Shaolin Invincible Sticks (1979)

Shaolin Invincible Sticks (1979)
Aka: Fist of Shaolin
Chinese Title: 棍王
Translation: Stick King

Starring: Don Wong Tao, Chang Yi, Kam Kong, Hsia Kwan-Li, Jimmy Lung Fong, Cliff Ching
Director: Lee Tso-Nam
Action Director: Tommy Lee

 

I’ve talked about this briefly in other reviews, but I’ll repeat again that one of the best things to happen to Taiwanese martial arts cinema was director Lee Tso-Nam. Mr. Lee has a very strong reputation among of traditional kung fu films for making very entertaining films on the cheap, combining stellar choreography with solid casts and, often, with good stories. Sometimes Lee Tso-Nam chose to walk down the already-trodden path of films about rival schools and styles, changing or including enough details to make it look at least a little fresh; other times he made his kung fu movies as period-piece crime thrillers, where the characters happened to solve their differences using kung fu.

Shaolin Invincible Sticks falls in the former category; this is a pure kung fu movie for people who appreciate pure kung fu. The story is old school and the premise expects the viewer to swallow two important points: the first one, a common trope of the genre, is that a kung fu master can wander around the countryside, killing dozens of rivals in unfair duels without the intervention of the law. The second one, which is even more hard to swallow to anyone who is familiar the diversity of martial arts styles in China, is that, within a limited geographical area, there could be not one, not two, but many schools dedicated to teaching fighting styles based on a single weapon, in this case, the pole/stick/staff/whatever. If you can suspend disbelief on these two facts, giving Lee Tso-Nam the benefit of the doubt in that he was trying to make a Lau Kar-Leung-esque meditation on a specific fighting style (or weapons style), then  you have a fairly entertaining kung fu movie on your hands.

The story, such as it is, deals with the exploits (or misadventures) of a certain young pole fighter named Ku Yung (Don Wong Tao, Challenge of Death and Slaughter in San Francisco). Ku Yung is the sort of “heir” to a special, all-powerful pole and the accompanying technique to use it, but instead of spending his days practicing to be an all-around bad-a**, he wastes his time gambling and flirting with girls, getting into the occasional street fight. This earns him the ire of his three uncles, who challenge him to a duel. When he loses, he’s kicked off the family property and practically becomes a pauper.

Meanwhile, another pole fighter named Lu Tai-Yeh (Chang Yi, Fatal Needles and Flying Fists and Super Manchu) is trying to prove to everyone that he’s the best stick fighter in the country. To this end, he goes around challenging fellow stick masters to duels and killing them. Actually, what he does is have his two assistants fight first, who are usually able to kill their opponents via treacherous means. If it looks like that the fighter in question is too good to be defeated by them, Lu jumps in and makes short work of the guy. I’m no expert in martial honor, but proving you’re the best by winning unfairly seems to defeat the whole point of the exercise.

So Ku Yung is wandering around trying to survive. He comes across a large fellow, Tai (Kam Kong, A Girl Called Tigress and Master of the Flying Guillotine), who is also a pole fighter and the survivor of an attack by Lu Tai-Yeh earlier in the film. After a brief fight between the two, they become friends and Tai tells Ku Yung that they should visit his uncle so Ku Yung can resume his training.

They meet up with Tai’s uncle, an old man, who’s an expert at convincing everybody around him that he’s a kung fu master despite the fact that really don’t see him fight during the entire film. The man has a daughter, Yu Yu (Hsia Kwan-Li, Woman Avenger and The Leg Fighters), a beautiful kung fu fighter who has attracted the unwanted attention of the annoying son of a local stick fighter. Although she’s able to handle herself in a fight, she eventually gets kidnapped by the idiot’s father who wants to force her to marry his worthless son. As beautiful as Hsia Kwan Li is, and she’s a looker, I can’t imagine what an annoying, effeminate, girly man like that guy could want with a wife like her. She could own him in a fight with her eyes closed and, not demonstrating any sort of quality of value, the guy would probably be consigning himself to a lifetime of spousal abuse at her hands.

Anyways, Ku Yung, Tai, and the girl’s father go to the rival school and Ku Yung to challenge the master. Ku Yung takes up the challenge and is able to win, beating the master in front of his students. As the students believe that Ku Yung was the student of the old bluffer, they all leave the master’s school and go to study with Yu Yu’s father. Ku Yung and Tai, after getting in an argument with Yu Yu’s mother, leave the school and go to work at a local inn/restaurant.

