Kung Fu of 8 Drunkards (1980)

Kung Fu of 8 Drunkards (1980)
Chinese Title: 醉八仙拳
Translation: Drunk Eight Immortals Fist

 

Starring: Meng Fei, Wu Ma, Chen Sing, Goo Chang, Lui Ming, Lung Fei, Cheng Fu-Hung, Sze-Ma Yu-Chiao, Siu Pui-Ling
Director: Wu Ma
Action Director: Chan Muk-Chuen

 

There’s something to be said about a film about the drunken fist technique in which the drunken fist boxing is arguably the least interesting aspect of the action. I guess that shouldn’t be too surprising, as the action here is supplied by prolific choreographer Chan Muk-Chuen, a man who could make all sorts of neat kung fu styles look underwhelming on film. I’ve been told that his films were always rushed to the point that none of the actors had the time to practice the moves and thus performed their routines a lot more slowly than they would in a less-hurried production.

I don’t buy it.

Hong Kong and Taiwanwere notorious for churning out films that had been produced in a matter of weeks, if not days, and many of those were chock-full of high-octane fight scenes. There’s really no excuse, as far as I’m concerned, for the quality of choreography in a 1980 film to look like the sort of thing that might’ve been new and fresh six years earlier. If we were comparing this to, say, Five Shaolin Masters, then yes, the choreography would be pretty decent. But that isn’t the case here. I’m actually tempted to seek out more of Chan Muk-Chuen’s work, if only to try to find an example of what his best work might look like.

Ironically, in spite of the fact that this film features some of the most lifeless drunken boxing ever committed to celluloid, this was apparently one of the most successful movies about that style made in the wake of Drunken Master. It boggles the mind, I tell you!

The movie doesn’t waste much time and as soon as the opening credits are done, we meet our hero, Chang Fung (Meng Fei, Young Hero from Shaolin and The Unbeatable 28), who’s practicing drunken boxing. The training exercise consists of him holding a couple of large jars of wine while he stands in the horse posture with some shards from broken jars threatening to pierce his bum if he can’t remain in stance. Chang’s master (Lui Ming, How Wong Fei-Hung Pitted Seven Lions Against the Golden Dragon) has already passed out by this point. Chang is tired of these tortuous exercises and decides to leave, despite his recently-awakened master’s attempts to torture him into staying.

Chang Fung goes back to the restaurant his uncle (Goo Chang, The Eight Escorts and The Shaolin Heroes) owns, where he works as a waiter. His uncle isn’t very pleased that his nephew has spent the last month learning kung fu. They never are.

A few days later, Chang Fung is out buying eggs for the restaurant when he happens upon a martial arts tournament. The current champion is a huge fellow (Cheng Fu-Hung, who showed up in Meng Fei’s The Guy with Secret Kung Fu). Due to the mischievous efforts of a local beggar named Monkey (Wu Ma, Righting Wrongs and House of Fury), Chang Fung finds himself on the platform with Mr. Giant, whom he beats down with a wicker basket.

Chang Fung’s skills come to the attention of the rich fellow running the tournament (Ma Cheung, Ninja Swords of Death) who challenges him to a fight. Chang is about to get beaten down when Monkey helps him off the platform and the two run away. Chang’s would-be opponent, Ta Pei, comments to some random Panther style fighter that Chang’s skills greatly resemble those of a man named Wu Sing. Panther guy goes to the home of a rich man named Pai (Chen Sing, Return of the Kung fu Dragon and Shaolin Plot) and tells him that Wu Sing may just have resurfaced. Mr. Pai does not seem very happy about that.

The rest of the movie alternates between komic scenes of Chang Fung and Monkey doing nothing that is even remotely funny, and the members of Pai’s gang trying to kill Chang Fung. We eventually learn that Pai and the other bad guys were robbers of some sort and Wu Sing, Chang’s master, was a martial artist who stepped in to stop them during a hold-up. He wasn’t able to successfully repel them, but they figured he died from his wounds anyway, so he was able to go into hiding. Figuring out that he didn’t have much left to do with his life, Wu Sing decided to take on a student and teach him the “Eight Immortals” style before he went to that big kegger in the sky. Chang Fung will now have to renew his training in order to defeat Pai and his men.

