Hell's Wind Staff (1979)

Hell's Wind Staff (1979)
AKA: Dragon and Tiger Kids; Hell’z Wind Staff
Chinese Title: 龍虎門
Translation:  Dragon Tiger Gate

Starring: Mang Yuen-Man, Mang Hoi, Legendary Superkicker Hwang Jang Lee, Jason Pai Piao, Kwan Yung Moon, Lau Hok-Nin, Yip Fei-Yang, Wang Hen-Chen, Tyrone Hsu Hsia
Director: Tony Wong Yuk-long, Tony Liu Jun-guk
Choreographer: Corey Yuen, Yuen Shun-Yi, Tyrone Hsu Hsia, Brandy Yuen, Chin Yuet-Sang

Comments: The first time I ever heard about this movie was years ago when I used to listen to rap music. Actually, I didn't hear about this movie per se, but when my brother got a copy of Wu Tang Clan member GZA's album Liquid Swordz, I remember there was a track on it called Hellz Windstaff or something like that. A couple of years later, when Xenon began releasing a lot of classic movies under the Wu-Tang Clan label, Hell's Wind Staff got a release and when I saw it for sale, I immediately remembered the track from the GZA's album.

By the time I got this movie, I had developed a special interest in Hwang Jang Lee, who plays the movie's villain but gets first billing on the VHS box. I think he's one of the greatest names to ever grace martial arts cinema and that he is the greatest of the "Bootmasters" of world cinema. I don't think there is anyone who has reached his level of skills, or at least consistently displayed it in as many films as he has. It's one thing to show off great bootwork, it's another to show it off consistently in film after film, although if I had to pick his successor, I'd pick Donnie Yen. But the special thing about Hwang is that he was never a one-trick pony (or whatever). He could kick and jump kick like none other, but he could fight with his hands just as well and he was no slouch in the weapons department. He was a talented martial artist in all respects.

So I got this movie because of Hwang Jang Lee but there are a few other bonuses in this movie too. One is that you can see some of Corey Yuen's choreography from his old school period. Corey Yuen, who studied with Jackie Chan, is a great action director but too many of his movies made since the 1990s use too many special FX and now too much CGI, which is sad. This isn't to say that he's not still not a good choreographer, but his work today pales in comparison to his movies from the 1970s and 1980s.

There ended up being another special gift inside this package: Mang Hoi. Who's that? Well, Mang Hoi is a short, squat version of Yuen Biao who had supporting roles in a lot of action movies in the 1980s. You may remember him as Jackie Chan's best friend in Heart of Dragon, as the monk/acolyte in Zu: Warriors from Magic Mountain, or as Brandon Lee's arms dealer friend in Legacy of Rage. Most of his roles were secondary ones and he seemed relegated to playing comic sidekicks and such. Sometimes he'd fight, but he never had a tour-de-force like his more well known colleagues Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung. However, he did work as a fight choreographer on a number of movies, his last one being Tsui Hark's masterpiece The Blade, for which he recieved a nomination for Best Action Design. Well, this movie is Mang Hoi's tour-de-force and I must say that he's an impressive fighter and an excellent acrobat.

Our movie begins with a certain Master Hsu (Tyrone Hsu) sending his students to chase after some guy. The guy, Tiao-Er, has just raped Master Hsu's sister-in-law or something and is now trying to get his uncle's protection. When his uncle finds out, he delivers Tiao-Er over to Master Hsu, who puts out one of his eyes.

A couple of years later, we find Tiao-Er's uncle having problem with his son, Xiao Hu (Mang Yuen-Man). The dad is trying to discipline his son and teach him kung fu, but Xiao Hu keeps on driving away his kung fu teachers and wasting time with his friend, Shi Hai Long (Mang Hoi). Hai Long's entrance is pretty cool, as we see him doing all sorts of acrobatics with one leg raised to avoid crushing the eggs glued to the bottom of the shoe. All this WHILE he's catching some chickens. When I took karate, my sensei never made us do that...although he did have us spar with one leg raised once, which wasn't easy.

After Xiao Hu's latest teacher leaves, a street performer/con artist/martial artist (I guess you have to be all three to make it in the Chinese movie world) is reluctantly brought in to teach and discipline Xiao Hu. Well, anyone who's seen Drunken Master can figure out what happens next. Well for starters, we can learn from this movie that the old laxative prank isn't a modern idea, but it goes back over a hundred years to China...at the very least. hehehe

While all that tomfoolery is going on, Tiao-Er is back and now he knows kung-fu pretty well. We find that he's hooked himself up with a local crime syndicate ran by Lu (Hwang Jang Lee), a master of the Devil's Stick technique. So they start extorting money from the local fisherman, beating the masses, and even massacre Master Hsu and his school.

Eventually, Xiao Hu and Hai Long get tired of watching all this nonsense go on and decide to fight back. Their first target is a group of slave traders called the 4 Snakes, who are backed by Lu's syndicate. After a couple of fights, they manage to kill the leader of the group (in a grisly way I might add) and incur the wrath of Lu and Tiao-Er.

