Kung Fu Brothers in the Wild West
(1973)
Chinese title: 龍虎征西
Translation: Dragon and Tiger March West
Starring:
Jason Pai Piao, Winnie Pei Nei, William Berger, Thompson Kao Kang, Zhang Fei,
David O'Brien, Lee Wan-Chung, Leung Pasan, Tony Lou Chun-Ku, Rose Marie
Director:
Yeo Ban-Yee
Action Director: Jason Pai Piao, Cheng Chun-Foo
I haven’t seen all of the kung
fu-western hybrids ever made, but I’ve seen enough to know which are good (Sun
Dragon; The Fighting Fists of Shanghai Joe), which are mediocre (The
Stranger and the Gunfighter); and which are just bad (Tiger at the River Kwai). Kung Fu Brothers in the Wild West, a Hong Kong production
filmed in Spain, falls squarely on the “bad” end of the sub-genre. A few decent
martial moments from the always dependable Jason Pai Piao keep this from being
a complete waste of celluloid, but only barely.
A plot synopsis will be a rudimentary
thing here, because there’s not much of a plot to speak of. At some kung fu
school in the late 1800s China, the master (Lee Wan-Chung, of Broken Oath
and Rape of the Sword) is holding a contest to determine who will assume
leadership over the school. His two top students, Chen (Jason Pai Piao, of Action
Tae Kwon Do and Four Shaolin Challengers) and Dao (Zhang Fei?), have
a particularly brutal fight that almost leaves both of them crippled. Chen
challenges Dao to a follow-up duel. Dao and his girl, Ling (Winnie Pei Nei, of Fingers
that Kill and Virgin Apocalypse), flee to America instead, where they
set up a Chinese restaurant in some random town. Chen follows them there and
spends the better part of five years looking for them.
About the same that Chen arrives in town
is the same time that a group of bandits led by Steve (William Berger, of Today
We Kill, Tomorrow We Die! and Gladys, the Groovy Mule) ride
into town, kill the sheriff and most of the menfolk, and claim the town as
their own. Dao and Ling take refuge at the homestead belonging to some dame
named Elaine (Rose Marie). Chen just wanders around looking for Chen,
occasionally beating some of Steve’s men to death. Chen and Dao finally meet
up, have a duel, and then postpone it to rescue Ling, who’s been kidnapped by
Steve and his kung fu instructor(!), King Dragon (Thompson Kao, of The Black
Dragon’s Revenge and Crack Shadow Boxers).
There’s not really much of a plot here,
but director Yeo Ban-Yee (who also directed Jason Pai Piao and Thompson Kao in Action
Tae Kwon Do and Stranger from Canton[1])
is able to stretch out the thin premise to eighty-some-odd minutes through his
leaden direction and non-existent editing. In his book Bambi Meets Godzilla,
writer/director David Mamet points out that a good directorial trick is to keep
filming the actor for about five seconds after the cut, usually of him doing a
180º head turn. If you need footage of the actor looking at something for a
moment, you have it. If not, nothing lost. I almost got the feeling that Yeo
Ban-Yee knew this and included that in every single scene, since I lost count
of how many scenes of characters just standing around and looking at each
other, or just loitering around in a shot.
Take for instance a scene where one of
the bandits accidentally shoots one of his compadres in the back. The latter
just sort of stands there for several seconds with a surprised look on his
face, and then slowly puts his hand behind his back, and then slowly looks at
the blood on his fingers, and then…cut to the other bandit entering the Chinese
restaurant and snooping around…and then cut to the nincompoop who got shot,
who’s still friggin’ standing there, and, after a few more seconds,
finally keels over dead. Almost every scene is drawn out like that.
If the direction is awful, the editing
doesn’t fare much better either. The death of one of the main villains is a
good example. We see the fellow slowly shooting one of the heroes to death.
Suddenly, the camera cuts back to him and his has a dart lodged in his
forehead. There was no brief cut to show the other protagonist throwing the
dart, or sound effect to let us know that a dart had been thrown. It’s very
much “Oh, he killed that guy. Wait, why is there suddenly a dart in the dude’s
head? Where did that come from.” The owner of the dart then does a jump
kick, the villain falls outside of the shot, and we never see or hear from him
again. I actually had to rewind that scene several times to be sure that he had
actually died!
The acting from the Caucasian performers
is largely indifferent; I can’t help but think that the entire project was
simply one big communications breakdown. It doesn’t help that the writing is
uniformly awful and really doesn’t give anyone anything to do. There are a few
moments of anti-Chinese racism, like when the sheriff is handing out rifles to
the menfolk to use against Steve’s forces, but refuses to give one to Chen on
account of his race. But nothing is really done with that angle, so it comes
across as an unnecessary detail, especially when Ling and Chen get in an
argument later on and she calls him a coward. I guess that’s true in some
regards, but he was willing to take up arms and was denied the opportunity, so
maybe not really.
The action was handled by Jason Pai Piao himself,
alongside Cheng Chun-Foo, whose only other credit was Fingers that Kill.
The fighting is no better or no worse than any other basher film from the early
1970s. A lot of the fights are pretty short, since Pai Piao is mainly beating
up overweight European stuntmen. Only in the beginning and the end are there
any sustained fights. The climax runs for a good fifteen minutes or so, ten of
which are dedicated solely to final throwdown between Pai Piao and Thompson
Kao, who comes across as a low-rent Chan Sing in this film. If you like early
70s basher action, you’ll probably enjoy the last fight, even if it does drag
on a bit, like everything else in the film. Pai Piao’s character also uses
darts and razor-sharp silver dollars in his fights, which is interesting. That
said, there’s this silly bit when Pai Piao is fighting a bandit and hurling the
silver dollars at him. The bandit miraculously shoots all of the coins out of
the air. He then runs out of bullets and has to reload, while doing that, Jason
Pai Piao whips out a bag of coins. Instead of exploiting his opponent’s
vulnerability, he waits for the guy to finish reloading before throwing more
coins at him. What the hell? I guess for a film that is a complete failure on
all technical and artistic levels, that sort of lapse in logic should be
expected.
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