Unfortunately, the fame of Yu Yu’s father attracts the attention of Lu Tai-Yeh, who shows up and kills the old man and Tai in a bloody duel. Ku Yung and Yu Yu flee. Lu Tai-Yeh also eventually finds his way to the house where Ku Yung’s uncles live and kills two of them, leaving only one alive. At this point, Ku Yung must train himself for the eventual showdown with Lu Tai-Yeh.

From a story point of view, there’s not much to set this film apart from others of its ilk (Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow, for example) save for the aforementioned fact that every single martial artist in this film is a pole fighter of some sorts. That in and of itself makes this movie more valuable to the more devoted chopsockey fan than to the layman, who might get board from watching people beat each other with sticks for 90 minutes. I have no problem with this, to be honest, especially considering that this is a movie that I had wanted to see for the express purpose of seeing how it would treat its premise.

Being a kung fu movie made after 1978, you can expect a fair amount of KOMEDY to be supplied by the supporting actors. Most of the odious comic relief comes from Hsia Kwan-Li’s annoying and effeminate suitor, who actually doesn’t die, even when Chang Yi and his men kill his dad right in front of him. Chang Yi, you could’ve made yourself a sympathetic villain by removing that irritating little jerk from the gene pool. But you didn’t, so Don Wong Tao had every right to kill you in the final duel. That said, there’s quite a bit of comedy to be derived from the dubbing, as we get lots and lots of dialogue from the males characters droning on and on about how long and powerful and hard their sticks are. I suppose the only film that could beat that is Peculiar Tricks and the Boxing Master, which, according to my friend Dave Thomas, has a cockfighting subplot and thus lots of scenes of the actors talking about how powerful their cocks are.

Being a Lee Tso-Nam movie starring the dynamic duo of Don Wong Tao and Chang  Yi, you can expect a solid amount of quality action in this film. As I said before, practically all of the action is relegated to pole fighting, although we do get the occasional open-handed fight, mainly from Hsia Kwan-Li, who briefly gets to show off her flexibility early on. The action chores are handled by Taiwanese choreography powerhouse Tommy Lee, who doesn’t quite reach the level of attained by Lau Kar-Leung and Sammo Hung, but still shows himself to be one of the more talented Taiwanese action directors out there. Most of the variety can be seen in the types of sticks being used: regular poles; short, thick poles; long, whip-like poles; twin short sticks; stick and rattan shield combinations; etc. The main complaint I’ve seen of this film is that the final fight is too short—it lasts about 3-4 minutes, which is very short by old school fight standards. It’s still a solid fight, just like all of the others in the film, so no complaints there.

Wong Tao and Chang Yi were much like John Liu/Hwang Jang Lee; Jackie Chan/Ken Low; and Yuen Biao/Dick Wei in which they were a hero-villain team that really brought out the best in each other. Wong Tao was trained in both hung gar and tae kwon do and thus was as good with his fists as he was with his feet, not to mention was no slouch in the weapons department. Wong Tao was one of those “next Bruce Lee” types early on in his career, but thankfully people like Ng See-Yuen and Lee Tso-Nam saw him as more than that and allowed him to carve out his niche as one Taiwan’s important leading men.

Chang Yi’s career goes back to the late 1960s and early 1970s, where he started his career making swordsman films (including a few musicals!) and early “swingy-arm” chopsockey films, usually as the hero. Then, for some reason, he became one of the go-to guys if you wanted a white-haired or mustached villain, much like Hwang Jang Lee, Lo Lieh, Chen Sing, and others. I’m not sure why, but we should be glad for it, because he did his best work as a villain, in films like Challenge of Death, this one, and The Victim, which I will review shortly. This film doesn’t represent his best work, but it’s fun nonetheless.

Shaolin Invincible Sticks should find its audience among fans of Don Wong Tao, Lee Tso-Nam movies, kung fu movie purists, and some more serious-minded martial artists, who might glean a lesson or two in stick fighting from this film. Heck, even the more casual fans of kung fu movies or B-movie fans who like a bit of unintentional humor in their chopsockey films will definitely find something to enjoy here. It’s not the best movie that this these people have made together, but it’s a fairly solid one.