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Fearless Shaolin : Four Films by Joseph Kuo
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - Eureka Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (12th October 2023). |
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The Film
 Born in 1935, Taiwanese film director Joseph Kuo's directorial career started in the late fifties in a variety of genres; however, he found the most success outside of Taiwan from the late sixties onwards in the martial arts genre comprising roughly eighty-percent of his recorded filmography as a writer, producer, and director until his retirement into a film school teaching career. Wildly diverse, uneven, sometimes sloppy, sometimes stylistically ambitious calling into question just how much of his filmography was actually as a director versus a supervising producer/director and how many of the co-directors and assistant directors actually helmed some of his films a sampling of four of the director's better-known film is showcased here as Fearless Shaolin : Four Films by Joseph Kuo: Kuo is back to familiar stomping grounds with Shaolin Kung Fu (1974) in which rickshaw driver Xiao-Ling (Shaolin Deadly Hands' Chiang-Lung Wen) is getting tired of turning the other cheek when a competing rickshaw company lead by Dongyang (New Fist of Fury's Ping Lu) starts stealing fares and beating up his co-workers. Unfortunately, he has made a promise to his blind wife Xiao Yun (Shan-shan Yang) whose own father was murdered in a senseless fight. While chief rival Cui is able to bully both Xiao-Ling's coworkers and even customers into accepting his rides, high-class prostitute Miss Bai (Forbidden Tales of Two Cities' Hung Yi) feels an affinity for the exploited and picks Xiao-Ling as her personal driver nightly; unfortunately, this rouses the jealousy of playboy Tien-Han Chu (Magnificent Bodyguards's Peng Cheng) who teams up with Cui Bao and his drivers to rough up Xiao-Ling. Xiao-Ling arrives home to Tien-Han Chu trying to rape his wife and administers a beating to the man who dies soon after. Tien-Han Chu's father Master Chu (Crazy Guy with Super Kung Fu's Yuan Yi) swears vengeance upon Xiao-Ling and will kill anyone who tries to help him. Poorly-written and rather shoddily-made, Shaolin Kung Fu really does cater to the lowest common denominator but making its villains ruthless without nuance, picking on old men, women, blind women, and even orphan children one of which gets roughed up for having the audacity to ask for payment for the hardboiled eggs he sells on the street slapping the other cheek every time Xiao-Ling turns it, and really hammering home the class divide with Master Chu with Master Chu. Presented first as seemingly just, Master Chu is neither blind to his son's faults nor is there any misunderstanding or lie that puts the blame on Xiao-Ling so much as a reaction of "how dare you not let my son abuse you." The film only seems to set Xiao-Ling up with a number of family, friends, and concerned bystanders in order to inflict so much violence and death upon them so that Xiao-Ling will have literally nothing to lose when he goes on the offensive, puncturing and snapping necks with equal ruthlessness to Master Chu who even in the final confrontation cannot resist using another child as a human shield. The end result is not really a "vengeance, but at what cost?" film since the blind character seems to be the only person who cannot see that Kuo is less interested in a moral lesson than making his protagonist suffer enough so that the audience cheers the onslaught of revenge killings. The Shaolin Kids (1975): Humiliated at court by his son's (Avenging Warriors of Shaolin's Nan Chiang) violent acts and his failure to make an example of him by "beating him to death," Premier Hu Weiyung (Yuan Yi again) decides he want to ascend to the throne. He first visits ailing minister Liu Bowen (The Chinese Amazons' Chiu Chen) who once opposed his appointment and poisons him under the guise of recommending a special treatment. When his daughter Liu Xin-Er (Dragon Inn's Polly Ling-Feng Shang-Kuan) discovers the doctor's body along the side of the road after her father's funeral, she vows to kill Hu Weiyung. She goes to her father's close friend General Lu Quiyu (The Victim's Yi Chang) whose Shaolin-educated son Lu Ding (The Tongfather's Peng Tien) appeals to his teacher Shangguan (Big Trouble in Little China's Carter Wong). Upon discovering that Hu Weiyung is recruiting the Japanese and the Mongols to help him overthrow the Emperor (Boxer Rebellion's Hsiang-Ting Ko), Liu Xin-Er and Lu Ding make off with a letter written in Hu Weiyung's hand explaining his plan. Hu Weiyung sends his powerful protectors The Light and Dark Killers (Kung Fu Inferno's Fei-Lung Huang and Vengeance!'s Cliff Lok) to retrieve the letter and kill anyone who gets in the way. Armed with the letter as proof, the general, his son, and Liu Xin-er plan to prevent the emperor's caravan from reaching Hu Weiyung's country home and the death