Shaolin Mantis

The Man
From A Mantis

Shaolin Mantis
aka Tang lang
Hong Kong 1978
Directed by Chia-Liang Liu
Shaw Brothers/Celestial Pictures
88 Films Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Some mantis-like spoilers in this one.

Wow. This is an extremely entertaining Shaw Brothers martial arts movie, for sure (and for Shaw, I guess). The film stars screen legend David Chiang as Wei Fung, who becomes the Shaolin Mantis of the title. More on that later but, a quick summation of the style of the film is as follows...

A lame fight with freeze frame credits is followed by a scene where Wei Fung has to demonstrate and prove his kung fu skills to his emperor by defeating two of the emperor’s champions, the second being a cameo guest appearance by Chia-Hui Liu, who is perhaps best known to many westerners as Gordon Liu, from his appearance as two different characters in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill movies. After he proves his mettle, Fung is sent out to spy on the clan of a region where the emperor suspects there is rebellion brewing and gain proof of such, with time deadlines devoted to punishments meted out on his family if he fails to return from his mission (ultimately ending as death for all as the final incentive).

So off Weng goes and he meets a good looking, young, insolent brat of a woman named Tien Chi-Chi, played by Cecilia Wong. She is in the process of throwing out her 18th personal tutor in, probably, as many months and, somehow, she takes a shine to Wei Fung and gives him a job as her new teacher. Luckily for him, this takes him into the household where the rebellion just happens to be brewing. When the elder uncle finds out he is a spy, he is going to kill the new teacher but, unbeknownst to Wei, the daughter tells him they are to be married and promises that he’ll stay in the compound. And so they do marry, with Wei none the wiser about what has happened. But soon he needs to go back to ensure his parents are safe and his situation is clarified for him in no uncertain terms. So he and his wife decide to break out but, first they must fight five fights with skilled kung fu experts, including the girl’s mother and auntie, to be able to leave. With tragic circumstances but, Wei escapes with his life (he’s the only one at this point... as his wife, the mother and aunt, all die either in these sequences or as a result of what happens).

Now then, while stumbling in the wilderness at his lowest point, a praying mantis attaches itself to Wei’s hand and won’t let go. He eventually gets it off him but then observes the mantis, along with assorted mantis friends... and realises the skill of the mantis staying attached to his hand comes from the insect’s martial arts mindset. An extended training montage plays out where he observes and emulates the moves and stance of the mantis, as he perfects a new mantis style of kung fu, giving himself maniacal mantised-up martial arts powers in order to beat the styles of the various guardians of his dead wife’s clan with something more formidable. And so he returns to fight his away back into the compound, bringing his mantis mayhem with him.

Eventually he returns to free his family from prison but, there’s a nasty twist at the end as to where his true allegiances lay... which I have to say I saw coming from the first five minutes of the film, to be honest (he’s way too reluctant a hero and obviously doesn’t want to go on the mission in the first place). It’s one of those endings where pretty much anyone you were rooting for dies and the only winner in this is the established emperor.

But the film packs a punch. I’m pretty sure the fighting on the credits and the opening two fight scenes where the hero has to prove his worth are only there because the next half an hour are pretty much just long, drawn out character development stuff... until the last hour of the film is pretty much one fight scene after another. So, if I were to sum the movie up it’s as follows...

Credits fights... two ‘prove your skills’ fights... long, slow but still entertaining scenes where characters and their relationships are built, followed by... fight, bigger fight, slightly bigger fight, even bigger fight and then biggest fight ending in tragedy and escape... followed by a silly but enthralling mantis kung fu training session... followed by a fight, a bigger fight, an even bigger fight and then, just for good measure, a really big fight. Followed by the ending which, almost but not quite... involves a fight.

