The Spiritual Boxer (1975)

The Spiritual Boxer (1975)
aka: Naked Fists of Terror; Fists from the Spirit World
Chinese Title: 神打
Translation: God Hit

 

Starring: Wong Yu, Lin Chen-Chi, Chiang Yang, Shih Chung-Tien, Fung Hak-On, Lee Hoi-Sang, Ng Hong-Sang, Ai Fei, Chan Shen, Teresa Ha Ping, Chan Mei-Hua, Ti Lung, Chen Kuan-Tai, Wilson Tong
Director: Lau Kar-Leung
Action Director: Lau Kar-Leung

 

By 1975, Lau Kar-Leung had been in the movie business for 22 years, nine of which as Chang Cheh’s fight choreographer of choice. The two had started their partnership in 1966 with The Magnificent Trio and had continued working together during Chang’s partnership with Jimmy Wang Yu in the late 60s, the director’s “Iron Triangle” films of the early 1970s, and then Chang’s burgeoning “Shaolin Cycle” starting in 1974. They ended up making more than forty movies together during this period.

When 1975 rolled around, Lau Kar-Leung was ready to strike out on his own as a director. He still worked on a few more films with Chang Cheh, namely Disciples of Shaolin; The Fantastic Magical Baby; and the epic The Boxer Rebellion. The latter saw release at the beginning of 1976. He did bow out of Marco Polo, whose fights were supervised by Chang’s “second generation” of action directors: Hsieh Hsing and Chen Hsin-I. Instead, he made his directorial debut with The Spiritual Boxer, a meandering film that serves as a prototype for the kung fu comedy that Jackie Chan would make popular three years down the road.

The movie begins in late 1890s, with three members of the Boxer Association (Wilson Tong, Ti Lung, and Chen Kuan Tai) putting on a demonstration of their spiritual boxing techniques for the Empress Dowager. This includes spells that render them invulnerable to bladed weapons. Finally, the Empress’s guards receives orders to fire their muskets at the three. The Boxers prove themselves invulnerable to gunfire. This scene will have nothing to do with the actual story, but was included to give a little background to the subject. Something similar was done in the Shaw Brothers film Lion vs. Lion (1981), where the opening fight sequence was included to explain why the Manchurians forced their Han Chinese subjects to wear their hair in queues, but had no bearing on the actual story.

We jump ahead about the twenty years to the early days of the Republic Era. Wong Yu (not to be confused with Jimmy Wang Yu) plays a martial artist-conman named Xiao Chien who arrives in town with his sifu, Master Chi (Taiwanese actor Chiang Yang, of Woman Guerilla with Two Guns and Virgins of the Seven Seas). Master Chi is a so-called spiritual boxer who puts on shows for wealthy, superstitious people in which he allows “spirits” to “possess” his body and give investment advice to his clients. However, before his scheduled job, Master Chi gets soused at the local inn, leaving Xiao Chien to pick up the slack. While initially convincing the client that he really was possessed by the Monkey King, Xiao’s ruse is discovered by the local kung fu master. Xiao Chien then discovers that his master has been arrested as a fraud and flees into the next town.

Xiao Chien goes to work deceiving the local populace into believing that he is a spiritual boxer. The only person to see through the ploy is a tomboy named Jin Lian (Taiwanese model Lin Chen-Chi, who showed up in Valley of the Double Dragon and Soul of the Sword). The two join forces and start using his talents to help the locals. But they soon run afoul of Master Liu Deruei (Shih Tung-Tien of Cantonese and The Dragon and Tiger Joint Hands), the richest man in town and head of the local extortion gang. When they start throwing a wrench in his operations, he hires a pair of criminals (including frequent Lau Kar-Leung collaborator Lee Hoi-Sang) to unmask Xiao Chien and his shenanigans.

The Spiritual Boxer feels very much like a post-Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow comedy, right down to the finale, which is practically a scene-for-scene rehearsal for the final fight of The Magnificent Butcher. Heck, both films had Lee Hoi-San as the villain! The movie mainly moves from one comic set piece to the next without any real plot to hold things together. For example, in one sequence, Xiao Chien and Jin Lian go to a nobleman’s house to expel a ghost from an abandoned wing, which leads to a gag featuring numerous characters dressing up as ghosts. The gags lack the zaniness to really be funny, while Lau Kar-Leung’s fight choreography is still a little on the crude side. The resulting mixture is an average film overall.

According to Chang Cheh’s memoirs, Lau Kar-Leung had originally planned to make The Spiritual Boxer an exaltation of Chinese folk magic. Chang urged him to make a comedy about the charlatanism behind it instead. The “magic” depicted in the film is obviously fake, although the film suggests that many of these spiritual boxers were at least authentic martial artists. It would have been more interesting to tackle the subject in the context of the Boxer Rebellion instead of more than a decade afterward; Lau Kar-Leung would later revisit the theme with his classic Legendary Weapons of China.

There are a few fights between Xiao Chien and Master Liu’s men, who include Fong Hak-On (Warriors Two and Five Shaolin Masters) and Huang Ha (Enter the Fat Dragon and The Drunken Master). The movie suggests that despite being a charlatan, Xiao Chien’s kung fu is genuine; he wins practically every fight he picks with the antagonists. There are a handful of group brawls between Liu’s men and the townspeople—look fast for director Lau Kar-Leung as one of the latter. The final fight has Xiao Chien taking on a pair of wanted criminals, played by Lee Hoi-San and The Snake Prince’s Ng Hong-Sang. While initially unable to defeat them, Xiao Chien is able to best them using both the Five Animals and Five Elements techniques (similar to Chi Kuan-Chun’s big fight in Five Shaolin Masters). It is a decent ending to a decent film, but as Lau Kar-Leung was still finding his voice at this point, don’t go into The Spiritual Boxer expecting a classic like Heroes of the East.