by Meyers, Ric
As such, probably the most important piece of dialogue in the film was “Forgive man and forebear. Never forget humility and kindness. That’s the way real kung fu should be.” Of course that doesn’t mean that evil people should go unpunished. In film after film, Liang showed that by seeking to better your own kung fu, you will be able to correctly show those who would do harm the error of their ways.
What truly set Liu Chia-liang apart was that his films were really all about kung fu. His were the only ones in which the kung fu couldn’t be removed without negating the movie. In every other director’s filmography, the kung fu could be replaced by guns, or swords, or boxing, or whatever. Not in a Liu Chia-liang film. That’s one of the reasons he’s the true “Master of the Kung Fu Movie.”
He cemented his reputation in his next film, which has stayed with anyone who ever saw it. Executioners from Shaolin (aka Executioners of Death, 1977) was nominally about the surviving temple monks taking vengeance on Pei Mei (played by Lo Lieh), the white-browed hermit, who betrayed them. But it was actually about the creation of hung gar, the Hung Family Fist. It contained ample amounts of the things that made Liang famous: screenplay wit, cinematic inventiveness, and superlative kung fu.
One of the film’s highlights is on the wedding night of Shaolin survivor and tiger style kung fu master Hung Hsi-kuan (played by Chen Kuan-tai) with crane stylist Fang Yung-chun (played by Queen of Shaw Studio kung fu Lily Li). In their honeymoon haven, she sets him a challenge. If he can open her crane legs with his tiger style, he wins. But once he eventually does, and their son, Hung wen-ting (Yung Wang-yu, star of The Spiritual Boxer) grows up, the film explodes into repeated attempts to defeat Pei Mei’s consummate iron skin kung fu, using such esoteric, fascinating devices as a metal statue with rolling pinballs that symbolize the monk’s moving internal weak point.
But only when the son combines his father’s and mother’s techniques — creating hung gar — does the villain get his bloody comeuppance. Executioners from Shaolin succeeded grandly on an emotional, kung fu, and box office level, so Liang pressed his advantage by suggesting his next film be even more unusual.
“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.”
36th 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.
36th 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 36th 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).
Into this seemingly simple plot the director has mounted more wonderful scenes of “secret” martial arts — as in a ballroom sequence where everyone fights in costume — and added exquisite touches, such as the Westernized boy (Hsaio Ho) who constantly uses American slang and profanity incorrectly. The shining star of this movie, however, is Hui. Although she was featured in Liang’s three previous films (as well as in Clan of the White Lotus aka Fists of the White Lotus, directed by Lo Lieh as a sequel to Executioners From Shaolin in 1980) this was her first starring role and the one that won her the Hong Kong equivalent of a Golden Globe award.
“He was nice,” Kara said of Liang. “He taught me everything. He taught me how to use the camera, how to use film, and how to make movies. He gave me many chances and created stories just for me.” And he wasn’t through yet. His next film was Martial Club (1981), his final statement in Huang Fei-hong films. Liu Chia-hui again played the youthful Huang, but not before Liang himself pops up during the credit sequence, instructing the audience on the traditions and styles of the lion dance. The film then opens with a lion dance performed by Hui and his partner (Mai Te-lo).
It unfolds as a classic story of kung fu school versus kung fu school, complete with impressive battles and challenges, but the film is basically a setup for its final fight. The evil school has hired a northern Chinese stylist (Wang Lung-wei once again) to defeat Huang. Instead, the pair test each other’s skills in an extended fight in a long alleyway that gets narrower and twists. This is an amazing fight scene, displaying a range of styles and techniques, as well as subtle moves and grandstand plays. It is a testament to Liang’s, Hui’s, and Wei’s talents — which are prodigious. The Wei character winds up winning, but he never intended to kill the young man. He merely wanted to see what he could do and was duly impressed. At the close he strongly suggests that the bad guys clean up their act. This was a special movie for Wang Lung-wei … he finally got to play a good guy.
But it was
all a prelude for Liang’s next film. More than once, you may notice that when a kung fu star gets to a certain age, he or she becomes interested in capturing his or her kung fu skills at their optimum. This invariably results in an extraordinary film, and Legendary Weapons of China (aka Legendary Weapons of Kung Fu, 1982) is no exception. In fact, I’ve often referred to it as the quintessential kung fu film.
First, it is about kung fu. It is not a western with kung fu, a love story with kung fu, a comedy with kung fu. If kung fu did not exist, this movie could not have been made. Second, it is about kung fu films. If the martial arts movie genre didn’t exist, neither would this picture. On the surface it is about the end of the kung fu era in China. Foreigners (gweilos) have invaded and occupied China, causing the kung fu (or pugilist) schools to unite in order to devise a style to counter their most dreaded and powerful enemy: the gun.
Glorious years of self-improvement have ended … perhaps even having been for naught. Weaklings with guns could defeat the mightiest fighter, and only one sifu is willing to admit that: Lei Kung (the forty-six-year-old Liu Chia-liang). Naturally, all the other schools put a kung fu hit out on him, lest his contention get to the ears of the enemy. But these are no ordinary schools. The Pugilists are a divided sect of the dreaded “Mosha” (aka Maoshan) — the predecessors of, and inspiration for, the Japanese ninja … only they don’t have the psychological yoke of the ever-corruptible bushido code of honor to hamper them. These Chinese “magician-spies” are feared to this day and rarely spoken of … even by the filmmakers who cautiously picture them. In this film, they include a group who can control their students via voodoo-like dolls, as well as a vast array of blades, bombs, and chi.
To find Lei Kung, who has gone into hiding, the schools send Kara Hui Ying-hung, Hsaio Ho, and Gordon Liu Chia-hui. Complicating matters is a Spiritual Boxer-like kung fu charlatan played by Alexander Fu Sheng in total Bob Hope mode, who impersonates Lei Kung in several memorable scenes. The kung fu complications and comedy Liang wrests from setting the characters off each other like pinballs is a joy to behold, until the Hui Ying-hung character finally finds Lei Kung, who is disguised as an old woodcutter, and convinces him to start honing his rusting skills to confront the killers stalking him.