But, honestly, I found the whole thing thoroughly riveting. I mean, this spectacular fight choreography looks more like a ballet so, I don’t know, maybe it’s the testosterone infused equivalent of dance but, whatever, it’s great to watch and, all in all, I had a great time with Shaolin Mantis. The swords and other weapons looked, maybe a little too shiny (like lacquered plastic accessories you’d get on early 1970s Playmobil figures) but David Chiang is as brilliant as always, as are the majority of the cast and I’m really pleased I blind bought this one last year (after the company posted a video of one of the fights on twitter). It’s good stuff and, well, I  have another fifty or so Shaw Brothers martial arts films still to watch and waiting in the wings so, I’ll get to those sometime soon, I guess.

Dirty Ho

Fine Art Prince

Dirty Ho
aka Lan tou He
Hong Kong 1979
Directed by Chia-Liang Liu
Shaw Brothers/Celestial Pictures
Arrow Blu Ray Zone B

Dirty Ho starts off with an opening credits sequence depicting the two main protagonists, Wang Tsun Hsin played by Gordon Liu and ‘Dirty’ Ho played by Yue Wong, fighting an abstract battle against many people against a white studio background, as the two fight side by side and protect themselves from hordes of combatants who mean them harm... serving as a metaphor for various action sequences much later in the movie. Unfortunately, it’s also scored with some excruciatingly inappropriate De Wolf library needle drop which, yeah, kind of put me off a little, it has to be said.

Then we get dropped into the story, as black market jewel trader Ho and upmarket, generally honest but ‘cunning and hiding something very important’ Wang, come into rivalry on a pleasure boat, as they each try to one up the other with the number of girls they can retain at their tables with various high value bribes. When it all ends badly for Ho and he is cheated out of his own ill gotten gains, he tracks down Wang but always seems to come a cropper of bad luck. Whether it’s a big fight with ‘The Handicapped Four’, all who turn out to be quite able bodied after all, in a parody sequence poking fun at Crippled Avengers (reviewed here) or one of many spectacular set pieces where Wang pretends he’s hired one of the escorts, Crimson, as his body guard, manipulating her arms and legs (and lute) as he pretends she is fighting Ho, coming out on top when s/he splits his forehead with a venom filled sword cut... it’s all quite fun stuff.

When Ho can’t find a cure for the big, ugly thing brewing on his head as a result of that fight, he eventually ends up becoming Wang’s disciple/slave so he receives a daily antidote which will eventually cure his condition. However, after a number of reveals, Ho slowly falls in with what’s going on and realises Wang is the eleventh of fourteen princes who is supposed to return to the palace at some point so the emperor can announce who will inherit his throne. The princes are trying to stop each other from being there, especially Wang, who does need to be there but is only really interested in living a life outside with fine art, good wine and the pursuit of martial arts. Ho falls in with him and, when Wang is wounded in one leg, allows Wang to train him and develop his kung fu skills so he can be a better bodyguard and help him return to the palace at the required time.

And it’s a fun film filled with elaborate set pieces. There are a couple of scenes where various people try to kill Wang in social situations without Wang or his opponent letting on that they know. What are best described as battles of social manners when, for instance, the tasting of eleven fine wines becomes a low key but no less spectacular acrobatic affair where wines are served and tasted by each as they dodge each other’s killing hands and feet, keeping up the pretence of a social situation. Similarly, there’s more of the same where the study of some fine art prints and scrolls turns into a battle against people wearing ‘Rosa Klebb’ style shoes with retracting blades (note to a regular reader... not blades retracting from George Lucas' butt though, okay?).

There’s also a great scene where, with Wang being wheeled through the land by Ho on a pushcart, the two manage to survive an attack by a battalion (including many archers) in a long action scene not unlike the kind you would get in the Lone Wolf And Cub movies (which I need to revisit again on Blu Ray real soon, I think). There’s also the inevitable training sequence with a ‘revert to type’ set of scenes where Ho is taught how to improve his kung fu skills by kicking targets while balancing little candles in small bowls on his shoulders, burning himself with wax whenever he gets something wrong to train his body. So yeah, while the film does kinda poke fun, tongue-in-cheek style, at some of the conventions of the genre up until this point, it also uses those very conventions and genre tropes to do it... which I guess would make sense.

