Films of Fury: The Kung Fu Movie Book (10 page)

The Chinatown Kid
was more realistic than most modern chop-socky pictures, and Chang Cheh
pulls off one of his cleverest metaphors in the form of a digital watch. It represents the brave new American world to Sheng’s naive character, and his actions all revolve around attaining and sustaining the watch. At the end, as he’s dying, he offers it to Chien — who takes it. The whole business is obvious, but extremely effective.

Sheng proved his mettle in period pieces directly afterward with
The Brave Archer
(aka
Kung Fu Warlords
)
series,
in which he played a Sung dynasty hero named Kuo Tsing, who did precious little archery. Hong Kong audiences lapped up these colorful, convoluted epics — full of duels between fighters of at least equal ability, in sumptuous period costumes, on exact, intricately detailed period sets. They were crazy, silly, and, as the series continued through two sequels and an abortive fourth feature,
The Brave Archer and his Mate
(1982), increasingly unfocused. But the
Kid
and the
Archer
were enough to cement Chang Cheh
’s next career-changing brainstorm.

Using the “team” concept from
Five Masters of Death
,
why not film a series of lively kung fu movies all starring the same actors in basically the same roles? Cheh seemed to think that his mistake was using ambitious actors for his first team (Chiang, Lung, Kuan-tai, Sheng, etc.). For his next, he’d recruit lesser stars to ensure greater longevity. Bit by bit, his new team took shape in the Fu Sheng
Brave Archer
and Shaolin series. Then, in 1978, they were introduced, fully formed, in
The Five Venoms
(aka
Five Deadly Venoms
) — a hunk of kinetic kung fu grand guignol.

In this film, set in the fifteenth century, a dying teacher taught five masked students the deadliest forms of “poison kung fu” known: snake, centipede, lizard, toad, and scorpion. None of the students knew each other at the time, but now several had teamed to become criminals. The sifu tells his last student, who knows a bit of all five arts, to find the students and stop their crimes. From this simple premise, Cheh wrought martial arts extremism. The villains practice esoteric, nasty killing styles. They defeat each other with a solid gold, knife-lined casket, pins in noses, knives in ears, as well as their own unbelievable skills. In the finale, when the venoms fight, the heroes literally walk up the walls and stand there. It is all done with bold, unapologetic style.

Thus the new team was born. Kuo Chui
(aka Kwok Chun-fung aka Kwok Choi aka Philip Kwok Choi aka Philip Kwok) was always the main hero and always played a street-smart supreme fighter who hid behind the guise of a beggar, transient, or criminal. Born and raised in Taiwan, his father was a comic actor, but Kuo was only interested in action. Soon he was training in Taiwanese Opera as an acrobat and stuntman, where Chang Cheh
discovered him in 1973. Because he could do things almost no other Taiwan stuntman could, and was about the same height as Fu Sheng
, Chang Cheh brought him to Hong Kong, and made him the leader of what he called “The Third Class” (following the likes of first class man Jimmy Wang Yu
, and second class man David Chiang
).

Chiang Sheng was known by American fans as “cutie-pie,” and indeed he was. Just as small and thin as David Chiang
, he almost always played the acrobatic partner to Kuo. Lu Feng
almost always played the insidious traitor who lures heroes into his traps. Like Kuo, this duo was also discovered by Chang in Taiwan and brought over to star in Hong Kong. But unlike Kuo, they did not have the luck to make a go of it outside Shaw Studio walls.

While Lu Feng
, who was always saddled with the villain roles, was an intensely private man, Chiang Sheng took things more personally. When his work as Chang’s co-choreographer and assistant director didn’t lead to bigger things, “cutie-pie” reportedly turned bitter and self-abusive. He died in 1991, at the age of forty, of a heart attack. Kuo Chui
has been widely quoted saying that his friend was alone, depressed, drinking heavily, and actually died of a broken heart.

Lo Mang
almost always played the thick-muscled (and thick-headed) Hong Kong Chinese of the group. Like Kuo, he was able to create a career for himself away from Chang Cheh
, but unlike Kuo, he stayed within Shaw Studio walls when the Taiwanese acrobats headed home near the end of the Shaw Studios film unit era. Born in China, Lo started kung fu training in his early teens, and still takes pride in working out every day. Finally there was Sun Chien
, a leg fighter supposedly held back in his career because he was thought to be Korean. In fact, it’s reported that he was born in Taiwan (with the name Sun Jian-yuan), where he was recruited by Chang.

Cheh also used a variety of regular actors in secondary roles (including Wei Pai
, Yu Tai-ping
, and Wang Li
, among others) but these five were the main unit for more than a dozen thrillers that were unique in their extremism. The tone was set by their second movie,
Crippled Avengers
(aka
Mortal Combat
or
Return of the Five Deadly Venoms,
1978). The venerable Chen Kuan-tai
played a Ming Dynasty kung fu master driven mad by his wife’s death and son’s disfigurement (his enemies chopped off the boy’s forearms and the mother’s legs). Years later, Kuan-tai has taught his son (Lu Feng
) the Tiger style and replaced his limbs with metal arms that elongate and shoot darts.

From then on, the wealthy man cripples whomever he doesn’t like. He blinds a trinket salesman (Kuo), deafens a blacksmith (Lo), chops the feet off a passerby (Sun), and renders simple a hero who wants to avenge them (Chiang), by tightening a steel band around his skull. The four unite, find a sifu, and learn new kung fu techniques to off-set their handicaps — the footless man even getting remarkably effective metal feet. They crash the villain’s birthday party and make sure he, and his son, don’t have one to grow on.