trap he has set up; however, such an act is punishable by death, particularly if one is armed as they will need to be once Hu Weiyung is alerted to their plans. One of the best entries in the set enough so that one may wonder if Kuo actually directed it based on the previous films The Shaolin Kids seems to be galvanized by the presences of Polly Ling-Feng Shang-Kuan, Peng Tien, and Carter Wong, all of whom would be reunited in Kuo's highly-successful The 18 Bronzemen (and, to an extent, in its sequel). The plotting is better, the photography is elegant, the production values are better exploited, characters are better-delineated, the fights are quite exciting, and the film is actually quite suspenseful from the pursuit of the McGuffin letter to the final sequence in which one of the villains is "allowed" to figuratively hang himself. Nothing from the plotting to the violence seems gratuitous; surprisingly so given the presence of another sadistic son character (who barely gets any screen time here). Of the six films thus far in this set, The Shaolin Kids is the Taiwanese martial arts film that seems easily on par with the better Shaw Brothers works of the same period.  The 18 Bronzemen (1976): After her general son is murdered by Qing soldiers, Lady Shang (The Eight Masters's Shu-Fang Chen) brings her grandson to the Shaolin monastery and asks them to take him in to learn how to avenge his father. Years later, Tang Shaolong (Pang Tien) is just as bewildered as his brothers when he is the target of assassination attempts by hooded interlopers. When he receives the call from his grandmother to return home, he requests to challenge the eighteen bronzemen against the advice of his "big brother" Jao-long (Carter Wang) and best buddy Daqi (Nan Chiang again). Tang Shaolong fails the first try, and it is four years before he tries again, with Jao-long joining him in place of Daqi. Although they must compete separately under penalty of death, they encourage each other and eventually make it past all of the arduous tests. Emerging into the outer world with the vow to serve their country and be loyal, Tang Shaolong parts ways with Jao-long to visit his mother, promising to meet his big brother at the Flower Inn in two weeks. He learns from a cousin he has never met that his grandmother went to see his uncle Liu eight months before, but arrives there to discover that she has since passed away. His uncle reveals his true identity to him as Guan Long, and that Lord Hei Chu-Ying (Yuan Yi again) was the murderer of his father General Guan. Guan Long reunites with Jao-long and Daqi who has failed the 18 Bronzemen but decided to leave anyway and is also trailed by a mysterious "man" (Polly Ling-Feng Shang-Kuan again) who has decided Guan Long owes him his life for sparing him when challenged to fight, and that includes saving him from various assassination attempts. Guan Long is more annoyed than grateful for this man's help; that is, until he discover that "he" possesses the jade trinket that his uncle told him would be in the possession of his future wife. Lord Hei Chu-Ying, however, is aware that they are on the hunt for him and has a few tricks in store. More of a road movie compared to the relatively epic The Shaolin Kids, The 18 Bronzemen has some impressive moments in the hall of the bronzemen Jackie Chan's Shaolin Wooden Men sound like a budget version but are more ambitiously-executed and the various ambushes, but clean-shaven and expressive Wong manages to overshadow Peng and the main villain is rather flat and ordinary until the physically-exhausting climax. The plotting is such that at least two dying characters need quite the last breath to deliver extensive exposition, the only reward of which is brief flashback montage cutaway that calls in question our previous conceptions about those two characters' interactions with the hero. The most novel aspect of the film is the spies having obtained the manual of the bronzemen stances for which he has created eighteen golden statues to which the film cuts away as he recalls each stance used by the heroes and how to counter them. The film performed well in Hong Kong but it was not until four years later that the film became a massive success in Japan (see below), by which time its sequel had come and gone with less fanfare. Wong takes center stage in Return of the 18 Bronzemen (1976) as the fourth prince Long Zhen (Carter Wong again) who, upon learning that the will of his comatose father has made the fourteenth prince Yinti his successor, has the will revised, has the minister to whom it was dictated assassinated, and has the assassin accuse Yinti. He is prevented from having his brother executed by pleas from the ministers to carry out an investigation and has him consigned to the dungeon. Upon learning that Shaolin monks plan to rebel against the Manchurian Qing usurpation of the Ming empire, Long Zhen thinks back to earlier days when he enrolled at the Shaolin temple in order to learn their fighting style to combine with his own