Once again, just like in Heroes Of The East (reviewed here) and a few others, the director allows the moving camera to get right into the action with the cast, making for a dynamic series of combat sequences (not to mention lengthy ones), which pull you into the centre of things and, well, it’s an alternate way of doing it and I guess it does allow you to cheat a little in terms of breaking the fight down into shorter sequences rather than pull back and do longer takes from a static shot set up, but the technique works well and the skill and expertise of the performers... all of whom perhaps belong in a circus, as is the nature of the characters in these films... is such that you certainly don’t think any less of the brilliant fight choreography and the enthusiasm with which it is brought to life.

And that’s me done with both Dirty Ho, another of these movies I would gladly recommend but, also, with Arrow’s ShawScope Volume 1 Blu Ray set, of which this is the twelfth and final movie in the box, followed by two CD compilations of the soundtracks from six of them, all of them needle drop tracks from the De Wolff music library. However, if you are liking some of my Shaw Brothers movie reviews, fear not, I still have a few stand alone titles to watch and there’s also a second Shaw Scope volume being released* of these fairly soon (and which will surely have been released by the time this review makes it onto this blog so, yeah, more to come soon, I would say).

*Actually, since writing the first draft of this review a year or more ago, I have the second Shawscope set and four additional Shout Factory Shaw Brothers Classics box sets to watch and review too (so somewhere around 60 moives) plus, as of a couple of weeks ago, the announcement of ShawScope Vol 3 on the horizon. So, yeah, although there may not be as many Shaw Brothers reviews on here in the next month or so, there will be a fair few Golden Harvest reviews coming too (if you like early MIchelle Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock movies, keep an eye out) and, you can rest assured, the Shaw Brothers will certainly be returning to this blog at some point in the near future... at least that's the plan.

Heroes Of The East

Hitty Woman

Heroes Of The East
aka Zhong hua zhang fu
Hong Kong 1978
Directed by Chia-Liang Liu
Shaw Brothers/Celestial Pictures
Arrow Blu Ray Zone B

Okay, so the eleventh movie presented in Arrow’s Blu Ray ShawScope Vol 1 collection is Heroes Of The East and, it’s another entertaining yarn. That being said, I’m amazed that Shaw Brothers got away with releasing this one after the racist tone of the movie... I was going to say subtext but it’s way less subtle than that.

Okay, so it’s one of those films which introduces characters with credits from the moment they enter the story. I think I’ve only ever seen this practice done on Shaw Brothers movies and there are a lot in this box set which do this... once the titles are finished, they still just keep coming and coming until every new character has turned up throughout the course of the picture.

The film stars a young Gordon Liu as Ho Tao but, it’s a younger version of the actor in a way I’ve never seen him before... with a full head of almost Beatles-style mop top hair. After some shenanigans where he pretends to get ill rather than go through with an arranged marriage to a childhood companion, he drops all pretence of illness when he discovers she’s not the ugly battle axe he was expecting to have to marry. Far from it and, in the first of many credits in the movie which introduce actors and actresses with their specialist martial arts skills status, she is billed here as Japanese Seikendo Expert - Yuka Mizuno (who is here playing said new wife Yumiko).

Yup, it’s a ‘Chinese man marrying a Japanese woman‘ battle of the sexes comedy, for a while, with the extremely proficient new lady of the house pitching her belief in her own, ‘failing in the face of her husbands more elegant Chinese kung fu styles’ Japanese techniques, in which the battle is initially raised. So, yeah, it's a case of marital arts to martial arts, I guess.

However, it doesn’t take long to figure out for even the most IQ light viewer (so that’d be me then), it’s really about pushing the agenda that Chinese martial arts are far superior to Japanese brands and styles. This gets further pronounced in their domestic disputes to the point when, unable to take her techniques’ failures any more, she high tails it back to Japan.

So Ho sends her a letter challenging her to use her seven different kung fu styles against his in a battle to settle the dispute once and for all. However, her martial arts instructor (who also wants her for himself), shows his grandmaster the letter and seven of the masters in their special techniques (including him), plus the grandmaster as an observer, go to China to accept the challenge in her place, in seven duels.