There is hardly a believable second in this adventure, but as a kung fu movie it works, as do such following adventures as
The Daredevils
(1978) — an early Republic of China conflict in which street performers avenge themselves on a corrupt general (about the only Venoms film in which the Kuo Chui
character dies) — and
The Kid With the Golden Arm
(1979). Here Kuo Chui plays a drunken-style master who aids a hero-laden escort service trying to get a wagon of gold to a famine area during the Ming dynasty.

The ax-, sword-, spear-, and wine-jug-carrying heroes face masters of the Iron Palm (which leaves a black imprint that slowly kills the victim), the Iron Fan (a gigantic, sword-edged, steel war fan), the Iron Head (really, a man with a steel forehead shield), and the infamous Kid with the Golden Arm himself — a master of an art that makes him invulnerable to blades.

To see any of the Chang Cheh
movies of this period is not to believe them, but to enjoy them for their kung fu craziness and exuberant bloodiness. When asked why he was depending upon such supposed “ugly” actors, Chang reportedly replied, “They become beautiful when they move.”

And move they did. “Mr. Chang himself cannot handle morning shifts,” Kuo Chui
explained. “Usually we would do an eleven o’clock shift, or a one o’clock shift. He would arrive, at the earliest, say three or four o’clock, because he had to come back at night to write scripts, and do other things. We were actors, assistant directors, martial art directors, wire-workers, and prop-men. I mean, we actually helped with props. We were rather busy all around. As long as it can help, we would do it. In terms of shooting times, we must wrap at eleven o’clock at night. We were always punctual. So it’s a steady shift —normally nine hours.”

In addition to all his other duties, the director even started searching out new talent while teaming his Venoms with Fu Sheng
and Ti Lung
for
Ten Tigers of Kwantung
(1979), a Cheh mess which juggled two stories through flashbacks, involved Huang Fei-hong’s father and cousins, and had a man’s head kicked off at the climax. Despite its entertainment value, the audience was becoming inured to the director’s cavalier approach.

That out of his system, Cheh took his Venoms through
The Spearmen of Death
(1980) and
Masked Avengers
(1981). They fought spear-topped flags in the former and particularly nasty tridents in the latter, both about eight feet long. It gave the stars the chance to strut their stuff, but also the director to overuse a particularly harsh sound effect whenever blade entered flesh.

The final complete Venoms movie was
House of Traps
(1981), which pushed all Chang Cheh
’s concepts to the razor’s edge ... literally. In the Sung dynasty, an evil man hides incriminating evidence in a death-filled pagoda and hires kung fu criminals to guard it. Kuo Chui
is the “Black Fox,” a tarnished knight-errant who signs on as a guard, but actually intends to secure the evidence for honorable Judge Pao
(an actual Sung Dynasty lawman who also figured in the original
Five Venoms
film). But first heroes and villains alike must be sliced, diced, and slaughtered by the place’s spike-growing doors, spear-hurling walls, arrow-shooting panels, ax-swinging beams, and most impressively, razor-lined stairs.

By then the Venoms themselves had pretty much had it. There had been some jockeying for space, leading to some films featuring just a few of them, which, in turn, led to a sad realization. Their careers compromised by Chang’s increasingly repetitive, diffident approach, Kuo, Chiang, and Lu returned to Taiwan in 1982 to make the politically-incorrectly-titled
Hero
Defeating Japs
(aka
Ninja
in the Deadly Trap
), leaving Lo Mang
behind to help Cheh make his last great movie (while Sun Chien
reluctantly jumped ship to work for other Shaw Studio directors).

Five Element Ninja
(aka
Super Ninjas
, 1982) starred new discovery (Fourth Class man?) Chien Tien-chi
as a virtuous member of a white-clad kung fu school victimized by a jealous, rival kung fu school who hire ninja
to make sure the good guys don’t win their up-coming challenge. After poisoning the heroes’ sifu, who must isolate himself for a month, the ninja issue a new challenge. Expecting the usual, each noble warrior arrives at the predetermined location, only to be massacred by sun ninja using blinding, booby-trapped shields, wood ninja disguised in a forest, water ninja who use liquid as hiding places, fire ninja who burn their ill-equipped adversaries, and earth ninja who disembowel from below (leading to a show-stopping moment when a wounded kung fu student steps on his own hanging intestine). Lo Mang
plays an honorable student left to guard his sifu, but foolishly allows in a supposedly abused woman, who’s actually a kunoichi (female ninja) spy.

This is an outlandishly entertaining, strongly structured, thriller. The second section of the film portrays the ninja
attack on the heroes’ headquarters, the immolation of the sifu, and the crucifixion of Lo Mang
on his teacher’s barricaded door. The third section shows Tien-chi coincidentally finding another sifu in the outlands who just happens to be an expert on the shinobi no mono (shadow warriors). There he turns the surviving hero and three other students into ninjabusters(!).

The fourth and final section is ludicrously enjoyable as the ninja
challenge is recreated — only this time by kung fu fighters who know what they’re up against and are prepared to fight sun, wood, water, fire, and earth with sun, wood, water, fire, and earth … or, in this case, with a specially made version of what looks like a six-foot long Swiss Army knife. The finale explodes as Tien-chi sacrifices his life in order to literally tear the ninja master in half. When asked why, he understates, “I don’t know … I guess I was obsessed.”

It was as if the director was answering his growing group of critics and dissatisfied customers. Tired, burned out, and at the mercy of his diversions, Chang Cheh
continued working, but made increasingly disjointed, dismissible and even sad films like the aptly-titled
The Weird Man
(1983) the accurately-titled
Attack of the Joyful Goddess
(1983), and the unfortunately-titled
Dancing Warrior
(1984).