Manchurian boxing to be an invincible warrior. Being older than the requirement of the admission standards, Long Zhen was determined to learn as fast as possible, hoping to face the eighteen bronzemen within a year of his training. Although he failed his first try, he impressed his brothers with his determination to try again and again when others have died in failing, hoping to have mastered the Shaolin form before the three year deadline when he arranged to be collected and returned to the kingdom, or before his secret identity and intentions are exposed. The flashback structure of Return of the 18 Bronzemen is indeed the source of much confusion thanks to Kuo's usual rushed storytelling, abrupt transitions, and stripped-down editing that gets the setup out the way so fast in favor of spending more than an hour on training montages and Long Zhen's tries at the eighteen bronzemen. Those who miss the flashback transition may think it absurd that newly-appointed emperor with shaky ministerial support (and presumably other brothers as cutthroat as he) would leave the kingdom in other hands for three years to study Shaolin and that no spies would know his likeness and expose it to the monks and assume that the film will have Long Zhen redeeming himself and developing a respect for the Ming-allied Shaolin through his training and trials.  What the viewer actually gets, is a king reflecting on his bitter failure and having his seemingly sincere dedication rebuffed as a liability issue, it seems, rather than that fact that they are mortal enemies and deciding, upon learning of the development of a "powerful weapon" that can wipe out the Shaolin, to deploy it (the "powerful weapon" plot turn sounds lame on the English dub, but the Mandarin track specifies that it is the infamous "flying guillotine" from many a Jimmy Wang Yu vehicle). Peng Tien turns up again but only in an extended cameo as the brother of a young woman Long Zhen rescues on his way to the Shaolin temple, while Polly Ling-Feng Shang-Kuan has bookending appearances (her reasoning for her second attack upon Long Zhen another indicator of offscreen deeds that cement the correct structure of the film's flashback). Even though we are perhaps meant to find Wong's protagonist more likeable with his extreme dedication to training, the character and the story make for a rather disappointing star vehicle (but there are plenty of others to discover for new Carter Wong fans).
Video
Shaolin Kung Fu had a previous non-anamorphic letterboxed DVD from Mei Ah with Cantonese and Mandarin tracks and English subtitles while M.I.A.'s Old Skool Kung Fu DVD featured the same transfer but the English dub. Germany's NEW DVD was the best of both imperfect worlds, including the same non-anamorphic transfer, the original Mandarin track, the English dub, a German dub, as well as English and German subtitle options. Despite it being one of the better films, The Shaolin Kids has been hard to see, possibly because it gets confused with Kids from Shaolin (1983) a sequel to the Jet Li film Shaolin Temple, not the earlier Chang Cheh film or even The Shaolin Kid, and it does not appear to have been released in the US or UK before theatrically while the Video Asia double feature DVD (which retitles it "Shaolin Posse" and pairs it with Shaolin Kung Fu under the title "Rickshaw Man") After its Hong Kong release and international export, The 18 Bronzemen sat around until Japanese investors showed interest circa 1980 in all thing Shaolin. Kuo responded by reediting the film to tailor it to Japanese demands, with a new twenty minute prologue with narration about the Shaolin religion, moving the flashback of the general's death up to the start, and cribbing footage from some of his other films to depict the child's Shaolin temple training. Film elements for this version survived and were remastered by Mei Ah for their Region 3 DVD even the Japanese version had Mandarin audio and as an extra on the German Bronzekδmpfer Collection supplementing the shorter German cinema version. The transfer are anamorphic but the originals may be upscaled from the 4:3 letterboxed masters. It is pretty much the same story with the avialability of Return of the 18 Bronzemen (although the Mei Ah disc is cropped to 2.20:1).  The Shaolin Kids and the two bronzemen films look consistently the best of the set the Japanese version in the case of the first bronzemen film while the reconstruction of the Hong Kong cut is obviously the "worst" looking in terms of the inserts, although they become less distracting as one finds this version's story more coherent than the Japanese recut. Shaolin Kung Fu fares best in bright exteriors for the most part, although it seems as though consistent lighting during these scenes was not a priority, and only the overcast skies of the quarry scene justify the changing lighting conditions. In all cases, the scope lenses are occasionally either misaligned or the blocking of the actors is off, wrecking the effectiveness of some would-be stately compositions.