From here on in, the film becomes a series of seven long fight scenes which, yeah, is all very watchable, fast paced and I dread to think how many times these various actors got hurt doing these sequences. So there are seven different skills and styles poor Ho has to go against... Swords, Karate (which Ho manages to defeat by somehow learning Drunken Kung Fu overnight), Nunchucks, Spears  (no match for Ho’s pole fighting technique), Sai (which is, yeah, the plural of Sai, as it turns out), a huge Judo guy who is defeated by Ho smearing his body with oil and, eventually, the Ninjitsu style as Yumilo’s affronted ex-master uses the most sneaky and deviously underhanded techniques to win his confrontation... losing out to the same techniques pitched against him.

So, yeah, there’s a sense of honour among the Japanese characters and they’re not presented as total idiots but, it’s very much, despite Ho’s attempt at a speech to help the Japanese regain face at the end, a movie saying ‘Chinese are better than Japanese’, live with it. So I’m surprised I’ve not been aware of any backlash against the film, which I’m sure it must have had.

It’s nicely put together too and the fight choreography is never boring. Indeed, rather than remain static and follow the action from afar, the director gets the camera right in with the actors, using camera motion to follow the fights around with a certain dynamism and kinetic appeal which, due to some good editing and clarity of where you are in a fight at any time, never gets at all confusing.

There’s some nice little moments in the fighting as well... such as the sense of honour of the characters. For instance, when Ho is using some kind of big choppy blades against his opponents sai, he disarms one sai from the other but then presents it back to him. The Japanese guy promptly sheaths it as it would be dishonourable to carry on using the weapon as it’s already been disarmed. In response, Ho beds one of his own weapons in a wooden support so they can carry on meeting each other on equal terms.

There are also some other things which add to the entertainment value... such as when the Ninja guy uses what he calls his Japanese Crab Fist technique, which really does have him energetically scuttling sideways here and there in stark resemblance to its crustacean origins. If that sounds a little silly... I can assure you it looks way more hilarious and ridiculous than it sounds and, I was almost sorry when Ho used his special Chinese Crane Fist technique to put a stop to his opponents sideways stratagems.

So yeah, Heroes Of The East is a bit of an unusual movie, starting off as a kind of Chinese/Japanese version of a Rock Hudson/Doris Day kind of comedy (with lethal weapons) but then turning into something far more serious, with the honour of Chinese martial arts resting on the energy and enthusiasm of the husband as he tries to somehow win back his wife by, I don’t know, reiterating in a more grander, large scale way what he tried to demonstrate to her in the first place. It’s a freeze frame ending so, yeah, we don’t know if this did the trick or not but, certainly that wouldn’t want to be a conversation I’d like to go back to if I was the male in this particular relationship.

And that’s me done on this one, I think. Despite its racist leanings I found the film to be thoroughly entertaining and didn’t mind the lopsided nature of the story as the comedy turned into something more serious and kinetic. Another good one in this set from Arrow.

Executioners From Shaolin

Pai Mei Kung Fu
Roo Down, Sport!

Executioners From Shaolin
aka Hong Xi Guan
aka Executioners Of Death
Hong Kong 1977
Directed by Chia-Liang Liu
Shaw Brothers/Celestial Pictures
Arrow Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Spoilers abound but, you know, they’re no more than you would expect from the film anyway.

The seventh entry in Arrow’s Blu Ray box set ShawScope Volume One is Executioners From Shaolin. It’s another epic of punching, kicking, needle dropped soundtrack cues (War Of The Gargantuas, anyone?) and lots of sound impacts. As in, it’s very entertaining and watchable and, also, happens to contain a quite iconic villain in one of his early appearances.

