Chinese Kung Fu Against Godfather (1974)

Chinese Kung Fu Against Godfather (1974)
aka Fist of Fury in China
Chinese Title: 大鄉里大鬧歐洲
Translation: There is big trouble in Europe

Starring: Cliff Lok, Eddie Ko, Lee Kwan
Director: Lee Tso-Nam
Action Director: Chan Siu-Pang

I watched this hoping for na early 70s basher/Triad film, but got something akin to Way of the Dragon 2 instead. There were a few of these movies made in the 70s in the Wake of the success of Bruce Lee's classic, like Leung Siu-Lung's Kidnap in Rome and this. While a spectre of its inspiration hangs over the proceedings (ex. Lee Kwan was in The Big Boss; the alternate title is obviously a cash-in, and Bruce Lee is even mentioned once in the film), this movie does try to be its own creature and actually does some things better than Way of the Dragon.

Cliff Wong plays Tong Shan, a kung fu expert from Hong Kong who has arrived in Amsterdam to make his fortune. He's received by his brother, Charles (Eddie Ko) and is put to work at Charles' Chinese restaurant. One day, Charles asks Tong Shang to make a delivery for him. When Tong discovers that the object being delivered is narcotics, he beats up the dealers, throws the drugs into the river, and goes to live with Chinese cabbie Robert Lee (Lee Kwan). Robert encourages Tong to open a kung fu school, and Tong even starts a romance with a Dutch woman (Ine Van Veen) who speaks Chinese. But it'll only be a matter of time before Charles and his gang find Tong Shan and demand their drugs back...

Comparison between this and Way of the Dragon is inevitable. The latter is, for the most part, focused on the plot of restaurant owners vs. gangsters. Here, the main conflict doesn't really step into the foreground until the second half. The first half is more of a fish-out-of-water story, showing Tong Shan's struggles to adapt to his new settings and find his place in Western culture. One amusing scene has Cliff Lok entering a chic Chinese restaurant, only to discover that nobody that works there speaks Chinese!

Lee Tso-Nam throws more sex into the film, with Lee Kwan more concerned with sleeping with every White woman he can and trying to get Cliff Lok's character laid. At one point, Cliff almost sleeps with a big-breasted blonde, but stops when he remembers his mom's request that he not bring home a European wife.

Action-wise, the film isn't bad. Kudos to Chan Siu-Pang and Lee Tso-Nam for casting non-Chinese actors who could fight, although one might wonder why Western drug dealers never use guns and why a Dutch kingpin (Jan Willem Stoker) is a martial arts máster, too. Chan Siu-Pang makes a valiant attempt to put some real technique into the fights, despite the then-current standard for flailing arms in a basher film set in the modern day. Cliff Lok gets to use his Southern Kung Fu skills a lot, and never resorts to the sort of shapes-less fighting that defined era. His main flaw as a screen fighter is that he lacks power, and thus fails to convince at times that he could beat up some of the people he does throughout the film. But I won't blame Chan Siu-Pang for that. He does a great job with what he's given to work with.

I think this would make a great double-feature with Bruce Lee's Way of theDragon.