Kung Fu Theater Week: Drunken Master

Welcome back folks and sorry for yesterday.  I wanted to spend time with my lady love and lost track of the day.  Today I wish to focus on Jackie Chan’s second starring role after Snake in Eagle’s Shadow.  Because the unparallel success of this film lead to his second movie of an coming of age and growing with wisdom with some antics, bit of violence and in the end perhaps a change for the better.  So master your Kung Fu, don’t hide the rice wine from the old sot and NO BACK TALK!  This is Drunken Master.

Hey, that's dirty!

You must harness the 8 drunken spoilers to defeat any opponent!

Our story centers on a lad name of Wong Fei-hung (Jackie Chan of Enter the Dragon, New Fists of Fury, The Young Master, Cannonball Run II, Police Story, Supercop, Operation Condor and Rumble in the Bronx), a undisciplined spoiled boy who gets in all sorts of mischief.   Flogging an arrogant and overbearing Kung Fu assistant teacher is viewed as amusing but his father Wong Kei Ying (Siu Hung Cham of Dai Mung Sing, Mad Monkey Kung Fu, The Young Master, Killer Wears White, The 36 Deadly Styles and Man tian shen fo) chastises him and warns him of his ways.  He fails to take his Kung Fu spiritual training to heart and is a bully to most those around him.  To impress his buddies he hits on a young girl when her older guardian thrashes him profusely in front of his boys.   As he arrives home from his childish way he is introduced to his aunt and cousin only to find out that they are the same two women he had his confrontation with.

Ow! Okay, your hair does not make you look like a girl!

As if that was not enough he soundly beats a punk son of a highly influential man in town and is forced to train even harder in his martial arts by his father.    Wong’s father sends for his uncle Su Hua Chi (Siu Tin Yuen of Deadly Snake Versus Kung Fu Killers, Boxing Wizard, The 36^th Chamber of Shaolin, Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow and Heroes of the East) a notoriously vicious trainer that has been known to break his students and with that knowledge Wong escapes his father’s home.   He heads to a local diner and proceeds to stuff his face and cons a fellow to pay for his meal only to find out that the man is the owner of the restaurant and dives into a fight to with the waiting staff and ends up drawing a drunkard old man into the fight and they both escape.   The drunk reveals himself to being Wong’s new trainer and Su works Wong like a dog.

Tired of this torturous training and runs away to bump into an assassin Thunderleg by accident and ends up in YET another fight.  Seriously this kid just needs to learn a bit of common sense or manners.  Thunderleg beats him like a gong and humiliates him so Wong heads back to Siu to throw himself into his training for a rematch.

 I had just a bit of comments on the film.   Jackie damn near had a detached retina from Kung Fu master Hwang Jig Lee (Thunderleg) snap kicked his head.  Siu Tin Yuen was 66 in this movie and some of the more athletic sequences was done by his two sons, future directors Cheung-Yan Yuen (Ghost Mansion, Coupe de Grace, Yao guai du shi, The Tai Chi Master and Kung Fu Hero) and Woo-ping Yuen (Dance of the Drunken Mantis, Tiger Cage, Tiger Cage 2, Tai-chi Master and Wing Chun) as stunt doubles. It was fun, ridiculous amounts of violence this side of an anime film and in general I had a load of fun watching this one again. 

Uh oh, Ryu got in the Sake....again.