The film starts off with two grandmasters fighting against a red backdrop, representing a fight they are having while the Shaolin Temple is burning. Yep, it’s yet another kung fu film set after the burning of the Shaolin Temple by the Qing government and, once more, the main heroes flea the burning temple to fight the tyranny in their own way. The opening credits fight involves the white browed, white bearded Bai Mei (played by Lieh Lo), a character who is often translated in English as Pai Mei and who has made a number of appearances in films over the years. In this opening credits battle, he uses what I can only assume are the kung fu honed super powers of his testicles of doom (either that or he has no balls, hard to tell... I think he’d be fatter if that were the case, though). Anyway, his opponent gets his foot stuck tight in Pai Mei’s lower regions and the villain pulls his partner along with the power of his undercarriage before dealing the killer blows. It’s just as well they show us these key moments because the white browed monk will use this technique at least twice more in the narrative.

Meanwhile, survivors of the massacre are trying to escape, including Gordon Liu, who fights off a load of Quin dynasty warriors in a spectacular post titles combat, to allow his fellow survivors to get away. He eventually falls when the watching archers have had enough, thus making this a short appearance but, of course, although he doesn’t fight Pai Mei in this movie (although I believe he does in others), he would also go on to play Pai Mei himself in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Volume 2.

Another hero, Hong, played by Chen Kuan-tai... who practices Tiger Style kung fu... escapes and leads a bunch of survivors, all in hiding on ‘red ships’ as acting troupes. Much is made in the film, in terms of screen time, of his short courtship and long marriage to Fang, played here by Lily Li, who practices the Crane Style as her main element of kung fu disciplines. Eventually the Quin government get wise to the red ships and start burning them all, forcing the survivors to separate into smaller batches. After Fang gives birth to their son, Hong perfects his tiger style for another ten years before seeking out Pai Mei in his temple for revenge in his betrayal of the Shaolin Monastery... and for the death of his master (which we see in those opening credits). He is easily defeated but manages to escape, although his best friend dies helping him and also giving him the information that Pai Mei can only be beaten by hitting all of his pressure points in the hour of the goat only (between 1 and 3pm). Why Pai Mei’s invisible, mystical body defences can only be penetrated in that time period is anyone’s guess.

Anyway, Hong trains for another seven years while Fang trains their youngster Wending, played at this point in the film by Wong Yue, in the crane style. Then, father Hong goes off to fight Pai Mei again but he doesn’t return, himself falling victim to Pai Mei’s Groin Of Doom technique, as I have just named it.

So the son trains for a little longer (from a rat shredded and incomplete manual showing the tiger style) and goes to fight Pai Mei, finally beating him as we are told on the bizarrely hasty freeze frame which concludes the picture without any real warning.

And it’s great. Lots of action and nice use of the fast zooms and some cool kung fu choreography. The director also does nice things with the camera, for example, as when a fight with Pai Mei has already started, showing part of the fight through his just removed, see-through outer robe which his assistants are holding up still as the combat has already started.

My favourite thing about the movie is the ingenious training doll the two generations of kung fu heroes use to train. I don’t completely understand it but it’s a wooden dummy with absolutely loads of pressure points highlighted by marked marbles... filling many channels carved out of the dummy. As each pressure point is accurately hit, the marbles from that part of the channel unlock and then spill onto the floor. It looks and sounds great in the extended training montages and, in the last use, the marbles are replaced with many lit candles which the hero has to snuff out to complete his pressure point targeted exercises. It’s good stuff and I’m wondering if this brilliant prop will be turning up in any other movies at some point.

And, yeah, not much more to add but Executioners From Shaolin, despite having no actual executioners from Shaolin in it (and why would the Shaolin Temple have need of executioners anyway? This makes no sense!), is an absolute blast and I thoroughly enjoyed this one. One of the better ones I’ve seen in this genre for sure although, it has to be said, it’s hard to make the call because most of the films so far in this first volume of ShawScope box set have been pretty good. Definitely worth a peek.