I’d say about 2/3 of the blame for this movie not working goes to actor/director Wu Ma. Wu Ma has shown himself to be a pretty solid director when he wants to be. I liked Shaolin Deadly Kicks well enough, and The Dead and the Deadly wasn’t bad. I’ve heard some good things about Showdown at Cotton Mill and Kick Boxer as well. But he directs this movie as if he’s seen The Drunken Master, but completely failed to understand why it worked. It certainly doesn’t help that too much of the film’s running time is spent with Wu Ma’s Monkey character getting involved in comic situations that aren’t even that funny to begin with. Really, they could’ve written Monkey out of the script, dedicated more time to the other characters, and they would’ve had a tighter, better film.

Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. It’s hard to feel any sympathy for Wu Sing after hearing his sob story because he’s only had a few minutes of screen time until then. The teacher-student dynamic is one of the most important aspects of these films, so ditching it in favor of a relationship between the hero and an idiot does the film no favors whatsoever. The same can be applied to Pai Yu (Sze-Ma Yu-Chiao, who looks like Miki Saegusa from Heisei Godzilla films, if Miki were an expert in the snake style), Mr. Pai’s daughter and Chang Fung’s love interest. She has something of a pivotal role in both the climax and the bittersweet denouement, but she gets so little screen time that to believe that Chang actually liked her is just asking too much of the viewer. Heck, the movie doesn’t even give us much of a reason that she’s in love with Chang in the first place.

Wu’s meandering direction also undercuts the main villains. In addition to Mr. Pai, there are two hired killers called Silver Tiger and Gold Tiger, both of whom are supposed to be powerful and imposing, but in reality, don’t do much of anything. It doesn’t take much of a kung fu fighter to beat up a sick old man. And when they meet their ends at the hands of Chang Fung, who almost doesn’t break a sweat, one has to wonder why they were even included in the film in the first place. Mr. Pai is pretty underwhelming as the villain, since like most of the other characters, he’s given very little to do until his fight with Chang. In fact, his character does almost nothing throughout the entire movie that it’s hard to root for Chang, since he’s practically just fighting some random guy. As it stands, Kung Fu of 8 Drunkards is a collection of subplots as half baked as a clumsily-made clay wine pot.

Of couse, Chan Muk-Chuen’s static fight choreography doesn’t help. As I’ve already said, had this sort of action been found in a Chang Cheh film circa 1974, it’d be just fine. But Sammo Hung, Lau Kar-Leung, Jackie Chan, the Venom Mob, and others had pushed the envelope for fight choreography so far by this point that Chan’s slow, metronymic fight direction just won’t cut the mustard. There is more action here than in Story of the Drunken Master, to be sure, but at least Lam Moon-Wah’s choreography was quick and fluid. Muk-Chuen tries to throw in a couple of played-for-laughs fights, but screws the pooch on that, too. They mainly look like two uncoordinated people goofing off, unlike those in Drunken Master, which were choreographed just as meticulously as the more serious duels were.

I’m not a Meng Fei fan in any way, but I do respect the man. He was, after all, not only the first modern Fong Sai-Yuk, but also one of the original Five Shaolin Masters. He carved out a solid career for himself early on when people like Jackie Chan were still eking out a living as stuntmen and action directors. In some ways, he has the sort of impish personality that makes him something of a proto-Jackie Chan. That makes it all the more ironic that he didn’t come close to matching Jackie’s charisma in this film. To make things worse, his drunken boxing is the stiffest, least-acrobatic jui kuen I’ve seen so far. There’s no element of randomness to the attacks, no staggering, and no displays of physical prowess that Jackie Chan exhibited in his classic film. It looks like Generic Southern System-Derived Movie Fighting #342 with some bent wrists and cup-holding gestures just for that drunk boxing “flavor.”

The result of that is that the interesting action belongs to co-stars Lung Fei and Henry Luk. Lung Fei plays a killer who walks around in a straw hat and cocks his head to the side as a character quirk. His character uses the Northern Eagle Claw, which is always welcome in movies. Too many films have the characters using the Southern Eagle Claw, which uses three fingers and not all of them, passing it off as the Northern style.  Luk plays the Panther style master. The Panther style shows up very little in movies, so to see it onscreen without being “diluted” with other animal styles is a treat in itself.

Unless you’re some rabid fan of drunken fist boxing or Meng Fei and feel the burning desire to watching anything that features one of those two elements, you’re better off watching some other movie. It’s not terrible, but it’s pretty forgettable and ultimately not worth the effort to watch.