The Austin Film Society is truly one of the country’s great examples of what a film society can be. And does anything quite exemplify that as much as a weekend of old school kung fu films projected in 35mm and lovingly curated and hosted by the likes of Lars Nilsen and Dan Halsted? Last year was the first annual Old School Kung Fu weekend that Lars programmed since joining AFS, and I missed out on the event. This year I couldn’t make the same mistake, and I’m thrilled to have gotten the chance to attend the first night of programming.
When Lars and Dan took the stage to reveal their picks (yes, each title is a surprise even right up until the individual film gets rolling), they gave some background on how truly special this event was going to be. Dan had located a cache of extremely rare 35mm prints in a dilapidated Canadian theater which used to be owned by The Shaw Brothers, and through help from The Alamo Drafthouse and AFS, upwards of 100 films were able to be purchased and saved! Apparently most of the Shaw Brothers’ subtitled and/or dubbed prints had been destroyed, so these prints are among the rarest of the rare.
Let’s dive into the individual titles that were screened on Day One of the Kung Fu weekend on Friday June 20th.
SHAOLIN VS LAMA (1983) — Dir. Tso Lam Lee
The guys got started with a pretty deep cut. Apparently even at the time of shooting, this film was considered “Indie”: shot in Taiwan outside of any kind of studio system. While I guess that means it had a lower production value than many a Shaw Brothers film, I couldn’t tell. Probably due to a solid 70 minutes of pure fighting. I don’t think 5 full continuous minutes ever passed without a fight scene in this entire movie.
The plot felt a lot like The 36th Chamber Of Shaolin as it featured an eager young lead who seeks a master who can defeat him so that he can improve his own kung fu. Upon being beaten by a hilarious Shaolin master, hero Sung Li Ting spends half of the film trying to get the Shaolin to accept him as a student… something they are wont to do since their greatest student betrayed them, stole a sacred scroll, and has become part of a rival group of evil monks called the Lama. Eventually Sung Li Ting must master Shaolin techniques such as The Buddha Finger (which allows you to poke perfect holes out of pieces of paper), and bring down the Lama. At least I think that is the plot. Look… they fight. A lot.
And when they fight, some glorious and unique things happen. I think The WWE’s HHH must have caught this film at some point, because in a genius move, seemingly everyone in this movie has a mouth full of water before they get punched in slow motion, and the water sprays everywhere to glorious effect. Seriously, at least 3 dozen times there’s a face-punch-water-spray combo. That innovation alone would bring me back to this film again with gladness. But the comedic elements are also wonderful and feature several fights in which our hero cooks a duck, tempts the Shaolin master out of hiding, then fights him over the roasted duck until he learns a new move. They repeatedly use the term “duck ass”, and all is right with the universe.
THE KID WITH THE GOLDEN ARM (1979) — Dir. Chang Cheh
I’m not the world’s most well-informed Kung Fu fan. I go through phases where I watch a ton, and phases when I don’t. I tend to focus on the cream of the crop, the all-timers. So while when someone drops the name “Chang Cheh”, a dim bulb of recognition goes off in my head. It isn’t a full on eureka moment. However, if you say “The director of The Five Deadly Venoms”, then you definitely have my attention. Lars and Dan paid some homage to Director Cheh, who made over 100 films in his career, before letting us know that our next film was going to be a title that came soon after Venoms, and starred many of the same cast as that mega-hit. They noted that Chang Cheh filled his movies with muscle-bound, highly attractive men, and sprayed blood all over the place in ways that most kung fu films simply don’t. Interestingly, while The Kid With The Golden Arm comes only one year after The Five Deadly Venoms, there are literally FIVE films directed by Chang Cheh listed on IMDb BETWEEN that film and this.
In a similar vein as Venoms, Golden Arm features a villainous gang of master fighters, each representing a different kind of metal. The Kid With The Golden Arm is the most feared and skilled villain in the Che Sa gang, and they will stop at nothing to steal a shipment of gold that is intended to go to starving villagers in a famine, and is fiercely protected by our heroes of the movie who… well… I don’t feel like I know very much about our heroes. The movie is sloppy as hell when it comes to setting up its minimal story. Besides the metal gang, the various players who constitute the “good guys” are largely disposable and generic. The heroes mostly aren’t the fun part of Kid With The Golden Arm.
What IS fun is the usage of every awesome kung fu trope in the genre’s bag of tricks. The titular kid is able to bend and even chop up metal swords into pieces with his bare hands. There’s a heroic character who only excels at fighting when he’s drunk, so you get a drunken master element thrown in. There’s even a five-finger death punch sub-plot. And a dramatic climax involving a character getting blinded. Basically Chang Cheh throws EVERYTHING at the wall, and most of it sticks.
MASTER OF THE FLYING GUILLOTINE (1976) — Dir. Jimmy Wang Yu
Out of the three titles chosen for the night, this was the only one I had been previously familiar with, seen, and own on DVD. Was I even remotely disappointed to watch a film I already own on the big screen? That’s a negative. I believe I became aware of this title via Quentin Tarantino’s recommendation many years ago. And through that I learned a lot about its director and star, Jimmy Wang Yu. Lars and Dan made a point to give Wang Yu a proper introduction, noting his most famous character, the One-Armed Swordsman, his various and sundry gangland affiliations, and his bad boy reputation. Wang Yu was a bit of an action super-star, and liked that to be clear in his films.
In Guillotine, the titular character is actually the villain. A rage-filled monk employed by the evil empire to dispatch any dissenters with cinema’s most deadly weapon of all time — a ridiculous contraption that only even approaches practicality through movie magic, and takes the heads off of any fool who crosses it. Oh, and it makes a ricocheting bullet sound every time it is dispatched by Fung Sheng Wu Chi. But all of that is no match for Wang Yu’s One-Armed Boxer, who has all kinds of sweet breathing techniques, jumping skills, and a plan involving contraptions that hurl axes… a guaranteed victory plan for deafeating blind, rage-filled Flying Guillotine Masters who are accompanied by this badass music every time they appear on screen.
Master Of The Flying Guillotine is an all time great. I love Wang Yu’s swagger, the tournament fight featuring racist caricatures of Indians and Thais from which the Street Fighter video game franchise clearly swiped several characters, and the aforementioned soundtrack (which was apparently willfully stolen) is so heavy it’ll cause spontaneous muscle development and hair growth. Master Of The Flying Guillotine has no regard for human life, but is bizarrely concerned with providing you with constant entertainment.
I wasn’t able to attend the second night of the Kung Fu weekend due to a severe case of “the Snowpiercer”. But Cinapse team member and all around good guy Wilson Smith was there and plans to break down the surprise picks from the second night (which, if rumors are true, surpassed even this great night of martial arts mayhem). Big thanks to the Austin Film Society and to hosts Lars Nilsen and Dan Halsted for a genuinely great night at the cinema.
And I’m Out.