Tiao-Er and Lu respond by killing everyone at Xiao Hu's house, including Xiao Hu's dad and eventually, Xiao Hu's teacher. If you seen enough kung fu movies, you can already guess where this goes. Our heroes are going to learn some better kung fu from some other master, in this case it's Hai Long's sworn father, who coincidentally has a score to settle with Lu also. He teaches the two boys different styles: Rowing Oar and Dragon Hands, which when combined, can supposedly beat the Devil Stick technique. And yes, the former is a style based off the movements of rowing a boat...yes..."boat fu."

When Jackie Chan's Seasonal Films (Snake in Eagle's Shadow and Drunken Master) were huge box office successes, it opened the story to a lot of chop-sockey comedy movies. A lot of the movies seemed to run on essentially the same basic plotline, some goofball fighter gets into a lot trouble but ends up having to learn a new style to beat the bad guy for whatever reason. I don't think a lot of movies strayed from that mold on the whole. That's not too much of a problem, for without this popular formula we wouldn't have classics like Knockabout or The Magnificent Butcher or others that followed in the same mold. This movie follows in suit and storywise, is nothing that we haven't already seen.

Instead of channeling creative energy into the storyline, these movies tend to channel the creative energy into the fights and the styles used. You often get a lot of different martial arts styles on display, some of them real, others created for the sole purpose of the movie. For martial arts fans, this is a blessing. To those who don't have much understanding as a genre, this doesn't mean as much and probably comes across as repetitive, which is sad, since there's a lot more imaginative thinking going on than meets the idea, it's just expressed differently.

So if creativity of the martial arts is the true measure of these movies, you may ask how this one fares. Pretty good, actually. The fights in the movie are a wonderful blend of real kung fu styles (eagle's claw, crane, and snake), stylish acrobatics, weapons work (staff...natch!), some prop work, and in a lot of fights, a certain degree of humor. The grand finale is a much praised showdown between the two Mang's, Hwang Jang Lee, and Mang Hoi's sworn father. It goes on for nearly 10 minutes and heck, it may be an early peak for Corey Yuen's early career. Also on hand for the choreography is Yuen Shun-Yi (Yuen Woo-Ping's brother) and Tyrone Hsu, best known for his role in Drunken Master as the "King of Sticks" (he worked a lot with Yuen Woo-Ping in the old days).

The two main protagonists are really good in their roles. Mang Yuen-Man, in a role similar to Jackie Chan's Wong Fei-Hung in Drunken Master, lacks Chan's charisma but makes up for it in acrobatic skill. Mang Hoi still looks goofy but also fights great and too shows off agility that'd make the cast of The Matrix stare in sheer awe. The two are great individually and work even better as a pair, especially in the finale. For all those who've seen Mang Hoi as an annoying comic supporting character, this would be a good movie to watch him shine in.

This is a great movie to see Hwang Jang Lee's proficiency as a martial artist. In this movie, he does it all: weapons (he uses a metal pole for his Devil's Stick technique), handwork (like some of his other movies, he uses the Eagle's Claw), and his usual awesome Tae Kwon Do kicking. The guy is so talented that he's probably the only actor who can play a villain and constantly outperform, overshadow, and take attention away from the main good guys. One reviewer comments that he destroys everyone in a lot of his movies but then has to lose simply because he's the bad guy, and not because the good guy is actually capable of winning. While he has played alongside cult favorites like John Liu and mainstream favorites like Jackie Chan, in a lot of his movies, he gets top billing and is often the selling point of the movie. I don't believe that there's any typecast bad guy actor who such a great reputation. You can say that a movie is a "Hwang Jang Lee film" even though he's the bad guy and probably has limited fights in it. You can't say that about Ken Low, Billy Chow, or Collin Chou (Ngai Sing), who are also good bad guys, but usually don't overshadow their opposites.

The movie isn't perfect and it has a few flaws. One liability to this movie is that I watched the subtitled version and not the dubbed. I prefer subtitled versions to newer movies and such, but with chopsockey classics, I prefer the dubs. When you're watching a kung fu comedy, the dubbing usually makes it all the more humorous and entertaining.

From a technical standpoint, the movie used a lot of freeze frames which after a while, got kind of annoying. It's alright for emphasis once in a while, but this movie goes overboard. Also, Hell's Wind Staff is awfully violent for its subgenre. I mean, this isn't Chang Cheh level stuff, but there's a lot more blood spitting and a higher body count than movies like Drunken Master and Knockabout.

Hell's Wind Staff was a critical and financial success which led to another pairing of Mang Hoi and Hwang Jang Lee: Buddha Assassinator. The movie will never win any awards for originality, as it's basically a remake of Drunken Master (like most were), but it does its job: provide us with a lot of cool fight scenes, prove that Hwang Jang Lee IS the man, and provide some amusing comic bits. Now I just have to find the dubbed version of this.