Enter the Fat Dragon (1978)

Enter the Fat Dragon (1978)
Chinese title: 肥龍過江
Translation: Fat Dragon Crossing the River[1]

 

Starring: Sammo Hung Kam-Bo, Lee Hye-Sook, Ankie Lau Heung-Ping, Luk Chu-Sek, Peter Yang Kwan, Meg Lam Kin-Ming, Roy Chiao Hung, Leung Kar-Yan, Lee Hoi-Sang, David Nick, Fung Fung, Fung Hak-On
Director: Sammo Hung Kam-Bo
Action Director: Sammo Hung Kam-Bo, Fung Hak-On, Huang Ha

 

With the success of the the posthumous (and heavily edited and re-shot) release of Game of Death, Bruce Lee was once again a big thing in Hong Kong cinema in 1978. The imitators were also working at their highest level of output, sometimes even putting in their very best work, such as Bruce Li in Dynamo and Bruce Le in Enter the Game of Death. At the same time, Sammo Hung, who had worked with Bruce Lee on Enter the Dragon and who had choreographed the fights for the new footage of Game of Death, worked on one of his more personal projects: Enter the Fat Dragon. It stands as a loving homage to the Little Dragon and as a message to the imitators: “You can’t destroy my idol.”

Sammo plays Ah Lung, a pig farmer living in the New Territories of Hong Kong. He’s also a kung fu aficionado and a huge fan of Bruce Lee, whose onscreen fighting style he has learned to a “T”. Ah Lung is sent by his dad to the city to work at his Uncle Hung’s (Fung Fung, the real-life father of co-star and co-choreographer Fung Hak-On) restaurant. And that’s most of the film. Ah Lung gets into fights without ever considering the consequences, and his uncle usually has to pick up the tab. His co-worker, Kao (Luk Chu-Sek of Fatal Flying Guillotines), is an aspiring artist who gets invited to work on forged paintings by a pair of lowlives (including Fung Hak-On) working for a crime boss (Roy Chiao, of A Touch of Zen and Blonde Fury).

About an hour into the film, a semblance of a plot makes an appearance when the crime boss receives a visit from a millionaire antique dealer (Peter Yang). When the dealer, Professor Pai, is invited to a party at the boss’s mansion, the restaurant Kao’s female friend works for is called in to cater. As it happens, the lady (Lee Hye-Sook, of The Bamboo House of Dolls, and who is a dead ringer for Rosamund Kwan) is a spitting image of Professor Pai’s unrequited love. So he hires the boss and his gang to kidnap the girl for his own nefarious ends. Fights break out. The end.

Outside of the fight scenes, the film is little more than a series of comic vignettes in which Ah Lung gets into trouble because of his naïveté and carelessness. Rarely is the humor all that funny, especially today. That probably would not be a problem, but the fight scenes are spaced far enough apart (although at regular intervals) that the humor really starts to grate before Sammo goes into Bruce Lee-mode and starts kicking some much deserved rear.

The fights are where the film shines. Choreographed by Sammo himself, with assistance from Huang Ha (The Drunken Master) and Fung Hak-On (Warriors Two), Hung demonstrates that he is the supreme Bruce Lee imitator. The entire tone of the film is reverent to Bruce Lee, to the point that it takes specific aim at the imitators of its day. In one sequence, Ah Lung finds himself as an extra on the set of a Brucesploitation film—the name of the actor is Tseng Siu-Lung, played by Tony Leung Siu-Lung (brother of Bruce Liang). When Ah Lung comments that the actor’s imitation leaves a lot to be desired, Tseng films the fight without pulling any punches on Ah Lung. This leads to a fight where Ah Lung proceeds to out-Bruce the Bruce Lee imitator and lay waste to the entire production team.

The big finale is a series of fights between Ah Lung and Professor Pai’s three bodyguards. The first one is a black karate expert, played Lee Hoi-Sang in blackface. That is definitely a joke that would never go over with audiences today. The second fight is with a Caucasian boxer, played by David Nick. The Bruce Lee imitation is at its best here, with homages to Way of the Dragon and Game of Death in this sequence. The final fight is with Leung Kar-Yan, where both men eschew modern fighting for more traditional kung fu techniques. Keeping with the traditional theme for the fight, instead of nunchaku, Sammo fights with an iron hoop, which is an actual weapon in some styles. Sammo also uses the Five Animals form from hung gar during a fight at the mansion against the Roy Chiao’s goons. Fans of both Bruce Lee’s style of screen fighting and traditional kung fu forms will easily find something to like here.

Enter the Fat Dragon is one of those movies that you’ll most likely watch once, and then fast-forward to the fight sequences in subsequent viewings. It doesn’t have enough substance as a whole to be a classic, nor does it have the non-stop action and training sequences to make up for the lack of plot. That said, this is some of the best overall fighting of 1978, bar none.

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[1] - While the English title is a play on Enter the Dragon, the Chinese title is play on the Chinese title for Way of the Dragon, which translates as “Fierce Dragon Crossing the River”.