Monday, March 21, 2022

Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin (1978)

Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin (1978)
Chinese Title: 蛇鶴八
Translation: Snake Crane 8 Steps

 


Starring: Jackie Chan, Nora Miao, Kam Kong, Kim Jeong-Nam, Lau Nga-Ying, Miao Tian, Lee Man-Tai, Wu Te-Shan
Director: Chen Chi-Hwa
Action Director: Jackie Chan, To Wai-Wo (credited as Du Wei-Her)

Originally posted at “It’s a Beautiful Film Worth Fighting For” in 2005[1]: We live in a society that thrives on "the best." We judge everything to some sort of standard and we often assign titles of "the best" and "the worse" to various aspects of life. This is true with movies, books, video games, food, even friends and enemies. That's just how are society is. As a result, we often speak (with regards to movies) about the best(or worse) movies of a given year, the best movies of a given genre or actor, the best fight scenes*, the best entry in a series or franchise. Whatever. That's the way things are in our society.

Before I started my old website, “It’s a Beautiful Film Worth Fighting For,” in 2004, I always wondered what the "favorite" movies of my favorite B-movie reviewers were. I always wondered which movies of such-and-such actor or genre represented the best to them. Even if I knew their picks would not line up with mine, I still wanted to know. So, I'd occasionally email a few of them asking them what they thought of certain movies and such. I never reached the point where people would email me asking me questions asking me about my favorites and recommendations, but c’est la vie.

Nonethless, a few of you may wonder about movies that I hold dear to myself. Well, tonight's review will help respond to your unasked question of: In Blake's opinion, what are the top five Jackie Chan movies? Well, I don't want to spoil it for you all, so I'll tell you that Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin is the first of those five, chronologically speaking. Oh, let me note here that my favorite Jackie Chan movies don't always reflect my all-time favorite Jackie Chan fights. But we'll get to all that another day.

I think I can say that time has been kind to Jackie's career, especially to his early career. His early films, a lot of which were box-office failures, were picked up by Sony in the early 2000s and got a respectable DVD release. Fans give them a lot more respect than they used to—save New Fist of Fury--especially compared to most of the films he’s released since 2009. Hell, the DVD age has seen 4K restorations of some of his earlier films, not to mention a release of the original version of the 1973 Cub Tiger from Kwangtung, his first starring role.

Jackie has gotten a lot of criticism from martial arts purists or people who don't find his brand of physical humor amusing. They should watch this film (and some of other early ones) and they'll know that behind his humorous exterior, there's a man who knows how to bust it out. Proving this, this movie starts with a series of martial arts demonstrations (set to a red background) by Jackie designed to show us the viewers that a) he knows his stuff and b) this film means business. We get to see Jackie doing a traditional spear form, and then a form with a sword and tonfa, and finally he takes he takes on a pair of dudes armed with spears. Does this have any relevance to the plot? No. Is it cool? Heck yeah! I mean, the first five minutes of this film is Jackie Chan showing off his martial arts prowess to the opening credit music of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I kid you not.

It's a popular convention: play opening credits to the main actor doing some sort of form or engaging in random combat just to show us how bad he is up front. Drunken Tai ChiSnake in Eagle's Shadow, and Enter the Fat Dragon are some good examples. Even the 1997 Death Games started off with a bunch of random fights with just that purpose. I like these sorts of beginnings...actually, I like to the actors doing traditional forms in movies. Take Jet Li's The One for example: my favorite (there we go again with that word) scenes are the final fight (natch) and the scene where the two Jets are doing some traditional pa-kua and hsing-i forms in different locales at the same time. I like that sort of old school stuff.

Anyways, the movie proper begins with the eight Shaolin masters getting together to develop a new style called "The 8 Steps of the Snake and Crane." How do they do this? Group debate? Powerpoint presentation? Diagrams? Scrolls? Nope. They just get into free-for-all and wail on each other. Nice, huh? Anyways, the narrator then informs us that after their meeting, the masters all suddenly disappeared. As their was nobody to "regulate" affairs in the martial world, "chaos reigned in Southern China." That's an odd consequence, as this movie obviously takes place during the Qing dynasty. Where are all those Manchu soldiers? Aren't they around to control things? Hmm...maybe this was in the beginning of the dynasty before they started cracking down on Shaolin.

