Lady Snake Fist (1980)

Lady Snake Fist (1980)
Chinese Title: 妖蛇拳
Translation: Demon Snake Fist

 

Starring: Carrie Lee, Sarah Sit, Mike Wong, Jackie Chen Shao-Long, Chan Muk-Chuen, Roman Lee, Gam Sai-Yuk
Director: Lee Hyung-Po
Action Directors: Chan Muk-Chuen, Jackie Chen Shao-Long

This was an absolutely dreadful Drunken Master clone hailing from Korea, with dull and uninspired choreography from people who should know better, lots of anachronistic non-sequiturs masquerading as comedy, and not enough of the title style on display. You’ll be pining for other snake-themed movies, including Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow, one of the film’s direct forebears, after watching this dreck.

We open in modern times, with a woman walking down the street of a modern city, looking at some places that offer to teach martial arts or something. Suddenly, the opening credits play over a solid-red background and we get to the film proper, which is set…uh…I dunno when. During what period of Chinese history did you have drunken masters walking around with Western guitars playing ballroom dance music?

There’s a girl (Carrie Lee) who hangs out with her friends, including Mike Wong, all of whom get in trouble with the local extortionists (one of whom I believe is Chan Muk-Chuen, one of the action directors). Our heroes win this fight via trickery, but later get beat down by a more powerful member of the gang, played by Korean actor Baek Hwang-Ki. They are saved in the knick of time by said drunken master (Gam Sai-Yuk), who beats the gang silly with his guitar. The girl decides that she wants to learn kung fu and begs both him and another master to take her in.

She eventually is taken in by the drunken master, but like Sam Seed in that movie, this guy’s regimen borders on torture. Mike Wong ups and quits, but Carrie Lee takes it for a bit longer. Well, the extortion gang work for the richest man in town (Roman Lee), whose daughter (Sarah Sit) is being trained by a powerful fighter armed with a fan (Jackie Chen, note the “e” instead of an “a”). Said fighter has some beef with the two good masters, and beats the non-drunken master to death in a duel. The extortion gang gangs up on Mike Wong and beats him silly, while Fan guy humiliates Carrie in a duel. Carrie decides to take her kung fu studies seriously, finally.

Yeah, we’ve seen it all before and whatever Yuen Woo-Ping’s flaws may be as a dramatic director, his strengths were on full display in both Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow and The Drunken Master. Here, the comedy is stupid, the story tired, and the fighting just boring. Taiwanese fight choreographers Chan Muk-Chuen (Iron Monkey and Crippled Masters) and Jackie Chen (Fearless Dragons and Tai Chi Shadow Boxing) have no excuse, beyond the fact that Chan Muk-Chuen was never that great of a fight director in the first place. The comedy-driven fights are slow; the fights involving a guitar standing in for a club are both slow, basic and lifeless; and there’s not enough good snake style on display. Remember how in Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow, Jackie Chan’s character discovered that his own Cat’s Claw technique made the perfect complement to the Snake Fist? Well, in this movie, Carrie learns that Tango, Disco and Ballroom Dancing can complement the Snake Style just as well.

The action threatens to get interesting in the last 15 minutes. But then Carrie’s fight with Roman Lee, the rich guy in town, is robbed of dramatic tension because the two have never interacted in any way at all during the film’s running time, and so he’s not deserving of the violent death he suffers. And then there’s Sarah Sit’s character, who’s clearly not up to Carrie’s martial arts level in the context of the movie, so it feels like an unfair fight when Carrie starts literally going for the throat. And there’s the bit where Carrie literally transforms into Wonder Woman during the final fight, causing Jackie Chen to become literally hypnotized by her beauty, giving her the opportunity to strike him. *Sigh* It’s all just goofy and silly, but not actually entertaining.

If you really must see a woman using snake kung fu, watch Sharon Yeung Pan Pan in A Kung Fu Master Named Drunk Cat instead.