I debated whether or not to write up a review for this movie as (to put it in spoilers) I found it to be a really bad movie. This wasn’t a Godfrey Ho it’s so ridiculously nonsensical that it’s a bad movie that becomes great because of the nonsense. It’s more just a boring, poorly paced, uninspired load that felt should have been better given the star talent involved. Heck, the martial arts director is none other than Lau Kar-Leung so it should be at least good, right?
Well, here’s the thing. Just because you’ve got the best martial arts director of all time doesn’t mean you’re going to have an instant classic. This movie was made in 1977 and not within the Shaw Brothers machine. While Lau Kar-Leung did direct other great movies before and after this one, he had one clear benefit behind him: Ni Kuang, who wrote a huge chunk of the Shaw Brothers classics. I have no idea whom the writers were on this one and the producers (or producer) seemed to only have made this one film.
On top of that, there’s some very good names attached to this production including Meng Fei, Kurata Yasuaki, Dorian Tan, Chang Yi and Lau Kar-Wing. Even Philip Kwok made a cameo here. Usually, non-Shaw Brothers independent movies with Chang Yi and Dorian Tan would yield some decent fights and a reasonable plot or something interesting. But again that only happens when Dorian Tan and Chang Yi are the main focus. Here, it’s Meng Fei as the main character of Fong Sai Yuk.
While Meng Fei does a good job wielding a fan and looking pretty for the camera, he’s just no Fu Sheng. Something is missing whether it’s his kung fu or presence but he’s off a few steps. And when he’s trying to carry a film….he doesn’t carry. He needs to be carried. And when you watch the Five Shaolin Masters it becomes very apparent how this guy becomes second fiddle (or 5th) compared to Fu Sheng.
That said, I really don’t want to do a recap style review. So instead, I’m just going to pick apart the story, characters and action. The story is weirdly told because we get introduced to a “fake” Fong Sai Yuk after the introduction of Meng Fei smiling with his fan and wandering the country side. The “fake” Fong Sai Yuk looks very close to the way Meng Fei is setup except you know something is off. But they don’t really do much to initially explain the fake outside of how he’s good at faking kung fu (heck, he’s the brother of the action director so go figure) And this is fine except we just got introduced to the main character at the beginning and are wondering when he’s going to show up (if at all)
Eventually, he makes his way to the screen and the two encounter at a brothel/restaurant. They notice that they’re similar in appearance and have a contest where Meng Fei demonstrates that he’s the real Fong Sai Yuk and humiliates the other guy. However, Fong Sai Yuk is looking for his missing brothers whom he heard were killed off and displaced. Somehow he figures the fake knows where they are. While in the brothel, they see Kurata Yasuaki acting like some pimp with a hot Chinese girl who’s completely silent. Naturally, Fong Sai Yuk’s donger sticks up in noticing the hottie and asks about her.
So here’s where the portrayal of this Fong Sai Yuk differs from the one Fu Sheng did. The Fu Sheng version shows Fong Sai Yuk less as a playboy. In Shaolin Avengers, his mother tells him he must forsake women. This makes me wonder if they just wanted to turn Meng Fei into more of a sex symbol type. But I’m getting off track.
Anyway, the two resolve their issue and the fake Fong Sai Yuk pledges himself to becoming Fong Sai Yuk’s follower. Now, this is kinda weird to me in that the actor who plays the fake probably is the better martial artist between the two. Considering his brother was the action director, I’m guessing this film was done to try and get Lau Kar-Wing some more air time. Weirdly, the fake Fong Sai Yuk shows up in the enemy’s court and I’m not sure how that played out because I thought he was going to become some traitor. It’s explained but not in a good manner which is where I think the movie started to break down for me.
At the court, Kurata Yasuaki shows up with his girl in tow and this guy is a supreme pimp. The way he just keeps his arm around the poor woman makes me wonder if he got the direction or if he was doing some sort of on screen sexual harassment thing. Because that woman looked really uncomfortable the way he’d dragged her around. And he did this the entire time whenever he was with her (or the other girl). Not that he was a bad looking guy but even that could be considered creepy. Either way, we find out his motivations for why he’s involved in anything. Apparently, he paid for half the girl’s body and wanted to get the other half by defeating Fong Sai Yuk.
Despite all this, the one thing that makes no sense is why is this Japanese guy in China at all. They never explained that part. He’s just there, pimpin’ around. And there is a bunch of racist remarks (at least the translation) so outside of the ‘ho, why else would this guy want to be in a place where he’s clearly unwanted?
At a certain point, Kurata Yasuaki challenges Fong Sai Yuk to a match on these poles. If you’ve seen other Fong Sai Yuk movies (mostly Fu Sheng ones at least), you’ll probably see a common theme or plot where he gets challenged on what I think are lama style poles. Here, there’s a FUCK ton more and they don’t really mention these being lama style poles of all things. More importantly, it’s a Japanese martial arts dude doing Shaolin poles so more WTF.
