| Big news! Regular readers of the Video Vulture will know about Shaolin Drunkard (1983), an utterly insane kung fu comedy that happens to be one of my all-time favourites. Well, guess what? Local Wal-Marts are selling the DVD for $3.96! Waaaahoooo! Too… excited… to… breathe.
Sorry, but I’ve been searching for an uncut copy of this flick to buy ever since I first saw it back in 1999. What’s so special about it? Well….
· It’s directed by the one and only Yuen Woo Ping (Iron Monkey) before The Matrix, Kill Bill and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon made him a household name.
· It has more kung fu puppetry (yes, puppetry) than you can possibly believe.
· An out-of-control Sunny Yuen (Shun-Yi Yuen), the director’s brother, plays an unstoppable rampaging vampire who fights using giant linking magician’s rings and commands a giant poisonous kung fu toad through remote control.
· The sour-faced kung fu granny is played by the same guy who plays the crazy buck-toothed drunkard.
· Crazy drunk guy "drives" a cart equipped with an exploding robot chauffeur and an emergency one-man-band rig.
· A life-saving acupuncture scene is filmed like a car chase (you’ll know what I mean when you see it).
· One guy prepares for battle by setting both his hands on fire. Fwoosh!
· The good guys have to fight a life-size marionette that breathes fire and farts poisonous gas.
· They lure the vampire out of hiding by disguising themselves as children.
· They do this by bending over and holding masks over their butts.
There’s a lot more, but you get the idea. Fans of Kung Fu Hustle (2004) will love it. If you can think of a better use for your $3.96, I’d like to hear it. The disc is letterboxed, dubbed in English and uncut. This movie is also available from Xenon entertainment as Wu Tang Master, but that version is pan and scanned, missing two scenes, has non-removable Chinese subtitles burned into the print and is so dark that the gag involving the clockwork monkey is completely ruined. Make sure you get the disc labelled Shaolin Drunkard. Just bear in mind that it was released as a promotional gimmick for hip hop group the Wu-Tang Clan, so you’ll have to put up with a graffiti-style menu screen, and pointless gangsta posturing from rapper RZA. Fo shizzle.
Seriously, if you trust my taste in movies at all (and I’ll understand if you don’t), you need to get this disc right now. Be quick. If I go to Wal-Mart next week and find some copies of Shaolin Drunkard still on the shelves, I’ll know I haven’t done my job.
There were a few other $3.96 kung fu movies on the shelf, so I picked up Fury of the Silver Fox. This turned out to be a retitling of Matching Escort (1983), also known as Venus: Wolf Ninja and Wolf Devil Woman 2, starring Pearl Cheung. (Too many God damn titles for one movie? Welcome to my world, baby.) Cheung is the fascinating actress-director of cult favorite Wolf Devil Woman (a.k.a Wolfen Ninja) (1982), in which she played a feral super-powered ass-kicker who was raised by wolves. Fans of that one of a kind oddity will remember Pearl’s goofy fur outfit and the scene in which she saves her lover from being burned alive by biting her own arm and extinguishing the flames with a badly animated stream of blood.
Despite being called Wolf Devil Woman 2 in some territories, Fury of the Silver Fox/Matching Escort is definitely not a sequel. It is a fun martial arts flick, however, and Cheung’s unconventional beauty, expressive face, flamboyant directorial style and sense of humour make this one a winner. It begins with a shot of a little girl complaining about having to wear weighted shoes. Of course, in martial arts films, behaviour that normal people would consider child abuse always results in well-adjusted grown-ups with superhuman kung fu skills. In this case, a three-second montage shows poor little heavy-shoe girl growing up into laughing, scampering Cheung, who now has the leg strength to scurry up a tree instantly and can lightly run across the most fragile objects without falling down.
In short order she falls for a handsome prince, has her home attacked by ninjas, loses her parents to the attack and flees into the woods with her uncle. Here the duo is found and surrounded, the uncle is slain and the attackers prepare to kill Pearl for the priceless jade necklace she wears. Pearl asks if she can remove her shoes, which the bad guys don’t realize are made out of iron. She clobbers a bad guy with her shoe and leaps up into the branches above, flying around like Peter Pan. Can she elude her attackers, learn to be invincible and avenge her parents? I’ll never tell. |
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