Mad Monkey Kung Fu
(1979)
Director: Liu Chia-Liang
Cast: Liu Chia-Liang, Hsiao Hou, Lo Lieh
As you
probably know, there are a lot of subjects that I like to ponder about,
but nothing more than the motion picture industry. What I really like
to think about regarding the motion picture industry is not just
individual movies, but also the many different genres they represent.
It's fun to take time to think about the creative process. For example,
take the film genre of animated movies. How did the idea of making
thousands of different hand drawn pictures and photographing them one
by one to make a fluid story get in someone's mind in the first place?
And when that idea was conceived, why were the short animated films
that followed for the next while almost all comedic in nature? For that
matter, why did most of them have animal characters instead of human
characters? I also wonder when I think about animated movies about the
painstaking process of making even a short animated movie. How do the
animators get through the monotony of drawing frame by frame something
happening with only a slight difference from the previous frame that
they drew? Do the animators feel comfortable animating something in a
style that is much different from their personal drawing style they
mastered before getting into animation? How do animators feel nowadays
by the fact that the credits for their animation are now demoted to
being a small and quickly rushing by notice in the closing credits,
especially since in the golden days of animation, animators (at least
the chief ones) were credited in the opening credits?
Another film genre that I like to think deeply about is
the martial arts genre. I think about the entries in this genre that
were made by American filmmakers, Indonesian filmmakers, and from
filmmakers from other corners of the world, but I especially like to
think about martial arts movies coming from Hong Kong. That's because
it's the place where it seems the genre was born in, and where so many
great ass-kicking exercises have come from. Often, I wonder who the
first person was in Hong Kong that came up with the idea of not just
having a movie have martial arts, but was actually about
one martial art fight after another. Once he (or possibly she) had this
idea, how did this person bring this idea into fruition? And when they
were making this martial arts movie - and many more martial arts movies
in the future - how did the filmmakers figure out how to pull it off?
Surely it must have been a lot of work to find actors who could pull
off martial arts in front of the camera, then to direct these actors to
pull off their martial arts skill in a way that would be extremely
commercial. And once the filmmakers were able to do all of those
things, how did they get through the post-production process? What did
they have to go through to come up with the right sound effects to dub
in, from the "whoosh" of limbs that fly through the air, to the
"thwack" sounds when a foot is pushed with great force into someone's
belly? Actually, I have heard that in the 1970s, the "thwack" sounds
were often made by recording the slapping of a leather sofa with ping
pong paddles, but I have been unable to confirm that particular fact.
There are other things I wonder about when I think about
Hong Kong martial arts movie, like what the filmmakers were thinking
whenever they used music from foreign (usually Hollywood) movies
without getting permission first from the copyright holders of the
music. But I am always careful not to think too much
about such
questions while I am actually watching a Hong Kong martial arts movie.
If I were to question too much, it might spoil the viewing experience a
lot; sometimes you just have to enjoy a movie as non-think
entertainment. But there has been a question about Hong Kong martial
arts movies that recently came into my mind: Why haven't I reviewed
more such movies for this web site? Well, finding such movies, at least
until recently, was a
problem until avenues like streaming came along; sadly, such movies are
aimed at a niche audience in North
America, especially if they are also unknown movies. But as luck would
have it, I found such a movie recently during my regular patrol of the
local dollar stores, Mad Monkey Kung Fu.
And it was a Shaw Brothers production, an outfit well known for making
high quality martial arts movies in the 1970s. It's set in China long
ago, where we learn of a man named Chan (Liu Chia-Liang, Twin
Dragons) who has gained fame due to his martial arts and
opera skills, running an opera with his sister (Kara Wai, The
Inspector Wears Skirts). However, a gangster and
brothel
owner named Duan (Lo Lieh, Five Fingers Of Death),
who has his eye on Chan's sister, frames Chan for rape. Chan is let go
when his sister pledges to be Duan's mistress for life, though Chan's
hands are crippled to make sure he doesn't get revenge on Tuan. Years
later, Chan has become a street performer, and struggles to make a
living while dodging goons collecting for a protection racket. Chan one
day bumps into a homeless individual just known as Monkey (Hsiao Hou, Iron
Monkey),
and eventually agrees to train Monkey in the art of mad monkey kung fu.
It seems that together Chan and Monkey can together bust the protection
racket in their town, and of course ensure that Chan can eventually get
his revenge against Duan. But of course, there are a lot of obstacles
in the way...
