Drunken Arts and Crippled Fist (1979)

Drunken Arts and Crippled Fist (1979)
Chinese Title: 怪拳小子
Translation: Peculiar Fist Kid

Starring: Lee Yi-Min, Simon Yuen Siu-Tin, Cheung Siu-Fan, Leung Tien-Hsiang, Wei Ping-Ao, Lee Man-Tai, Lee Siu-Ming, Yue Hang, Wong Man
Director: Tong Dick
Action Director: Lee Siu-Ming, Jue Lung, Wang Chi-Sheng

 

While it would certainly be unfair to refer to Taiwanese actor Lee Yi-Min as a Jackie Chan imitator, it’s easy to dismiss him as such when you watch some of his most popular films, like World of the Drunken Master, Seven Grandmasters, and Mystery of Chess Boxing. Like Chan, Lee had a strong Peking Opera upbringing and was just as much an acrobat as he was a martial artist. He was especially good at playing the sort of character that Jackie Chan played in Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow: the naïve, goofy type who starts off not knowing kung fu, but eventually learns it and becomes better than everyone around him. I think the problem was that he wasn’t very good at playing other roles, where Jackie Chan, despite his own limited range, could easily play intense, arrogant, downtrodden, naïve, or any combination of those.

Like Jackie Chan, he spent a good portion of his career playing bit parts and supporting roles until the late 1970s, when he came out onto his own. Unlike Jackie, however, Lee Yi-Min actually got some good supporting roles in big Shaw Brothers productions like Shaolin Temple and Seven Man Army before he made a name for himself appearing in Taiwanese kung fu comedies. Nonetheless, his most famous films have the specter of Jackie accompanying them and I can’t imagine that Lee Yi-Min was ever able to successfully convince audiences and filmmakers that he was anything but a Jackie Chan clone.

For the record, if there are any actors whom I might dismiss as Jackie Chan clones, I suppose I could name Jackie Chen (aka Chan Siu-Lung), who simultaneously rips off both Jackie and Bruce Lee. Then again, I’ve never seen any of Jackie Chen’s films. I wouldn’t call Cliff Lok one, either, since Cliff was already something of an established actor in the early 1970s. Cliff did have the bad luck of looking like Jackie, so when he inevitably started making kung fu comedies later on, it would’ve been easy to accuse him of engaging in Jackiesploitation. I’d throw my money at Benny Tsui, a third-rate kung fu actor with the ugliest mock Jackie hair I’ve ever seen and who’s a veteran of “classics” like Masters of the Tiger Crane and Incredible Shaolin Thunderkick, which is the only film I’m aware of where the hero performs drunken boxing after drinking water.

Back to Lee Yi-Min, the years 1978 and 1979 were his most prolific years, at least as the leading man. The latter saw Lee participating in two drunken boxing-themed films, even though most of his movies made during this period copied the formula to one degree or another. Drunken Arts and Crippled Fist is probably the lesser of the two films, with World of the Drunken Master having a bit more renown, in part because it was directed by popular independent director Joseph Kuo and was choreographed by a member of the Yuen Clan. Drunken Arts and Crippled Fist doesn’t have anything that can be considered a big name besides Lee Yi-Min, unless you count Lee Man-Tai (Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin and Police Woman), who shows up in role tailored after Drunken Master’s Iron Had Rat. Surprisingly enough, this movie proves to be a fairly entertaining, if lightweight affair that breezes quickly through its brief 78-minute running time, delivering the kung fu goods, if nothing else.

The movie starts out with a kid named Hsiao Hu being trained by a hunchbacked kung fu master (Simon Yuen Siu-Tin, who trained Lee Yi-Min in Mystery of Chess Boxing). The kid grows up to be Lee Yi-Min, who’s labeled an “expert” by his master, but is given the order to never use his skills to beat people up. Hsiao Hu returns home to find out that his rich father had him spend 10 years studying kung fu in order to use him as a free bodyguard and extortionist. When Hsiao Hu refuses to fight on daddy’s command, Hsiao gets the boot and is forced to fend for himself.

Inexplicably, Hsiao goes to the local kung fu school, where he accuses the instructor (Lee Siu-Ming, the film’s choreographer) of having terrible kung fu. This being a kung fu movie, the instructor tries to beat him up. In the real world, the instructor would’ve called the police and had Hsiao Hu arrested for disturbing the peace. Of course, Hsiao doesn’t fight back so much as he dodges his opponent’s kicks with acrobatic grace, although he does get in a powerful head butt to the stomach that ends the fight right then and there. Interestingly enough, it was established in an earlier scene that his head was strong enough to break concrete, even when Hsiao Hu was doing something as simple as kowtowing. But after the fight with the instructor, that particular ability of his is essentially abandoned for the rest of the movie.

