Tiger on the River Kwai (1975)

Tiger on the River Kwai (1975)
Aka: O Vingador Karatê do Rio Kwai; La tigre venuta dal fiume Kwai

 

Starring: Krung Srivilai, George Eastman, Kam Wong Lung, Gordon Mitchell
Director: Franco Lattanzi

 

Okay, so what we have here is an interesting anomaly among the small off shoot of the Spaghetti Western sub-genre known as “Kung Fu Spaghetti Western Movies”. In this case, the hero is neither Japanese (a lá Robin Hood, Arrows, Beans and Karate) or Chinese (although there is a Chinese character here), but is Thai. As a result, the expected Western brawls come peppered with a dash of muay thai. I can only guess that movies like The Tournament and Duel of Fists had been fairly successful in Europe for director Franco Lattanzi to try to shake up the formula with this ethnic substitution. Sadly, the fact that you have Thai martial artist in the lead role turns out to be the only memorable thing in this movie.

Somewhere in Thailand circa 1870, a Thai man whose name we’ll never actually learn (whom we’ll call Tiger and is played by Krung Srivilai of Cobra Thunderbolt) is seeking permission from some monks at the local Buddhist temple (from the architecture, I wonder if the film crew actually went to Thailand to film these scenes) to go to the United States. Apparently there was an American guy named Richard Stone who was living in Thailand and had acquired a jewel-encrusted elephant before dying. The movie never explains why he was in Thailand, how he acquired the elephant or how he died. Tiger know Stone and thus has taken it upon himself to return the Stone’s ashes to his family and give them the elephant.

Tiger isn’t the only one who knows about the jewels, though. There’s a vicious, cutthroat gang of bandits led by Jack Mason (Gordon Mitchell, of Atlas in the Land of the Cyclops) who have found out about it. They try to ambush him on his way to the town of Abilene, where the Stone family lives. However, being white people from the 1800s (and I’m sure many people of today would also fall into this group), they think that all Asians are the same and end up harassing the local Chinaman, Won Lon (Kam Wong Lung). Won Lon is a real piece of work: He’s the embodiment of almost every Chinese stereotype one might imagine: he’s proficient in kung fu, he speaks in parables (complete with the familiar ‘So Sorry’ accent), he owns a Chinese restaurant, his wife (surprisingly a white woman, which I doubt would’ve been allowed in 1870s Texas) is treated in a pseudo-subservient manner, and he knows how to perform acupuncture. All that’s missing is for him to be running a Laundromat on the side!

Anyway, Tiger shows up and fights with the bandits, but gets bashed in the leg for his troubles. The bandits flee and make it to the Stone homestead, where they proceed to murder Richard’s widow, his father and his little daughter Mary in cold blood. This is witnessed by some random cowboy named James, who will be the hero’s ally for the rest of the movie. Meanwhile, Tiger limps into town where he’s taken in by the local floozy (Lina Franchi—we know she’s playing a floozy because she’s the only female character whose dress lets us see her cleavage), who takes a single look at him and decide that she’d like nothing more than to taste some Thai cuisine. Their amorous encounter is interrupted by the arrival of Sheriff Sam (George Eastman), who’s looking for the “Thailandese” (the characters call Tiger the “Thailandese”, although in the 1800s, wouldn’t he be called the Siamese?). Tiger makes a break for it and eventually makes it to the Stone place. Jeff Mason and his gang are ready: they have one of their men and Mason’s gal act like the Stone’s, although Tiger figures it out in time. He escapes, but is shot in the shoulder and almost succumbs to his wounds.

*Almost* is the key word here, as he’s rescued by Won Lon, who nurses him back to health via acupuncture and bullet-removal surgery (the Chinese guy can do everything!!!). But Jack Mason strikes back by kidnapping Won Lon’s wife and demanding an exchange: Tiger for her. Tiger and the wife are able to escape unscathed, so the bad guys finally decide that they’re through screwing around and start taking hostages in order to get their hands on the elephant. Perhaps they could’ve remade this as Tom Yung Goong 2, in which Tony Jaa’s jeweled elephant could’ve gotten stolen, so he’d tear a** through the Wild West, beating people up as while screaming, “Where’s my elephant!!!”

So the film isn’t very good. It is extremely cheap and the sets are especially threadbare. You almost get the feeling that they were working with the leftovers of sets that had been used in 15 different Spaghetti Westerns prior to filming. That shouldn’t be too much of a problem, as Django used shambling western buildings to great atmospheric effect. That could also have been the case here, especially considering how cold-blooded the villains are. But the lack of action and suspense, coupled with the horrible 70s muzak (although note how the notorious Oriental music riff is played whenever Won Lon is onscreen) that makes up 95% of the film’s score, robs the film of any sort of real emotion.

The fight scenes aren’t very frequent. Won Lon doesn’t actually fight until the end, when he dishes out the kung fu to two of Jack Mason’s stooges. He actually kicks better than Krug Srivilai. Srivilai, I’m assuming, is a muay thai fighter and you can see that (to some extent) in the fight. He does a lot of knee strikes and some clinching, plus a lot of roundhouse kicks that aim high, but still look kind of sloppy. It’s like he’s performing a roundhouse kick, but instead of driving the ball of his foot into his opponent, he hits the guy with the lower region of his shin. His handwork is nondescript brawling punches. It’s pretty much on the level of an early Jimmy Wang Yu film as far as I’m concerned. Won Lon is far crisper in his moves, both his kicks and hits, but his scene is really short. In the other fights, he just throws acupuncture needles like darts as a sort of precursor to Jet Li’s character from Kiss of the Dragon.

In the end, the film is mostly memorable for its rampant illogic, which follows all the way through to the asinine finale that hinges upon the unexpected survival of a character whom we saw die earlier. If I had cared more, I would’ve rewound the film to see if I had missed someone. Alas, I didn’t.