Audio
Shaolin Kung Fu, The Shaolin Kids, and the Return of the 18 Bronzemen have Mandarin and English LPCM 1.0 mono options. The Japanese version of The 18 Bronzemen only has the redubbed Mandarin track created for the film in 1980 in LPCM 1.0 mono while the reconstructed Hong Kong version includes original Mandarin and English LPCM 1.0 mono options. The Mandarin tracks are the way to go even though everyone is dubbed, but the English tracks take things seriously for the most part. The Cantonese options are no more authentic than the Mandarin tracks since they are also dubbed. All films have optional English subtitles for the Mandarin tracks - also enabled for the Cantones options - and an additional track for signs, text, and credits when English audio is chosen.
Extras
Shaolin Kung Fu and The Shaolin Kids are accompanied each by an audio commentary by action cinema experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema placing the former film not only in the context of other rickshaw-themed martial arts films but also as a play on both The Big Boss and the western Shane. This is the film out of all where Leeder and Venema call into question whether Kuo actually directed it, noting that some prints list a co-director. On The Shaolin Kids, Leeder and Venema provide some more information on the Kuo stable of actors (pointing out Wong, who is not as recognizable with a beard, and describing Polly Sheng not unflatteringly as the "female Jimmy Wang Yu"), they also note that Shaolin now is as much a business as it is a religion, noting that even this film illustrates some of the differences between real monks and performative ones.  Both The 18 Bronzemen the Japanese version since presumably the Hong Kong version reconstruction was not ready at the time of recording and Return of the 18 Bronzemen are each accompanied by informative and entertaining audio commentary by Asian film expert Frank Djeng and former Video Watchdog editor John Charles, author of "The Hong Kong Filmography, 1977-1997: A Complete Reference to 1,100 Films Produced by British Hong Kong Studios" and many Hong Kong film reviews from eye-straining cropped and squeezed Tai Seng tapes and discs. Charles points out the use of scenes from The Blazing Temple and The Unbeaten 28, noting that confusion arrives from the footage not only switching between two child actors, but which child it is supposed to be (especially with a cut from the child training to Carter Wong). While Charles provides more detail on the Japanese version, Djeng is able to explain the differences of the Hong Kong version to fill in the details. On the whole, they discuss how the reworking of the film for Japanese distributors made a very basic plot more confusing. Djeng also notes that Kuo is still going strong and teaching film. Charles notes that the film was never released in the United States theatrically. The film called The 18 Bronzemen was actually the sequel (as was the reissue with the "Return of" title). On the sequel, even they seem puzzled by the flashback structure but eventually clarify it for the confused viewer (although neither really explains why they both regard it as the better to the two films). More interesting than discussion of the film itself is their delving into Chinese history, noting that the matter of the altered will was taken from history but now disproven even though it overshadowed the new emperor's entire relatively short rule his son would rule for sixty years and that his paranoia was such that his other brothers spend most of their lives under house arrest. They also note that the sequel was actually released before the first film in Hong Kong.
Overall
Given the uneven quality and overall cheapness of Joseph Kuo's films, the four-film Fearless Shaolin may or may not be seen as a better alternative to the limited edition eight-film set.
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