Later on, the shamed instructor sends his iron-headed brother to fight Hsiao, but the battle ends in much the same way. A few days later, Instructor and Iron Head are at a restaurant eating when they fall victim to a pretty female pickpocket (Cheung Siu-Fan) who thinks she can trick the audience into thinking she’s a man just because she wears a golf cap. Hsiao Hu shows up at the restaurant and the pickpocket, Hsiao Yen, immediately takes a liking to him. The two are confronted once more by Instructor and Iron Head, and Hsiao Yen gives them a good beating.

Hsiao Hu and Hsiao Yen then have to accept a challenge with those bozos’ master, Master Liu (Wei Ping-Ao, the little squirrelly guy from Fist of Fury and Way of the Dragon). Hsiao Yen beats the hell out of him, too, but calls the attention of another wandering fighter, Chow Tao-Hai (Leung Ting-Hsiang, Cripple Lee Becomes Immortal and Sword Stained with Royal Blood). Chow turns out to be the elder martial brother of Hsiao Hu, but for some reason is bent on defeating all of his master’s pupils. Hsiao Hu and Chow Tao-Hai fight, with the former losing big time. Humiliated, Hsiao returns to his master to tell the tale of his miserable defeat. It’s then that the old hunchback decides to teach Hsiao Hu one last kung fu style: the crippled fist technique.

Drunken Arts and Crippled Fist is not much more than your standard Drunken Master clone made on a pretty low budget with only a few recognizable stars. All of the expected beats are hit: old, powerful master? Check. Hero who thinks he knows how to fight but gets beat down by the main villain? Check. Hero who has to learn a new kung fu style in order to win the rematch? Check. Villain who challenges the hero at the end because someone else hired him to? Check. Heck, this film even goes so far as to have our protagonist have conflicts with his dad, although this time around, it’s more the father’s fault than the son’s.

What keeps the movie from yet another tired clone (and trust me, there are lots out there) is that the film runs a scant 78 minutes and the usual momentum-stopping comic interludes always come in the form of elaborately-choreographed fight scenes, instead of silly pranks that only undemanding children would find funny. Even the goofy scenes involving Wei Ping-Ao are fun to watch on account of the cute Cheung Siu-Fan giving him the onscreen beating we wanted him to get in those Bruce Lee films he showed up in.

I’m actually rather quite impressed with the level of skill present in Lee Siu-Ming’s action direction. Despite a solid career in the 1970s spanning about 22 films, he only worked as a fight choreographer in four, three of which are pretty obscure films. As far as I know, Son of Yellow Dragon and Snake in the Crane’s Shadow don’t have very much in the way of cult followings. In this film, however, he’s able to stage a number of fight scenes with the same level of complexity and elegance as the Venom Mob or the Yuen Clan, at least whenever Lee Yi-Min is fighting. Oh sure, there are a few “Me too!” moments, notably a complex duel between Lee and a trio of spearmen that Jackie Chan had done twice before in The Fearless Hyena and Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin. But the bulk of the action is quite enjoyable Lee Yi-Min gets a pretty good showcase. The final battle is a bit reminiscent of the final fight of Knockabout, with Lee Yi-Min constantly switching styles (Mantis, Drunken Boxing, Monkey Fist) until he finds one he can defeat his opponent with.

There is some drunken boxing in this film, although it hardly gets a full showcase. Early on, Lee Yi-Min is seen practicing forms while his snobby father is picking a fight with the other men of the village. One of the sets he performs is the drunken gods form, which isn’t bad. It certainly doesn’t match the famous 8 Drunk Gods sequence in Drunken Master, but at least it’s there. Then, during the final fight, Lee uses some drunken boxing against Leung Tien-Hsiang, although he fails to defeat him with it. He’s certainly more convincing than Meng Fei was, but there’s not nearly enough.

More important to this film is the “Crippled Fist” technique, which looks sort of Jackie Chan’s drunken boxing, but performed by a person with cerebral palsy. There are lots of butterfly twists performed in this particular style, something that Lee Yi-Min was always good at doing. Much like the drunken boxing, the Crippled Fist only shows up in two scenes. In the first, Lee Yi-Min learns it following a brief exhibition by Simon Yuen. The two have a sparring match with the style that suggests that Lee Yi-Min’s character is so awesome that he can learn a technique that supposedly only actual cripples can master, despite not being handicapped in any way. Needless to say it’s not very convincing. Its application in the finale is negligible, although it does allow Lee Yi-Min to perform some nice footwork at the end.

Drunken Arts and Crippled Fist is a harmless way to spend 78 minutes and comes closer to being a decent kung fu family film than, say, the original Drunken Master. Nobody actually dies in this movie, and when drunken boxing is performed, there isn’t any alcohol being consumed. There’s a lot of solid action in it, which is a must for this type of a film. That’s really the best I can say about it.