Films of Fury: The Kung Fu Movie Book (12 page)

“No one had ever done a movie like this without a love story,” Gordon Liu
maintained. “But in this film, the love story was with kung fu.”

36
th
Chamber of Shaolin
(aka
Master Killer
) remains a milestone in the industry and a central classic of the genre. Although book-ended by the now stereotypical tale of a young man escaping persecution by learning vengeful kung fu at the Shaolin Temple
, it’s actually anchored by an extended set of training sequences, taking up almost a full hour of the film’s 116-minute running time.

Yu Te (Gordon Liu
) is taught the meaning of many things at the temple, having to discover much about himself before he even enters the first of thirty-five chambers of learning and enlightenment. He discovers his own balance, lightness, and intelligence before he is subjected to the tortures that pass for training. To build up his arms, he carries water in heavy buckets, but knives are attached to his forearms so that if he lowers his limbs he will stab himself in the side. He must hit a gigantic bell with a sledgehammer that has a twelve-foot-long handle to strengthen his wrists. He must smash hanging weights with his head to build his skull strength. He must endure and master all of that and more before he actually starts to learn to fight. Then he must become skilled with his hands, feet, and weapons.

To the surprise of his teachers, he excels in all thirty-five chambers within five years and is offered the sifu-ship (lead teacher’s position) of any one of them … that is, until another high-ranking monk, played by Li Hai-sheng
(another well-known genre villain), suggests that they fight. If the newly dubbed San Te can defeat his double butterfly-swords-style, then he can choose his chamber. In his first two tries, San Te is soundly defeated. Wandering in the bamboo forest nearby, he invents the three-sectional staff — three thin wooden poles approximately two feet long, each joined by a short length of chain. With this he defeats the two short swords of his opponent and is allowed to choose his chamber.

Instead, he suggests instituting a thirty-sixth chamber, a place where other young men could be trained to resist Manchu treachery. The remainder of the movie moves San Te out of the temple, where he takes revenge on his family’s killers and recruits the first thirty-sixth-chamber students. Many Western viewers wonder why so much emphasis is placed on incidental characters during these climactic sequences, but Eastern audiences know that each of these men San Te comes across are actually famous historic characters — including some who had been portrayed in previous Liang films.

36
th
Chamber of Shaolin
was an amazing movie. It was the training sequences that made it fascinating and involving. It also secured Liu Chia-hui
’s stardom. Although wiry, babyfaced, and, when playing a Shaolin monk, bald, Hui had the internal power and acting chops to cement his legacy. The same was true of Liang. Just as he had before, rather than continue to grind out the expected, he changed his approach.

Shaolin Mantis
(aka
Deadly Mantis,
1978) marked David Chiang
’s only appearance in a Liu Chia-liang
film. His very presence marks this movie as a change of pace, and, of course, his kung fu never looked better. In it, he plays Wei Feng, a Ching dynasty official who investigates a suspected family of revolutionaries. His presence there leads to a romance with the head of the household’s granddaughter, played by Huang Hsing-hsiu
, which results in marriage. Only then does he discover the proof of the family’s treachery and has to fight his way out, with the help of his newlywed wife. She dies during their escape, leading Feng to develop the mantis fist so that he can go back and disembowel the grandfather, played by Liu Chia-yung
.

Although up until that moment the film is the usually entertaining Liang mix of character development and precise, dazzling martial arts, he distinguishes the film with its ending. Although soundly cheered by the imperial court, Feng is poisoned by his own father for helping the traitorous Chings suppress the Chinese people. Liang had neatly and surprisingly skewered another genre tradition by pointing out the yin-yang aspect of Chinese history. In this movie, David Chiang
played a heroic
villain.

But the director had more in store for his amazed audience. Just when the studio thought he couldn’t be any more revolutionary, out comes
Heroes of the East
(aka
Challenge
of the Ninja
aka
Shaolin vs. Ninja
) the following year
.
Here was a kung fu movie in which no one was seriously hurt, let alone killed. Gordon Liu
Chia-hui
(with hair this time) plays Ho Tao, a wealthy, young, modern man who marries a Japanese girl in an arranged ceremony. The couple’s only problem is that they differ in terms of which country’s martial arts are superior.

The wife, Kun Tse (Yuko Mizuno
), is played as some sort of inconsiderate, stubborn, semi-lunatic who throws martial arts tantrums even when her husband consistently defeats her techniques. She finally resorts to ninjutsu
to “win.” Tao firmly condemns what he considers this “art of cheating,” suggesting that the goal is to learn at all costs rather than win at all costs. Naturally, his wife throws a hissy fit and runs back home to be consoled by her teacher (Shoji Kurata
). When Tao writes a baiting letter (which is suggested by his comedy-relief servant), the Japanese family misunderstands and sends their best fighters to challenge him.

“I think that was my most memorable film,” Gordon said. “Liu Chia-liang
hired seven Japanese people to shoot it with me, but six of the seven did not know anything about acting. They only knew how to fight! There was swordplay, karate
, judo
, wrestling, weapons … and they were all senseis, not actors! With actors, we can communicate with each other; ‘Hey, we’re only filming and not really fighting.’ But these senseis really fought. Every morning at [the start] of our ten o’clock shift, I would arrive to find the Japanese already down there, training. Oh, how scary that was. It was like we were preparing for a real fight. But, finally, later, I realized that they were just very serious about what they were doing, and not looking to beat me up. Now
that
was memorable.”