So, the filmmakers decide to demonstrate this "chaos" by playing suspenseful music from The Spy Who Loved Me (standard chopsockey procedure) and showing an icy river (the movie was filmed in South Korea during the winter), as if chaos in the martial world affected the weather. We see on the river bank a lone man, Su Yin Fong (Jackie Chan), fishing. He is harassed by three ruffians called the Ting Brothers (the one dubbed with a high-pitched voice is played by To Wai-Wo, one of the action directors). Su calls the three of them a bunch of thugs, which offends them. So, instead of trying to change their image, the three brothers simply try to jump Su and take the Book of the Masters, which they think he has. As you might expect from a man who has the "Book of the Masters" in his possession, he pounds them a good one without breaking a sweat.

Afterward this little skirmish, Su Yin Fong enters town. What town it is, I don't know. As we'll see, it's obviously an important town, judging by the number of bigwigs in the martial world that hang out there. But enough of that. Su makes friends with a dirty little beggar boy (played by Korean actress Kim Jeong-Nan, of The Tigresses). We soon learn from the dubbing that it's actually a girl, which is another common staple of the kung-fu movie: the woman who dresses up as a man and actually fools people. As the good people at StompTokyo have informed us: Scenes like these are included to fulfill the requirements of Chinese cinematic law requiring movies to have a mistaken idendity subplot.

The two go a restaurant where Su graciously promises to buy the kid a nice meal. The tension is pretty thick at this place and there are a lot of shifty eyes and mysterious people gathered together. A little mishap reveals that Su has the book and soon he's fighting a half-dozen members of the Wu Tang Clan who want the book. After dispatching them, he is invited (at the point of a dagger) to visit "a friend" at the local temple. Being a genial guy, he follows along. Let me remind you that by this point we nearing the twenty minute mark and we've already had four fight scenes.

So Su goes to the temple, where he meets a beautiful lady named Tang Pin-Er (Nora Miao, of Way of the Dragon and Fist of Fury). Her father was the leader of the Tang Clan and one of the eight missing Shaolin masters. She asks Su what happened to the masters, which he refuses to say, declaring that he never does business with women. As you can predict, this leads to a fight between Su and Pin-Er, in which she tries to beat him to death with her flute.

That evening, Su sees a mysterious trio of men that look like the Elementals from Big Trouble in Little China. We just know that Su will be locking horns with them by the end of the movie, due to the ominous drum music playing in the background when he sees them. Going to his room, he finds that he has a visitor: the beggar kid from earlier now dressed as a girl (which she actually is). I guess she was hoping to charm Su showing her the book, despite looking like she's only 16 years old. Su sends her away with a few witty remarks and is finds that he has another visitor: the leader of the Beggar's Clan (Lee Man-Tai, who showed up in Spiritual Kung Fu and Police Woman aka Rumble in Hong Kong). Unless you haven't been paying attention to the previous paragraphs, you'll know what happens next.

I guess it's pretty futile to continue with a plot summary, as the movie is practically made up of Su going to some place and getting into a fight. I suppose this is Jackie's most action-packed film to date, in terms of number of fight scenes. It never got monotonous for me (I'll explain the reasons in a bit). There's really more to the story than simply Jackie fighting. My summary hadn't yet reached the 40 minute mark of the movie. If I continued, I would talk about the various characters introduced, betrayals, friendships, tense alliances formed, schemes, etc. There are quite a few characters and different alliances are formed at several intervals during the film's running time. Fortunately, things never get confusing and it's pretty easy to keep track of everyone.

The movie's plot is centered around the "Book of the Masters," which supposedly has the details to the style that the eight Shaolin masters developed. It's really a MacGuffin, as it really serves simply to get Jackie into numerous fights. This plot device is a very common one in period pieces. Even when the genre was "ressurrected" in the 1990s, movies like The Swordsman and Zen of Sword revolved around mystical martial arts manuals. It's a genre favorite.

One of the best qualities of Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin is the large cast of characters. Usually, and this happens in a lot of wuxia movies, too many characters would be an instant sign of bad news as it would foretell a convoluted plot. While not an outright comedy, this movie has a lot of comic touches, many of which come from the quirkiness of its characters. This is especially true in Jackie Chan’s character, who is almost bursting at the seams to descend in comic hijinks. At one point, he basically says, “Screw it!” and makes a goofy face for no good reason. The other characters have their signature fighting style, some personality quirk, and some great, witty dubbed dialogue. My favorite is of course Old Lu (Wu Te-Shan, of Shaolin Wooden Men and Spiritual Kung Fu), who can't say three words without swearing. I honestly found his profanity to be more amusing than, say, Chris Tucker's in Rush Hour.

