Young
Taoism Fighter (1986)
aka Wu Tang Temple; Miracle Fighters 4
Chinese Title: 陰陽奇兵
Translation: Yin Yang Raiders
Starring: Yuen Yat-Chor, Tai
Bo, Hilda Liu Hao-Yi, Chang Yi Tao, Yen Shi-Kwan, Lee Man-Tai, Baek Hwang-Ki,
Tin Ming, Kwan Chung
Director: Chen Chi-Hwa
Action Directors: The Yuen
Clan
I’d like to know what was going through Lo Wei’s head in 1986 when he produced this film. I can imagine how difficult things had been for him after Jackie Chan ditched him six years before, but the old school kung fu movie had more or less been dead in its grave in Hong Kong for four years and by 1986 (and the Yuen Clan hadn’t made an entry in this series in two years) the only surviving markets for this sort of movie must have been Mainland China and pockets of Taiwan and South Korea. Why produce something like this when you could foot a couple of more dollars for a modern action film that’d have a better chance of success? Were Taiwanese audiences really begging for a follow-up to Taoism Drunkard? ApparentlyHong Kong audiences weren’t, as the film apparently spent but two days in the theaters there.
That said, I know that a lot of people are rather glad this movie was made and fans of the bizarre are sure to get a lot of mileage out of it. If my memory doesn’t fail me, Keith Allison of TeleportCityonce commented that a stoner friend of his preferred this film to Pink Floyd’s The Wall in terms of films to watch while one is high. If that isn’t a glowing recommendation, I don’t know what is. Young Taoism Fighter is indeed an extremely cracked movie and despite not having an actual plot, it does deliver the weird-fu wackiness for most of its 80-some-odd minute running time. I don’t think I liked it as much as the good folks at Teleport City, but then I probably went in with too high of expectations.
A plot summary of this film is a bit of a daunting task, mainly because the film is a collection of comic vignettes and fight scenes, its two main “plot lines” coming together only in the last third. But let’s see what we can do:
Cheng Ko (Yuen Yat-Chor, Instant Kung Fu Man and Taoism Drunkard) is a student at the Yin Yang School of Taoist martial arts. He shows some promise as a student, but he spends most of his time goofing off and getting into trouble, much to the chagrin of his teacher, one of Head Master’s brothers (Baek Hwang-Ki, Raiders of Buddhist Kung Fu and Dragon Lee Strikes Back). After giving his teacher a dose of the Taoist magic equivalent to Rogaine, Cheng Ko is punished by sent to the torture chamber run by the Master’s other brother (whom I think is Tin Ming of Kung Fu on Sale). This time (Cheng Ko practically goes to the chamber on a daily basis), Cheng must fight the old man inside the cave in order to avoid getting his face shoved into a pile of crap.
After convincing his second teacher to not torture him any more, Cheng Ko starts sneaking around the school and finds the entrance to a secret library. Inside the library is the sutra containing the instructions the Shadow Separation Style (aka Astral Kung Fu), which allows the practitioner to create a shadow clone who is intangible to an enemy’s blows, but can kick a** all the same. Cheng Ko also finds a cave full of talking box turtles, who’ll start dancing to disco music later in the movie. Just thought you’d like to know that.
After a comic interlude in which Cheng Ko tries to learn the Shadow Separation Style and gets the s*** kicked out of him by his own reflection, Cheng goes to see his master’s third brother (Lee Man-Tai of Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin), a drunken master of considerable skill. Brother #3 finds out that Cheng has been practicing the forbidden arts and transfers his own life force into the Cheng in order to save him. It destroys the old man’s kung fu, but it turns Cheng into a bonafide kung fu master.
There are a few more random scenes to come, including a dream sequence in which Cheng’s friend (Tai Bo, Ninja in the Dragon’s Den and Project A II) uses the Shadow Separation Style to break off four separate beings in order to make dumplings. The scene ends with a major supporting character getting sliced in half with a meat cleaver. Another set piece that has nothing to do with anything involves Cheng and his friend going to the funeral of a friend’s brother. Said friend’s sister-in-law apparently poisoned the deceased and is in process of screwing her lover in the same room when Cheng interrupts. Unfortunately for everybody involved, the circumstances of the dead man’s demise are such that he won’t reincarnate. Instead, he comes back to life as a kuangxi (hopping vampire) and a random fight breaks out between the Cheng Ko and the undead cuckold.
Finally the film will settle down on a single plot: There’s an evil school called Tien Wu led by a powerful fighter named Wicked Wu (Chang Yi-Tao, who once gallivanted around as Bruce Lai). Wicked Wu’s powerful wicked style is the result of not only lots of meditation, but also the consumption of drinking children’s urine and eating placentas, supplied to him by his second-in-command (Kwang Chung, Sword with the Windbell and Fire Dragon). I find it interesting that the sorcery that second-in-command uses to mesmerize the children so that they urinate in the right place apparently curses them and causes them to prematurely age. In any early scene, Wicked Wu fights and kills a rival fighter. His sister, Miss Lee (Hilda Liu Hao-Yi, Pink Force Commando and Amazon Queen Commando), gets involved and tries to bring Wicked Wu to justice.
