Chao Hsiung – Windows on Worlds

Legend has it that Shaw Brothers’ main motivation in making King Boxer (天下第一拳) was retaliation against Golden Harvest who’d managed to sign Bruce Lee after he turned them down because they offered him the standard studio contract which was at the very least unattractive. Until that point, the studio had mainly been making wuxia pictures and musicals, but had begun to shift towards unarmed combat with the success of The Chinese Boxer in 1970.

Released internationally under the title Five Fingers of Death, the film kickstarted the 1970s kung fu craze with its vast success in America and helped to solidify a new genre that was then only just being formed through the use of the trampoline technique pioneered by wuxia master King Hu along with his fast cuts and a surprisingly gory take on violence even having the floor shift and give off puffs of dust for added realism. Otherwise it weaves a fairly standard tale of warring schools each vying to win a top contest which confers on the winner the right to control five territories in the north, though this is not of course the goal of the righteous contenders who desire neither fame nor fortune only to improve their skills. The earnest Zhihao (Lo Lieh) just wants to stay with his master and adopted father, Song (Ku Wen-Chung), with whose daughter Ying-ying (Wang Ping) he has also fallen in love, but when and former pupil Daming (Jin Bong-Jin) returns after training with Master Sun and Song is attacked by bandits which leaves him feeling past his best, he decides Zhihao should be sent away too until he wins the contest and returns to take over the school.

Meanwhile, the evil Meng (Tien Feng) is scheming to have his son Tianxiong (Tung Lam), who lacks martial arts talent, win the contest so that they can control the territory and oppress everybody in its domain. Meng is fond of talking about honour and the martial arts spirit, but actually plans to win the competition by cheating which is why he had his goons attack Master Song. He plans to take out his rivals ahead of time so Tianxiong will have a clear path to victory.

Zhihao, however, is floundering, forced to toil in Sun’s kitchen’s for a year training through practical means before even being accepted as pupil. Sun’s top student, Han Long (Nam Seok-hoon), appears to take an instant dislike of him that may just be down to his insecurity and fear of competition but eventually becomes a source of weakness in the Sun school. It’s clear that Han resents Zhihao for stealing the place he feels to have been his by right, especially on learning that Sun has given him the manual for the Iron Palm technique, and is even more annoyed when he runs into singer Yan who asks him about Zhihao though he is obviously interested in her himself. This romantic rivalry seems to further undermine his sense of masculinity and causes him to betray everything he stands for as a martial artist by cutting a deal with Meng in the hope he’ll get rid of Zhihao so he can take his place in the contest even if doing so likely means he’ll have to lose to Tianxiong.

The romantic subplot has a gentle poignancy as we obviously know that Yan will never end up with Zhihao because he is in love with Ying-ying while Yan also tries to convince him to leave the martial arts world which is something that just isn’t going to happen. In any case, Zhihao remains committed to opposing injustice, facing off against Meng and battling the three karate masters he’s imported from Japan to do his dirty his work as well as the ace up his sleeve, wandering fighter Chen Lang (Kim Ki-Joo) who eventually begins to realise he’s chosen the wrong side on witnessing Meng’s ruthlessness which breaks every rule in the martial arts book.

Korean director Jeong Chang-hwa, however, slightly wrong foots us denying Zhihao his vengeance against Meng while Han takes him on instead as an act of redemption though he too is eventually denied. This not quite final fight is among the most impressive in the film, fought in near darkness as Han has by this point lost his sight. Zhihao meanwhile takes on Okada (Chao Hsiung), the karate master, demonstrating his “Iron Palm” technique which Jeong lends an eerie supernatural quality through the use of red lighting and the sting of synths. Though the plot plays out like a western, Jeong’s aesthetics otherwise strongly recall the colour of Nikkatsu youth drama of the earlier 1960s most especially in his colour palette and lighting. Unfortunately this would be the last film he made for Shaw Brothers after apparently becoming fed up with Mona Fong’s cost cutting and jumping ship to Golden Harvest where he stayed for the rest of his career, but he did help to create a genre of kung fu cinema and popularise it all over the world.

Review of this rare martial arts movie up at UK Anime Network.

Terracotta have always been keen to bring us the best of contemporary Asian cinema but with the “Classic Kung Fu Collection” they aim to shine a light on some of the much loved movies of the martial arts golden age that have been absent from UK screens for entirely too long. This third entry in the series, King of Fists and Dollars, is a more niche release than the others in the series and has been long unavailable in its original Mandarin language version. Shot in Taiwan in 1979 but starring a host of Shaw Brothers favourites King of Fists and Dollars is a fairly typical example of its genre but perhaps fails to offer anything more.

In feudal China, a tyrannical lord, Chien, rules over the local population with extreme cruelty and disdain. Following a mining accident in which several miners are killed or injured and Chien outright refuses to pay compensation to their families and the townspeople begin to look for a champion to fight Chien on their behalf. Luckily a famous kung-fu master lives in the town, but unluckily he’s retired and not that keen on helping. Nevertheless he finally agrees and a mini rebellion begins to take place, however, Chien is not someone to be lightly overthrown.

King of Fists and Dollars is pretty much your typical late ‘70s kung-fu film. The plot is fairly simple and set piece heavy with the consequence that we simply move from fight scene to fight scene with a few comedy moments thrown in. There is the standard trope of the young hopeful who is forced (or in this case tricked for comic intent) to complete a series of bizarre tasks – this time including catching 100 frogs and hanging upside down all night in a tree in order to prove worthy enough to be allowed to train with the great master. Indeed, training scenes make a large percentage of the movie as Iron Fist trains up a force to beat Chien with the usual bucket based workouts and tricky games of agility.

However when the action scenes arrive they are fairly impressive. All of the different characters fight in different styles and poses and the choreography leans more to traditional clearly defined moves than the more fluid technique prevalent later. There is a fair bit of obvious wire work and off camera trickery at play but fans of old school action will find plenty to enjoy here, especially in the later part of the film which sees the gang facing off against Chien’s seemingly unstoppable champion.

Fans of older kung-fu movies may be more likely to forgive the obvious problems with the film’s presentation which to put it kindly is “imperfect”. The film is presented in 1.78:1 aspect ratio rather than the original 2.35:1 (explaining why one character finishes her martial arts trick off screen) and has not been particularly well preserved. Crackly, worn and a little fuzzy the image quality is often disappointing though to be fair this may be the best available at the present time. The disc comes with the English dub as the default soundtrack with the original Mandarin plus French and Spanish dubs with English subtitles available from the menu screen. The Mandarin language soundtrack is similarly fuzzy with a few brief drop outs every now and then and the subtitles are generally fine. Given the film’s rarity (particularly in its Mandarin language version with English subtitles), many genre enthusiasts may find tolerating these defects an acceptable trade off in return for seeing the film but casual fans may have a much harder time forgiving them.

King of Fists and Dollars is therefore something of a mixed bag. A fairly ordinary, pretty typical Taiwanese martial arts film from the late ‘70s it offers everything you would expect but perhaps not much more. The cast of starry Shaw Brothers faces including: David Chiang, Danny Lee, Pearl Cheung Ling and Chao Hsiung are all accomplished performers doing what they best but nobody is really expected to stretch here. Genre fans will certainly jump at the chance to see this rare film but for the casual viewer its charms may be harder to discern.

Available in the UK now from Terracotta Distribution

Tag: Chao Hsiung

King Boxer (天下第一拳, Jeong Chang-hwa, 1972)

King of Fists and Dollars (錢王、拳王, Chen Ming-Hua, 1979)