Challenge Of The Masters

One Kick Pony

Challenge Of The Masters
aka Liu A-Cai yu Huang Fei-Hong
Hong Kong 1976
Directed by Chia-Liang Liu
Shaw Brothers/Celestial Pictures
Arrow Blu Ray Zone B

Okay, so the sixth entry in the wonderful Arrow Blu Ray box set ShawScope Volume One is Challenge Of The Masters and it’s a pretty good, fairly simple movie. It starts off with a quite striking opening title sequence with Kuan Tai Chen as Master Lu Ah Tsai and a young Chia-Hui Liu (aka Gordon Liu) as the teenaged version of famous Chinese martial artist Huang Fei Hung... going through various training routines on a white background with each other. Liu’s various poses of energetic kung fu are used as movements to herald in the on-screen credits as the two dance around against big Chinese letter forms, the meaning of which are sadly untranslated on the subtitles... perhaps they make up the title of the movie.

Gordon Liu, of course, has had a very long career and, to the person on the street in the Western world he would perhaps be best known (though not by name, I suspect) as the person who played both Johnny Mo, the bald headed leader of The Crazy 88 in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Volume One and Pai Mei in Kill Bill Volume Two (a character he’d fought against a few times, I believe, in various films over the years). The person he’s playing here, Huang Fei Hung, in a film which starts off at the Pai Competition in the Year Of The Wood Rat, before he learned martial arts (that’s what this story is about) has possibly been played on film more than any other character. Indeed, Kwan Tak-hing apparently played him at least 77 times in the years between 1949 and 1981. Even some of the music needle dropped into this Shaw Brothers production is a theme associated with the character from some of these films and it was apparently written into the score of one of Jet Li’s versions of the character in Once Upon A Time In China (which I guess I need to grab hold of and watch at some point now).

The film itself is, as I said, very simple in its plot. It revolves around a martial arts competition where people scrabble for Pai’s (which  in this film take the form of a bunch of scrolls) fired out from fireworks and whoever’s team take one or more home, shows that they are good at martial arts (if I’m understanding this rugger scrum of a tournament correctly). Hung’s dad will not teach him martial arts but, after he accidentally causes one of his fellow pupils to be injured ,saving him from a villanous kung fu school who pick fights with them and don’t want them to have any Pai’s, his father’s former master, Lu Ah Tsai, takes him on and trains him up for a couple of years. 

Meanwhile, another friend of the family, a police officer who has come to the town to find a murderous thief, finds said thief being sheltered by the rival gang. The thief is a master of the ‘sharp kick’ deadly kung fu technique and, with the assistance of his lethal, metal toe caps, he kung fu kicks the officer to death. Thus more motivation is built for Hung to finish his training so he can take on the villain (who is played here by the film’s director Chia-Liang Liu) and then compete for Pai’s in the next tournament. All goes to plan and things play out the way you would expect them to, with Hung mastering the fighting arts but also the arts of diplomacy and compassion, to end up with the two fighting schools reaching a peaceful co-existence together.

And, yeah, it’s the usual thing of watching human dynamo’s leaping, punching and kicking on screen at a fairly fast pace and its all good fun. Interestingly, the master teaches Hung using the style of The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter (which is another film I need to get hold of at some point), with the old ‘tracing a circle around increasingly diminishing sizes of easily breakable China to develop the reflexes’ ploy and, at one point, uses one of the Wooden Men of Shaolin Alley fighting pole swinging machines, which he names as such as coming from the Shaolin Temple (indeed, this is presumably one of the same props from the 1976 film Shaolin Temple from Shaw Brothers, reviewed by me here).

As usual, asides from the obvious needle drop issues, the film has fairly high production values and the quick shooting schedules and restraints are not in evidence in the film on a visual level for the audience to notice... it looks great. Of interest to me was the fact that one of the characters uses a transparent Sesame Seed oil to make himself slippery in a bid to be able to squelch out from the grasp of his opponents in the Pai contest. I can only assume that this may be the origin/inspiration behind the oiled up fight featuring Jason Statham in the first of The Transporter movies.

So yeah, Challenge Of The Masters is pretty much business as usual for the Shaw Brothers in that it’s a tightly paced mix of kung fu action, humbling training exercises and Eastern philosophy leading to forgiveness and peace over violence. In other words, an entertaining production which is nicely put together. Another winner in my book.