 

“You let go, or I’ll curse you!”

“You do that. I love nothing like a good cursing match. I’m a real expert.”

“Shithead! You goddamn stupid son of a bitch!!!!”


Even playing an overconfident know-it-all, Chan’s charisma and likability is always on display. He has a lot of witty one-liners and is really a joy to watch. I think he had a little bit more creative control in this movie, as evidenced in both the fight scenes and the characters. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that Lo Wei was only working as a producer, leaving the directing duties to Chen Chi-Hwa. Chen had previously directed Chan in Shaolin Wooden Men and the two became good friends. Chan often choreographed Chen’s independent movies as favor, like Dance of Death and The 36 Deadly Styles. Once Jackie Chan hit it big, Chan usually hired Chen Chi-Hwa to do second unit directing on his films. As the movie isn’t so dead serious as Chan’s other films that he made with Lo Wei, he is allowed strike up a really good rapport with his supporting characters, especially with Kim Jeong-Nan (who showed up in Half a Loaf of Kung Fu) and Old Lu.

Jackie Chan supervised the choreography, alongside Taiwanese veteran choreographer To Wai-Wo. To’s career as an action director was unexceptional, with his biggest claim to fame outside of this movie being Larry Tu’s arthouse wuxia film A City Called Dragon (1969). I figure To worked mainly on the group skirmishes, with Jackie choreographing his own fights. Although it's all serious traditional kung fu, Jackie throws in a lot of comic touches. The seeds of his modern stunt-driven action were visibly sewn in this movie. He uses his environment a lot to his advantage when he fights in enclosed places, especially at the inn. Tables, benches, signs, and counters are all used to his advantage. He also throws in some acrobatics for good measure. All the fights are choreographed in that old school intricate matter but rarely get really slow.

 

“The things is try not to hit too hard.”

“Are you crazy or just plain stupid?”

“Neither of the two. I’m actually quite smart. A genius, in fact”

“You’re the dumbest person I’ve ever met.”



With so much fighting, it's easy for things to get very repetitive. It does get a little bit, but Chan tries hard to keep things creative. One thing he does is mix up the fights with different one-on-one's, group battles, one-against-many’s. Another way is to give everyone a specific style and/or weapon. Tang Pin-Er fights with her flute and a razor-edged handkerchief. Old Lu uses a pipe. The old beggar uses his cane. One clan leader fights with those "stress balls" that you fiddle around with in one hand whenever you're nervous. There are a number of traditional weapons, including sabers (or broadswords), straight swords (or jian), spears, and throwing daggers.

Jackie has seldom looked better onscreen. My main complaint against Chan is that he too often plays the "underdog" and lets himself get beat around too much. He does it for comic effect but I think it's too much. This tendency of his really hurt several of his movies, including Project A II and Jackie Chan's First Strike. They could've been really entertaining movies but are simply pretty good to me. The movie begins with him already bad to the bone, so he dishes out the whoop-ass from minute one. In spite of the little touches that would become part of his modern films, he sticks to traditional kung fu including the snake and crane styles, hung gar, wing chun, and some weapons work for good measure.

The action reaches its zenith at the climax. Jackie is fighting the main villain, played by The Master of the Flying Guillotine himself, Kam Kong. The fight plays out in three parts. First, Kam Kong uses a powerful horse stance and handwork that resembles wing chun. Jackie has to use the crane style to break the stance and find a weak point. Their duel is interrupted by the aforementioned three mysterious dudes (one of whom is played by Peng Kang, an accomplished Taiwanese action director and occasional acrobatic double for Jackie). What follows is an unbelievable 3-on-1 fight with three guys armed with doubled-sided spears trying to run Jackie through at the same time. The timing, speed, and choreography of this scene is unbelievable. The final portion of the fight has Jackie fighting Kam Kong again, who is armed with a kunai and an abnormally hard head.

This is one of my favorite Jackie Chan movies ever. Jackie is out kicking hyde and taking names in a no-nonsense sort of way. There are lots of intricate fights, loads of quirky and entertaining characters, some excellent dubbed dialogue, and a pretty cool storyline. It's old school kung fu and Jackie Chan at their very best. Jackie Chan said that Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin was his first dream project. Well, it's a dream come true for me too.


[1] - <https://web.archive.org/web/20090808002818/http://geocities.com/drngor/snakecrane.html>

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