberto Grimaldi approached Parolini about creating something similar, with Sabata being the result.
Now, we come to the one name that is known here, thanks to Quentin Tarantino (though Robert Rodriguez gt there first): Django....
Sergio Corbucci wrote and directed, wanting to make an adaptation of Kurosawa's Yojimbo, just as Leone had. However, he went in a different, more violent route. The name is taken from guitarist Django Reinhardt, who had two crippled fingers on his left hand. This plays into the film, as Django has his hand destroyed in the film. Franco Nero stars as the anti-hero, in what would be his star-making role. The character is seen dragging a coffin around, in the film, which is ultimately revealed to be filled with weapons, including a Maxim machine gun, which he uses to mow down his enemies. The film was noted for its level of violence and was banned in the UK for nearly 30 years, getting an 18 Certificate in 1993. It spawned 30 "sequels", most in name only, as the name Django was slapped onto just about every violent western with a similar character, even if it wasn't the original Italian titles. Terrance Hill starred in the film Django Prepare a Coffin (also known as Viva, Django, though there is another film, primarily known as Viva, Django). Nero is the best, make no mistake and Corbucci was a better director than most who touched the name. Nero would have a cameo in Tarantino's Django Unchained, which had no relation to the original, as much as the concept of the name used for violent revenge westerns. Nero did appear in an official sequel, in 1987, Django Strikes Again. Corbucci wrote an initial script, but was not involved with the film...
In 2016, John Sayles was announced as working on Django Lives!, to also feature Nero.
Django was the inspiration for Robert Rodriguez' student film, El Mariachi, which gained studio distribution and led to his Mariachi trilogy, with Antonio Banderas appearing in the two big-budget sequels, Desperado and Once Upon a Time in Mexico. Quite frankly, the original is the best of the bunch, for sheer imagination, if not acting, though Desperado has the best mix of story and acting. The third was made to create a trilogy, but is rather lacking in story and not as engaging. The Mariachi, in the original, is mistaken for a killer who carries weapons in a guitar case and ends up with the actual case, in a moment of confusion at a bar. he finds himself caught up in a gang war and has his left hand shot by the criminal boss, which is used in subsequent films.
Nero would also star in The Mercenary, also from Corbucci, as a hired gun, fighting with Mexican revolutionaries in the Zapata era.
Similarly is the film A Bullet for the General....
This another film set in Zapata revolutionary Mexico, featuring Klaus Kinski, who turns up in several spaghetti westerns.
Lastly, the is Duck You Sucker, aka A Fistful of Dynamite....
Sergio Leone ended up directing because Peter Bogdanovich pulled out and Sam Peckinpah didn't do it. he had an assistant director working on it, but had to replace him 10 days in, when Rod Steiger refused to film his scenes unless Leone directed. Steiger co-stars with James Coburn and both are responsible for murdering accents. Steiger's Mexican is bad enough; but, Coburn's is the Irish equivalent of Dick Van Dyke's Cockney accent, in Mary Poppins. Take that out of the equation and you have a good, if uneven film, one that is not Leone's best work. It was outdone in Italy by Trinity is Still My Name and didn't perform that well in the US. It has a lot going for it though, as did Leone's Once Upon a Time in America, which was also a commercial failure and an uneven (and long) film. The film is generally left out of discussions of Leone's westerns, based on its lesser stature (I left it out because I had it mixed up, thinking Leone only produced, as he intended).
There are other spaghetti westerns, almost as many as American westerns (well, not if you count all of the B-movie series, serials and two-reelers, as well as the big pictures). Like American westerns, Italian westerns died out by the 70s, as tastes moved onto newer things and more contemporary stories (and sci-fi films, in the wake of Star Wars) They had a bigger influence on post-Modern American westerns that emerged in the 70s, as the western film transitioned into anti-hero mode, with Eastwood bringing what he learned to his own films, like Hang 'Em High, High Plains Drifter and the later Pale Rider.
Next, a brief look at another Italian genre, the Macaroni Combat film, inspired by 1960s American war movies and action films, particularly The Dirty Dozen. Expect some of the same suspects in the productions, as we examine a select few, including the original Inglorious Bastards (with the correct spelling). Then, a look at the Gamma One series of sci-fi films, from director Antonio Margheriti.
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Post by brutalis on May 22, 2020 8:23:55 GMT -5
You are talking about my 70's youth now! Italian Westerns on the big movie screens and dang near every weekend on television, so I grew up watching poorly dubbed Cowboy's shooting a lot of greasy, dirty looking villains sweating away in the hot desert sun! My dad was fond of the Trinity movies and my grandfather adored Eastwood Italian movies so I was treated to seeing Clint up on the movie screen and then during the Sunday Night ABC movies when they made their way to TV. The Sabata "trilogy" was another perennial Saturday afternoon showing on the local station where they would advertise a Sabata month showing 1 movie each Saturday and the 4th would usually be a Trinity movie. It was truly great seeing Van Cleef become a "big" star in Italian Western movies versus watching him in all the old 60's western television shows where he was doing bit parts as the mean and nasty guy or the mouthy partner of nefarious deeds in a gang. Oddly enough I never saw a Django movie until the 80's when VHS rental shops opened up.
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Post by codystarbuck on May 22, 2020 18:51:35 GMT -5
You are talking about my 70's youth now! Italian Westerns on the big movie screens and dang near every weekend on television, so I grew up watching poorly dubbed Cowboy's shooting a lot of greasy, dirty looking villains sweating away in the hot desert sun! My dad was fond of the Trinity movies and my grandfather adored Eastwood Italian movies so I was treated to seeing Clint up on the movie screen and then during the Sunday Night ABC movies when they made their way to TV. The Sabata "trilogy" was another perennial Saturday afternoon showing on the local station where they would advertise a Sabata month showing 1 movie each Saturday and the 4th would usually be a Trinity movie. It was truly great seeing Van Cleef become a "big" star in Italian Western movies versus watching him in all the old 60's western television shows where he was doing bit parts as the mean and nasty guy or the mouthy partner of nefarious deeds in a gang. Oddly enough I never saw a Django movie until the 80's when VHS rental shops opened up. I think the violence in Django (and the subsequent films that used the name) were considered too violent and would require too many cuts. I know that affected some of the other Euro genres, particularly their horror films. Japan had similar issues with samurai movies. One of the things you notice in them is how the Europeans embraced more characters with shades of grey, making them and their motivations more realistic, even if the gunfights and occasional weapons were flights of fantasy. It carried over into their comics, especially the really legendary European western comics: Lt Blueberry and Tex. Lucky Luke would poke fun at it, though he tended to be more of a satire of traditional American westerns. I've watched both of the Lucky Luke Live action films (the Terrence Hill one that led to the tv series and the more recent era one, with Jean Dujardin, of The Artist and the OSS 117 films) and the Hill one is entertaining, if not a laugh riot, while the Dujardin one is just plain weird. The Blueberry film that was done with Vincent Cassel in the role was just not good. It wasn't a good Blueberry adaptation, it wasn't a good western and it just wasn't much of a film. It looked like the director and writer were trying to do Alejandro Jodorowsky and were failing miserably. |
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). Meanwhile, her childhood sweetheart, Pok-To returns to the village, after years of studying martial arts, to protect Wing-Chun. He mistakes Chamy, a widow whop was saved from Flying Monkey's affections by Wing-Chun, for Wing-Chun. However, he soon aids Wing-Chun and the villagers in fighting the bandits. Pok-To comes to accept her for who she is and she agrees to marry him, after they defeat the bandits.