The script for Mad Monkey Kung Fu in
a number of aspects generates a kind of deja vu feeling among those of
us who have had the privilege of watching many other Hong Kong kung fu
movies from the same period, such as with the brother/sister being torn
apart and the sister being degraded, the hero being purposely crippled,
a young protege being trained in an unconventional teaching style a
special kind of kung fu, etc. You probably saw all that too. And while
the print of the movie I saw was subtitled instead of dubbed, the
translation still kept the tradition of some unintentionally amusing
dialogue ("My brother acted foolishly," the sister says about her
brother's supposed rape, and people call each other "rascals" and
"scoundrels", which at one point has a henchman say he's being
"scolded" with the insults hurled at him.) But such things are par for
the course, so I didn't mind experiencing them again. What I did object
to concerning the script was that this telling of familiar story
elements was drawn out much more than usual. The movie runs almost two
hours in length, which in my opinion is much too long for this type of
martial arts cinema. The stretching out inevitably leads to some
problems, such as key characters disappearing for incredibly long
periods of time without even a mention of them in their hiatus. It also
takes forever to get to key plot turns; Monkey doesn't start his
training until almost half of the movie has played out. And when the
movie does get to the key plot turns, these parts are elongated so much
in various ways that sitting through them will take a great deal of
effort. At the same time, there are a few parts of the movie when the
movie suddenly takes a giant leap forward in time, so that
transitioning from one point to the other is bewildering at first and
requires the viewer to try his or her best to adjust to the new
situation.
"Who cares?" probably a lot of you reading this are
saying. "That could be considered par for the course as well. As long
as the movie contains plenty of good action, it should still be a fun
romp." Well, I hate to break it to these particular readers (and the
rest for that matter), but I simply wasn't thrilled a lot by the
martial arts action in Mad Monkey Kung Fu.
Part of this may be that while I have enjoyed some 1970s Hong Kong
martial arts movies in the past, I much prefer Hong Kong cinematic
martial art
fights in movies from the early 1980s and forward - much swifter, more
acrobatic, and more brutal, if you ask me. But even if my first
exposure to Hong Kong martial arts film had been this particular movie,
I doubt I would have been much more thrilled than I actually was. One
problem was that in the first half of the movie, there isn't all that
much true fighting going on. In fact, the movie here almost seems to be
teasing its audience about if fights are going to happen or not. When
the characters do eventually get into major scraps, the best I ever
thought of these bouts was "It's okay... I guess." The worst I thought
about them was that they seemed too mechanical, too bogged down by
excessive choreography that prevents us from feeling the participants
are struggling and fighting desperately for their lives. It doesn't
help that the background music by Eddie Wang (Return To The 36th
Chamber) is almost pure obnoxiousness, souring any building
feeling of excitement. I admit the action isn't completely bad.
Director Liu Chia-Liang (Drunken Master II)
occasionally throws in a good touch to the fights, such as sudden slow
motion for a few seconds, or using the environment the fighters are in
to shake things up a little. His handling of the parts of the movie
outside of the fights is better. The movie is generally well
photographed, he displays the various sets in a manner that shows how
much time went into constructing them in great detail, and he isn't
afraid to bring in a little welcome slapstick along the way, which does
add some life to the otherwise slow-moving story.
However, there is one slapstick bit involving cruelty to
a monkey that while may have been funny at the time to Hong Kong
audiences does leave a bad taste today. (The UK edition of this movie
is edited, and I'm guessing this scene was what was cut down.) A bigger
problem with Liu's direction is that he is unable to make the
characters particularly compelling. Though with this particular script,
any director would
have found it practically impossible to do. The characters are really
lacking depth. For example, Chan's sister's name is not revealed until
almost at the very end. A bigger problem is that we generally don't
know the backgrounds or real motivations of any of the various players.
Where did Monkey come from, and why does he want to learn mad monkey
kung fu so much? Why does Duan have an eye on Chan's sister despite
already having a woman in his life? When Chan and his sister are torn
apart, why do they apparently forget each other (despite them still
living in the same town) for the next few years until Monkey comes into
the picture? Another mistake Liu and the screenplay for Mad Monkey Kung Fu
makes is that the villains are not all that memorable. The actors
simply don't exude evil at all, so that you won't particularly care
even when they are inflicting suffering on innocent people. Liu seems
unable to coax more enthusiastic performances by these particular cast
members, and seems instead (along with the script) simply content for
the bad guys to flash their pearly whites and go by that standard Hong
Kong movie cliché of the bad guys exclaiming "Hahahahaha!" over and
over. I certainly was not laughing, so I am glad someone found something funny about
this movie.
(Posted December 9, 2024)
Check
for availability on Amazon (DVD)
See also: The Fighting Fists
Of Shanghai Joe, Shootfighter, Stoner
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