The Prodigal Boxer (1972)

The Prodigal Boxer (1972)
Aka: Kung Fu: Punch of Death; Kick of Death
Chinese Title: 方世玉
Translation: Fong Sai-Yuk

 

Starring: Meng Fei, Maggie Lin Lin-Lin, Pai Hung, Yasuaki Kurata, Wong Ching
Director: Ulysses Au, Huang Pa-Ching
Action Director: Lau Kar-Wing, Huang Pei-Chih

 

The Prodigal Boxer is pioneer effort for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it is the first modern kung fu film set prior to the Republic era in the early 20^th century. In this case, it would be during the Qing Dynasty during the 18^th century. It’s also the first modern film to portray the life of Chinese folk hero Fong Sai-Yuk, or Fang Shiyu, and probably the first modern kung fu movie to portray any Chinese folk hero at all. Finally, the fight choreography, courtesy of Lau Kar-Wing and Huang Pei-Chih, predates Lau’s brother’s foray into traditional, or “shapes”, combat by almost two years. Obviously, this isn’t to say that it represents the absolute best of any of those categories above, but like The Chinese Boxer, the film gets points for being the first.

Our story focuses on Fong Sai-Yuk (Meng Fei, of Five Shaolin Masters and Snake and Crane Secret), a martial artist in Southern China who received his first kung fu lessons from his mother, Miu Chui-Fa (Pai Hung, of Fantasy of Dear Warrior). While not discussed in this film, Miu Chui-Fa had learned kung fu from the famous Shaolin nun, Ng Mui, known for founding both the Dragon and Wing Chun styles. Anyway, Fong Sai-Yuk is a troublemaking do-gooder, which means, he’s quick to address injustice with his fists, without ever giving thought to the consequences. This comes back to haunt him when he accidentally kills a guy for cheating during a cricket fight (think cockfighting, but with crickets), and that guy’s dad hires the heads of a local martial arts school, Wong Ching and Yasuaki Kurata, to beat up Fong Sai-Yuk and bring him to justice. When those two and their students show up at the Fong residence looking for trouble, Fong isn’t in. So they beat up everybody else in the household, including Fong’s non-martial artist dad, who doesn’t survive the beating. The rest of the film will alternate between Fong training for revenge and Fong attempting to get revenge.

Fong Sai-Yuk is an interesting character, having been the subject of a number of films and enjoying folk hero status. Nonetheless, scholars today debate whether or not he may have even existed. We only have literary evidence to his existence, showing up in Qing Dynasty-era novels like Evergreen and Young Hero of Shaolin. Those stories mix real-life personages with fictional characters, thus being the reason for people to doubt his existence. The general gist of the character is that he was the son of a wealthy merchant and a female martial artist. His mother taught him martial arts and later he went to the Shaolin Temple to further his training. He was involved in anti-Manchu activities and was eventually killed. The culprit varies according to the source, usually being attributed to either fellow Shaolin student-turned-traitor Ma Ling Yee; or to Shaolin Elder-turned-traitor Pai Mei.

One of the earliest films about the character was The Adventures of Fong Sai Yuk (1938), starring San-Ma Bye-Din as the hero. A dozen or so films about him were produced over a decade from the late 1940s until the end of the 1950s, with titles like How Fang Shiyu Shattered the White Lotus Gang (1950) and Fang Shiyu’s Invasion of Juling Peak (1951). These films featured actor Sek Yin-Tsi in the role; Mr. Sek is best known by modern audiences for playing the aged Triad head in John Woo’s breakout hit A Better Tomorrow (1986). In the 1960s, a pair of films titled The Invincible Kid Fong Sai Yuk (1965) and The Feats of Fong Sai-Yuk (1968) were produced, starring actress Petrina Fung Bo-Bo as a young Fong Sai-Yuk. The legendary Yuen Woo-Ping would do something similar almost three decades later, casting Angie Tseng Sze-Man as a young Wong Fei-Hung in Iron Monkey (1993).

Films about Fong Sai-Yuk generally portray him as a confident, happy-go-lucky martial artist with a strong sense of justice but lacking in humility and moderation. Jet Li’s portrayal borders on childlike before tragedy forces him to mature rapidly. On the other hand, Hsiao Ho’s Fong Sai-Yuk in Disciples of the 36^th Chamber is so brash that he’s little more than an arrogant prick. Meng Fei’s Fong Sai-Yuk falls in the middle, in which he’s never unlikeable, but nonetheless in dire need of the ability to analyze a potential conflict before jumping into it.

That brings us to the action, brought to us by Lau Kar-Wing and Huang Pei-Chih. This was one of the earliest gigs for the latter, who later went on to work alongside action director Tong Gaai on numerous wuxia films at the Shaw Brothers. We last saw Lau Kar-Wing’s handiwork in Five Fingers of Death and it’s obvious that Lau is in far more familiar territory here. You see, Fong Sai-Yuk is often considered to be a hung gar stylist, due to his studying at Shaolin at the same time as Hung Hey-Kwun, the credited founder of the hung gar style. Lau Kar-Wing and his brother, Lau Kar-Leung, both studied hung gar under the tutelage of their father, Lau Charn. Lau Charn was a student of Lam Sai-Wing[1], a famous student of Chinese folk hero Wong Fei-Hung.

The action is what we might call “proto-shapes,” in which the characters use the traditional forms associated with actual kung fu styles. Of course, in later films, those forms can be stylized and fictitious styles could be “synthesized” from different existing styles and creative choreography and acrobatics. Lau Kar-Wing and his brother, Lau Kar-Leung, were nothing if not purists, so the movements performed by Meng Fei in this film are more or less authentic hung gar. It means that the handwork is a lot more interesting than some of the more flailing-arm technique in a lot of early 1970s films, even if the exchanges are less complex than they’d become in a few years. In early 70s films, the footwork is often sloppy, low-altitude kicks. It thus comes as breath of a fresh air that Japanese actor Yasuaki Kurata, in one of his earliest film appearances, executes his legwork with heights and snap, something that was rare to see outside of a Bruce Lee film in 1972. None of the fights are all-time classics, but it serves as a positive omen of good things that would happen to choreography in a couple of years, when Lau Kar-Wing’s brother convinced director Chang Cheh to focus on the stories of Shaolin heroes.

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[1] - His character show up in films like The Magnificent Butcher; Butcher Wing; and the Once Upon a Time in China series, where he’s played by Kent Cheng.