Cheng Ko gets involved in a fight between Lee and Wu’s minions, saving her life in the process. He takes her back to the turtle cave and nurses her back to health, while Wu’s minions show up at theYin Yang School to make trouble. After a lengthy fight, the bad guys are defeated. However, there’s still Wicked Wu himself that Cheng Ko and Lee will have to defeat. Can their Daydreaming Kung Fu Technique defeat his Wicked Style?
Young Taoism Fighter is less of a Yuen Brothers film than the previous three entries (four if you count Drunken Tai Chi) in their Taoist sorcery comedies. Replacing Yuen Woo-Ping as a director is Chen Chi-Hwa, best known for directing Jackie Chan’s classic Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin and Half a Loaf of Kung Fu. Chen was a close friend of Jackie’s during his Lo Wei slog and when Chan went to bigger and better things at Golden Harvest, he often hired Chen Chi-Hwa to be his second-unit director. When Chan wrestled Crime Story away from Kirk Wong, it was Chen who was brought on to direct, if not choreograph, the main action sequences. Chen is also known for doing the two kung fu comedies, Dance of Death and The 36 Crazy Fists, both of which Jackie Chan choreographed as a favor to his friend.
Unfortunately, Chen Chi-Hwa doesn’t quite reach the heights set by Yuen Woo-Ping in Taoism Drunkard and Shaolin Drunkard. His direction emphasizes the magical hijinks more than the kung fu and is unable to give much direction to the meandering script. I know that the other movies had their moments in which time was spent on scenes only marginally related to the plot, but this movie takes almost an hour to really settle into the main conflict. It’s the Twilight of Yuen Clan sorcery films that way.
Unlike the other movies, that starred anywhere between three and four Yuens, this film only has one Yuen in front of the screen. Gone is Yuen Shun-Yee as the villain, being replaced a former Bruce Lee imitator with nice kicking skills. Exit Yuen Cheung-Yan as the drunken Taoist priest and enter Lee Man-Tai, who played the Beggar Clan Leader in Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin. Of course, the acrobatic skills of Yuen Cheung-Yan end up being sorely missed as Lee Man-Tai wasn’t much of a martial artist. And Brandy Yuen as the grandmother? There’s no analogous character this time around. All we have left is Yuen Yat-Chor, playing essentially the same character he played in other films, although he’s closer in character to Jackie Chan’s interpretation of Wong Fei-Hung from Drunken Master.
On the subject of Drunken Master, I spent a lot of time wondering why this movie didn’t quite measure up to its predecessors and it finally became clear: Young Taoism Fighter is more concerned with copying the landmark Jackie Chan film than it is following in the footsteps of Miracle Fighters and its sequels. Talented-but-arrogant student who spends more time belittling his teacher than training? Drunken kung fu master who helps his student learn a special style? Special kung fu style that the hero has to use in the final battle because traditional kung fu is ineffective? Somebody’s face being dunked into a pile of poo? The movie hits all of the expected beats of a late 70s kung fu comedy in the Drunken Master vein, even though that sort of film had gone out of fashion a few years before. I mean, the Yuen Clan’s other sorcery films were also comedies, but they tended to stray from the “arrogant kung fu prodigy screws around and then studies secret style with old master in order to defeat the villain’s unbeatable technique” mold and did their own thing, like throw in watermelon monsters and acid-shooting kung fu frogs.
Fortunately, the Yuen Boys as a whole were involved in the fight choreography, although to be honest, a lot of the fights felt as if they were in autopilot. The acrobatics are less elaborate and the wirework is less daring than usual. It’s only in the final fight that their skills really break out, but we’ll get there in a moment. There aren’t very many fights during the first half, the notable one being Chang Yi Tao’s entrance. He kicks up a storm in his first scuffle, beating up his own men in order to prove how powerful he is. I haven’t seen any of Chang’s other films, so I can’t really judge him in comparison to, say, Clones of Bruce Lee. However, he does have some solid bootwork, although he’s no Hwang Jang-Lee, mind you.
Things pick up in the second half when Hilda Liu and Yuen Yat-Chor have an extended fight against Wicked Wu’s goons. Hilda does get to show off some nice kicks in this sequence, although I don’t think this represents her best work (I’ll have to watch Shaolin Chastity Kung Fu to confirm that). That said, as a third-string kung fu actress, the lady is rather talented. That’s followed by a fight in which more of Wu’s goons attack the Yin Yang school. Some of them are armed with exotic weapons, like a pair a buzz saws, for example. Both fights are slightly reminiscent of those group melées that were common in Mainland Chinese movies during the era.
Then we get to the
final fight, where Hilda and Yuen take on Chang Yi Tao. It starts off pretty
basic, with the three trading blows and kicks, plus the occasional synchronized
acrobatics. The acrobatics are part of the Daydreaming Technique that Hilda and
Yuen invent, which apparently involves them linking up telepathically and then
playing the fight out in their heads before performing whatever moves they
think of. Then the trademark Yuen Clan creativity really begins to shine.
Chang’s first weapon is the zhuo, or claw, which just so happens to
be a skeletal hand. The hand then transforms into a bone sword and we’re just
getting started. The entire sequence comes to a head when Chang dismembers Yuen
Yat-Chor limb for limb. At that moment, Yuen’s character unleashes the full
fury of the Shadow Separation Style and his severed limbs start flying around
and beating Chang Yi Tao to a pulp. It’s a mesmerizing scene and, as far as I’m
concerned, one of the great highlights of old school kung fu choreography.
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