Drunken Master (1978)

Drunken Master (1978)
Alternate Title: Drunk Monkey in the Tiger’s Eye
Chinese Title: 醉拳
English Translation: Drunken Fist

 

Starring: Jackie Chan, Simon Yuen Siu-Tin, Hwang Jang Lee, Lam Kau, Linda Lin Ying, Yuen Shun-Yee, Tyrone Hsu Hsia, Chiang Kam, Dean Shek, Max Lee, Fung Ging-Man, San Kuai, Huang Ha
Director: Yuen Woo-Ping
Action Directors: Yuen Woo-Ping, Tyrone Hsu Hsia, Corey Yuen, Yuen Shun-Yee, Brandy Yuen

 

The film opens the way every movie, regardless of genre, should open: four fight scenes in the first 12 minutes. We meet some random kung fu master named Charlie Wei (Yuen Shun-Yee, who doubled as assistant fight choreographer here), practicing his locally-renown Four-Door Fist Style—which looks a little like choy li fut. He’s greeted by an assassin named Thunderfoot (legendary Superkicker Hwang Jang Lee), who has come bearing the news that someone has put out a hit on him and that he (Thunderfoot) is guy hired to carry it out. Two minutes later, Mr. Wei is dead from a double jump kick to the face and our movie proper starts.

 

“Well don’t you be so sure. My Four-Door Fists have never been beaten either. They’ll fix you.”

“I don’t care about your fists. I’m gonna smash them first!”

 

At the Po Chi Lam school (the English dub never states that, but because this story is a retelling of the story of folk hero Wong Fei-Hung, we can assume that’s the place), Robert Wong (Lam Kau—in the Chinese version, he’s known as Wong Kei-Ying) is teaching hung gar to his students when he leaves his assistant (comic vacuum Dean Shek) in charge. Wong’s son Freddy (Jackie Chan—playing said folk hero Wong Fei-Hung) and his friends take advantage of his dad’s absence to goof off and berate poor Dean, ending in a humiliating fight for the latter.

Later on that day, Freddy and his colleagues are at the village having a snack when an attractive young girl passes. Freddy bets his friends that he can get her to hug and kiss him on their first meeting, and then uses the ol’ “There’s something in my eye” line and a well-placed snake (which are actually common in Chinese markets, judging from these movies) to win the bet. Not especially happy with his antics is the girls mother (Linda Lin Ying, of Lackey and the Lady Tiger), who accuses Freddy of molesting her daughter. She’s also an accomplished wushu stylist, and promptly kicks the snot out of Freddy.

“The old bitch is tough!”

He himself humiliated, Freddy storms off, only to run into the local bully (Tino Wong Cheung, of Invincible Iron Armour and Secret Rivals II), who’s busy brutalizing a poor man for no reason at all. Freddy beats the hell out of the bully, both because it’s righteous and because, well, he needs to beat someone up to make up for his earlier loss.

Things come to a head later on at the school, when we learn that the lady who laid the smacketh down on him was actually his aunt, and thus he had been flirting with his own first cousin. Robert Wong’s attempts to discipline Freddy via some powerful palm strikes is interrupted by the arrival of Mr. Li (Fung Ging-Man, of Magnificent Butcher and Enter the Fat Dragon), the father of the bully Freddy whopped a few hours earlier. To save face, Robert publicly disowns Freddy and then allows one of Mr. Li’s lackeys to hit Freddy ten times without him fighting back. When those ten strokes are up, a still-standing Freddy receives some pointers from his forgiving aunt in how to beat the guy. Mr. Li storms off, two cripples in tow, declaring that he’ll get his revenge later on.

“Piss off! Shithead!”

“Who’s the shithead?”

“You are!”

At his sister’s advice, Robert tries to punish Freddy via tortuous kung fu training, including maintaining the fundamental posture for three hours while balancing cups of hot water on his head and shoulders, with iron rings around his wists and a hot bamboo spike beneath his bum.  Freddy tries to cheat his way out of that—I’m pretty sure I would, too—and his father is so incensed that he decides to call in his great uncle, Sam Seed (Simon Yuen Siu-Tin—in Chinese, the character’s name is So Hat Yee, or Beggar So, another local folk hero) and have him train Freddy into a decent human being.

Apparently, Sam Seed has a reputation for being a sadist, which causes Freddy to skip town. He ends up at some random restaurant, where he tries to con his way into a free meal. This doesn’t work, as the poor sap he tries to pin the bill on is actually the restaurant’s owner. A huge hulking fellow who happens to be the cook beats up Freddy, who’s spared further embarrassment by the intervention of an old drunk, who effortlessly fights off the cook and the rest of the restaurant staff.  Give yourself a cookie if you guessed that said old man is Sam Seed himself. Freddy is so screwed.

After a couple of days of training that does indeed border on torture, Freddy gets out of dodge (and almost drowns Sam Seed in the process). While drying off his clothes—his method of escape involved four huge vases of water—he’s approached by Thunderfoot, who happens to use the ruins of the building they’re at as his headquarters. Thunderfoot orders Freddy to take a hike, and when Freddy starts mouthing off as he’s wont to do, Thunderfoot humiliates him both physically and verbally. After that particular beating, maybe Freddy will start taking his training a little more seriously.

“Your kung fu is useless. Who the hell teaches you?”

“My father.”

“Well your father’s useless. Wouldn’t even hire him to wipe my ass.”

