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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 Mad Monkey Kung Funot 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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