The fake Fong Sai Yuk decides to stick up for his bud and does VERY poorly against Kurata Yasuaki. Of course, as he’s getting slaughtered Fong Sai Yuk finally shows up. I will say that made me laugh because most times the hero comes just in the nick of time. Instead, this fucker is late as fuck and his friend gets impaled on a bunch of poles. So Fong Sai Yuk accepts the challenge and gets his ass kicked too. But not before the friend makes a return and saves Fong Sai Yuk. Actually, I think that friend died at least three times because he clearly got staked through the guts three times. I thought he was being carried off at one point because Dorian Tan came around and a body in a white outfit was shown hauled away. So I believed the fake dude was going to get healed. However, he really was dead and that was that for him.
On the other hand, Fong Sai Yuk gets badly injured and is taken to his GFs’ father’s home. The father is one super shady guy and very dismissive of Fong Sai Yuk after ascertaining his identity. Later, he goes to town and finds out there’s a 1k tael reward for Fong Sai Yuk. Being a good citizen, he reports his findings to Chang Yi but pleads for his daughter to not be harmed. The bad guys are really bad and don’t reward the guy a penny. In fact, they only intend to reward him after Fong Sai Yuk is captured, which should have alerted the old man that these people should not be trusted. Despite calling his daughter stupid, it really is the old father that’s a brain dead idiot.
At any rate, Fong Sai Yuk moves next door where the hot girl takes care of him. He freaks out for being cold as he’s in bad shape so she uses her body to keep him warm. When the daughter returns with her father, she’s shocked at the hot girl’s disposition and a bitch slap fight goes on. Fong Sai Yuk’s mom shows up too and the father slaps his head in not knowing where the body was. Nonetheless, Fong Sai Yuk is dying (or near death) so the mom forces some sort of medicine down his guzzle but he passes seemingly which leads them to get a coffin.
Armed with this information, the shady father goes to tattle and the soldiers and Kurata Yasuaki show up. Of course, Fong Sai Yuk is gone as the mother knew the father was untrustworthy. But she and the other women are captured while Dorian Tan takes Fong Sai Yuk to go train. At this point, this film started to feel as though it was dragging badly and I really wanted it to end. We get a bunch of horrible unremarkable training scenes so that Fong Sai Yuk can go fight Kurata Yasuaki properly with Dorian Tan being the trainer.
Kurata Yasuaki and the court get impatient and decide to use the GF as bait (Chang Yi tells Kurata that he can rape her on the poles of all places. Like that sounds like something Vince Russo would come up with…but I digress again). The hot girl is killed trying to defend Fong Sai Yuk’s actual GF as she gets raped before the pole scene. Then the pole fight happens. It’s really bad. Like you can tell the camera was positioned below so that the two actors could do any movements without being on the poles themselves. But the fight is just long and boring. You can guess what happens to Kurata and even then there’s nothing to really write home about.
Of course, that leaves one major leaf unturned. So we go back to the court because the mother is still held hostage. Naturally, Fong Sai Yuk goes to rescue her where she’ tied to a wooden stake. A bunch of flaming arrows are shot at her and Fong must swivel her back and forth using the stake to protect her. Admittedly, this is one of those situations where I expected the mother to eat it and was extremely disappointed when NONE of the flaming arrows penetrated the stake. I mean, she was surrounded how the fuck could they miss that badly? Even Stormtroopers or Cobra soldiers could’ve hit her at that range.
Before things can go south for Fong Sai Yuk any further, Dorian Tan shows up…to do barely anything except insist that Meng Fei get a “fair” fight against Chang Yi. And you know that they needed that explanation to justify another extra boring fight to get a Meng Fei vs Chang Yi fight in. Somehow Fong Sai Yuk gets to use a crutch to fend Chang Yi off and the end is just Dorian Tan and Meng Fei supposedly hitting Chang Yi without a clear bloody death scene. It just fucking ends.
If you can’t tell, I really hated this movie. Originally, when I heard the title and learned that Philip Kwok was involved, I first thought it would be about martial arts and quarterstaves. Instead, we got a shitty Meng Fei Fong Sai Yuk movie that had only a few segments about the Lama Poles (if that’s what they were supposed to be). The people you wanted to see do something did absolutely nothing. Dorian Tan is a fucking bad ass and it’s always awesome watching him kick. He barely used his legs here. Instead, he was just hobbling around on a crutch. The aforementioned Philip Kwok shows up to get blinded and swing a dagger maybe three times at most before getting it shoved in his gut to make a single kung fu death face expression. Chang Yi only had a few minutes of fighting screen time.
The only person who got ample time was Meng Fei. But let’s be brutally honest here: he fucking sucks. I have yet to see him involved in something where he really impressed me on his own. He’s like a 3rd rate Fu Sheng minus the kung fu talent. All Meng Fei does is just smile and look pretty for the camera. But he’s not even 1/10th as expressive as Fu Sheng used to be. More importantly, he has no kung fu talent. And it showed badly even with the top rate martial arts director around working behind the scenes.
The only other non-Shaw Brothers movie that I can recall him being in that I do remember was the Ways of Kung Fu with Chen Kuan-Chun where Meng Fei plays a drunk student. But the movie was more about Chen Kuan-Chun’s growth (btw he’s another bad actor but at least his kung fu always looked good and he was in top physical condition). After seeing this movie though, I pretty much think that I never want to watch another Meng Fei movie again.
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