Director: Jimmy Wang Yu
Cast: Jimmy Wang Yu, Tien Yeh, Tang Hsin, Lung Fei
Have I Seen It Before: Never. My Kung-fu/martial arts awareness has always been a bit of a blind spot in my cinematic awareness, but with the promise of a 35mm print, I’ll make the point to show up**. I didn’t even know what movie I was going into, but I was sure to be there.
Did I Like It: The movie is undeniably silly. Wang Yu*** spends at least half of the film—and indeed, made a whole improbable film career—with one arm obviously behind his back. How does he rise from the ground any time he is struck in his fights? Well, I don’t want to ruin it for you.
We had fun in the theater. I got the sense that some people take martial arts very seriously, and they weren’t having as much fun as the rest of us, and the film is pretty flimsy as far as a story goes, but God help me if I wasn’t looking for a DVD of both this and the apparently equally-crazy sequel Master of the Flying Guillotine.
It worked like a charm on me.
*The print I saw claimed its title was the The Chinese Professionals, which cursory research tells me was the title it had when it first came to America in 1973. It’s a bad title, considering the titular professionals from China are both the bad guys, and at least one of them is from Japan.
**I really thought we were in for a wild ride when the reel broke within the first five minutes. And I mean that in the best way possible. You ain’t lived until you’ve had a reel break in front of you despite George Lucas spending all of his efforts in the 2000s trying to make that a thing of the past.
***I kinda want to write a whole blog post about him. When he wasn’t making martial arts films about forty-five seconds before Bruce Lee made the genre a worldwide phenomenon, he apparently worked for the Yakuza. Where’s that movie?