From there on it’s one long bout, with each of the Japanese confronting Tao on each successive day. Initially, he overcomes a samurai swordsman with a Chinese taichi
sword, and then he goes up against a spear man, a karate
fighter, a tonfa
pro (almost all TV cops use modified tonfas instead of nightsticks), a nunchaku expert, and an Okinawan sai
master (the sai
is a small trident with the center spike longer than the others) before facing Kurata’s ninja
-crab skills. In the end, Tao has his now-understanding wife back, and defeats all the fighters — but also gains their respect through his adherence to Confucian, as well as Jiang Hu
, ways.

Audiences were delighted by Liu Chia-liang
’s ability to extend the kung fu genre beyond its traditional limitations, so they readily accepted a movie that featured sympathetic, non-insidious Japanese. Although they were the bad guys of the piece, their villainy came from misunderstanding and a lack of communication, not the kind of cruel hatred that marked the Japanese villains of Lo Wei
’s, Chang Cheh
’s, and Jimmy Wang Yu
’s films. Under the guise of a so-called simple kung fu film, Liang had created a classic that was instrumental in making him and Gordon superstars in Japan
as well.

Finally, the director stepped back with his first sequel.
The Spiritual Boxer
Part II
(1979) was an enjoyable kung fu comedy showcase for the star, Yung Wang-yu
. Even so, the director added one more ingredient to the mix, which would serve as ample inspiration to his peers — Chinese supernatural mythology. Other directors would do more with the comedy and horror aspects he pioneered, so Liang decided on another tact — one which really only he could pull off.

The title
Dirty Ho
(1979) never fails to elicit Western giggles, although it refers to the sneaky disposition of title character, Ho Chih, rather than a grimy prostitute (a literal translation of the Chinese title is something like “Lazy-head He”). Beyond that unfortunate title, this Ching dynasty classic is one of the landmarks of kung fu choreography. Liang uses the story of how an incognito prince uses street people to protect himself from the assassination of plots of a jealous brother as a showcase for some of the cleverest, most complex, kung fu ever captured on film.

Prince Wang Ghing-chin is played by Gordon Liu
Chia-hui
(again with hair), but the street-thief and con-man title character is played by Yung Wang-yu
, who helps establish the film’s class-warfare themes and superb action direction in their first scene together — where the prince secretly makes a female musician (Kara Hui Ying-hung
) appear to be a consummate fighter through unnoticed manipulation. As impressive as that scene is, it has nothing on the subsequent fight sequences.

Next comes an assassination attempt in a wine bar. The wonderful Wang Lung-wei
plays a killer connoisseur, who, with the help of his assistant server (Hsaio Ho
), attempts to murder the prince while serving esoteric wines named for the kung fu styles they then attempt to kill him with. The prince protects himself and foils their plans, also using the same techniques, in such a way that no one in the wine bar, including Ho Chih, is aware of what’s happening. This is a milestone martial arts moment that remains one of the finest kung fu scenes ever conceived and executed.

During another attempt on his life in an art shop, Wang’s leg is injured, so the duped con man and the prince must overlook their societal ranking to serve as each other’s literal and figurative crutches. Together they battle their way back to the emperor’s palace to face the corrupt general who is masterminding the attempts (Lo Lieh
). Beyond the wealth of brilliant kung fu on display, Asian film critics were especially impressed with the climax, in which the prince, now done with Ho’s help, literally tosses him away in the finale’s freeze frame.

Dirty Ho
revealed another facet of Liang’s achievement. It was in this picture that the director’s ability to impart character and personality simply through movement
became clear. Although Liang had already shown how interested he was in character and story development through images and dialogue, here he openly demonstrates his choreographic genius. A viewer can tell what a character is like simply by the way he does kung fu. Liang adds and subtracts subtle flourishes of movement to achieve this effect. It is wonderful.

Liang put his own face on the line in
Mad Monkey Kung Fu
(1979). Although he had been featured in
Challenge
of the Masters
,
here he was playing a major role. It was that of a turn-of-the-(twentieth) century performer, who, with his sister (Kara Hui Ying-hung
), travels from town to town performing monkey-style kung fu. Lo Lieh
plays a cliché: a lustful, evil rich man who frames Liang’s character, Chen Po, for rape, then breaks the man’s hands, and, on top of all that, takes his sister as his concubine. The sister is killed when she discovers the frame-up, while Chen Po teams up with a pickpocket (Hsaio Ho
) to take revenge. Designed as a star-making showcase for Hsaio, a spotlight on monkey style, and another insightful rumination on the student-sifu relationship, it succeeds abundantly on all fronts.

Next, the director decided to put his unique spin on the very nature of sequels.
Return to the 36
th
Chamber
(1980) looked like a sequel, acted like a sequel, and satisfied like a good sequel, but the audience-challenging trick was to accept Gordon Liu
Chia-hui
, not as Priest San Te, but as a con man impersonating San Te, until the real San Te (played here by Ching Chia
) puts him to work making a bamboo scaffold to repair the Shaolin Temple’s chambers. The satisfying finale shows Gordon vanquishing his friends’ persecutors via kung fu he learned through natural osmosis, rather than traditional punch-and-kick training. No wonder the term “kung fu” actually means “hard work.”

Following that, Liang decided to try to do for Hui Ying-hung
what he did for Gordon and Hsaio. The result was the delightful
My Young Auntie
(1981), clearly the director’s take on a kung fu
My Fair Lady
. Kara played a naïve girl from the country who gets caught in a family dispute over an inheritance. This seemingly simple plot is used by Liang as an examination of the generation gap as well as conflicts between educated city slickers and uneducated country bumpkins. A highlight comes when the title character tries to update herself, only to have to fight in a slit gown and high heels (“Oh, those shoes!” Kara told me with a laugh).