One of the most remarkable aspects of this film is how well it captures the video game spirit of “hero fights mini-bosses in escalating levels of difficulty until he faces the final boss.” Not too many movies have achieved that sort of video game mini-boss sensibility to such a perfect degree. The two movies off the top of my head that have done that are the 1978 Avenging Eagle and Jet Li’s Fist of Legend. Doing this isn’t particularly easy, as it presupposes that a good majority of the fights will be against one or two opponents, tops. Moreover, it also assumes that the lion’s share of the fights will involve only the main protagonist, as opposed to two or more heroes (or a full-on ensemble cast, like many Mainland kung fu movies). And while it can be done with two protagonists—see the aforementioned Avenging Eagle—the movie must establish that both heroes are on equal grounds, skill-wise, for it to work. As Jackie Chan opts to play the underdog in his films, his growth as a fighter will thus pave the way for this sort of video game comparison.

With the exception of Freddy Wong’s fights with his aunt and later with Sam Seed (both of whom can be likened to the mythical Shen Long character from Street Fighter 2—Ryu’s fabled master), each successive fight grows more challenging for our lead. His initial bout with Dean Shek is a pushover, and his subsequent bout with Tino Wong Cheung isn’t much more different, save that more is at stake because Tino’s bully wields a broadsword. When Freddy Wong has to take on Mr. Chow (played by Huang Ha) and Eight Palm Technique, he’s handicapped by the condition that he can’t fight back for the first ten blows. But once he survives those, Freddy turns the tables rather quickly. The fight at the restaurant shouldn’t be difficult at all for Freddy, but with the appearance of Gorilla (Bolo Yeung look-alike Lee Chun-wa), the odds are evened out and Freddy’s full stomach and slightly tipsy state-of-mind contribute to his eventual loss.

Midway through the film, Freddy Wong faces off with Thunderfoot, which is akin to using a glitch in “Phantasy Star IV” for the Sega Genesis to transport to the final boss while you’re character is still at level 1—there’s no way in hell that Freddy could hope to win. Freddy is later evenly matched by Iron Head Rat, although he receives some assistance from Sam Seed in that brawl. We then meet the King of Sticks, who’s good enough to beat even Sam Seed when the latter is sober. But once Freddy has mastered the “Eight Drunk Gods” technique, then he’s more than a match for the Stick King. And that finally leaves us with the final fight against Hwang Jang Lee, who has since proven himself to be better than even Freddy’s own father.

“Well, well. If it isn’t shitface.”

Said fight is the pinnacle of Chan’s traditional “chopsockey” days, in terms of choreography, opponents, and showcase for Chan’s physical skills. Earlier in his career, Chan had fought people like the tiger-clawed Chen Sing and the master of the flying guillotine himself, Kam Kong. But in this fight he got to take on Hwang Jang-Lee, who was one of the greatest onscreen kickers of all time and easily the greatest kung fu movie villain ever. Chan also gets a great showcase, finding the perfect balance between both the martial aspects of his “Eight Drunk Gods” and its comic potential.

After a fast-paced beginning scene in which Chan drinks himself silly while acrobatically avoiding Hwang’s attacks, we get to the meat of the fight. So Jackie first shows us the strength of God Lu. All the while, Sam Seed, gives Chan tips on how to counter Hwang’s moves. For example, when their legs get locked, Yuen tells him to use the Crippled Li technique and soon Chan is taking on Hwang using some good ground kicks. Fingers, wrists, feet, and even Chan’s head are used to get the upper hand on Hwang.

However, after this initial demonstration of the drunken boxing, Hwang Jang Lee switches his style to a more hand-based style called “Shadowless Hands” (the style was created for the purpose of the film). Chan finds himself powerless to dodge and outmaneuver Hwang’s handwork in this portion of the fight. Even the combined work of the Flute Han, Drunken Tso, and Chan’s Double Kick is less than a match for Hwang. We give kudos to Hwang in this sequence for his fast and intricate handwork, showing us that he was more than simply a great kicker.

It is at this point that the fight reaches its comic apex, when Chan mixes together seven of the eight drunk gods to create his own style for Angel Ho, whose technique his character had been too lazy to practice. We then get funny movements like a slapping technique “Putting on her make-up” and “The Widow with a Lover.” Hwang Jang Lee unleashes one of his trademark kicks, a double flying dragon kick, but it’s too little, too late for him; Chan is on a roll here. This is one of the few fights where a solitary fighter beats Hwang Jang Lee and makes it look fairly believable. Usually, Hwang Jang Lee would lose in a fight only because he was double-teamed or because of some trick. Usually if an action director tried to sell the protagonist as being better than Hwang, he’d fail miserably, making us in the audience say, “Aw! Come on!”

So Jackie Chan and Hwang Jang Lee get great showcases here. Chan is at the top of his game and cinematic drunken boxing here wouldn’t be equaled until 1994 with Drunken Master 2. His acrobatics, comic timing, and crisp drunken techniques are a joy to watch. While not Hwang’s best performance, he does as well here as he’d done in any other movie. As we already mentioned, his kicks are well-showcased, but choreographers Yuen Woo-Ping and Tyrone Hsu Hsia don’t forget to show us that Hwang was no one-trick pony.

Drunken Master marked the point in which Chan would really start evolving his style of screen fighting and move out of the bounds of traditional kung fu. While his drunken boxing is certainly authentic, he balanced it out with his wacky acrobatics and comic touches. In his next movie, The Fearless Hyena, he’d forego most traditional styles and stick with made-up styles that’d accentuate the comic side of the fight. Then he’d go onto The Young Master (1980) and simply choreograph set-pieces made up of physical comedy, leaving traditional kung fu even further to the wayside. By Dragon Lord (1982), he had practically moved the emphasis from kung fu fighting to choreographed stunt work and acrobatics. As it stands, this fight represents the “traditional” Jackie Chan at his best, physically, as the film represents Chan at his best on all accounts.