 |
| Images Courtesy of Arrow Films |
While not much was made of these three at the
time, the young stuntman in his first speaking role onscreen was none other
than Jackie Chan with Sammo Hung as the choreographer, making this an earlier
union of three of the most important Chinese action movie makers who ever
lived. The film in question, the 1976
martial arts kung-fu fighter Hand of Death, wasn’t anything spectacular
but it was undoubtedly a harbinger of things to come in the action movie
hemisphere.
Amid the Qing Dynasty, a rogue warrior named Shih Shao-Feng
is storming the Shaolin temples and training camps on a genocidal reign of
terror to rid China of Shaolin. Their
top student Yun Fei (Doran Tan) is tasked with hunting down and eliminating
Shih’s murder spree where he befriends blacksmith Tan Feng (Jackie Chan) who
has his own axe to grind with Shih. Along
the way they also amass fellow warriors under their wing including a skillful
swordsman who vowed to never draw his sword again after killing a prostitute he
loved and the group forms a coalition which begins training and fashioning new
weaponry to fight Shih and his Lieutenant Tu Ching (Sammo Hung). Will it be enough to overthrow the ruthless
and murderous Shih clan?
While ostensibly a martial arts flick produced by Golden
Harvest founder Raymond Chow replete with widescreen fight sequences in large
courtyards, lots of kicking and punching, Hand of Death does show (for
those who are really looking) early traces of what was yet to come from the
Hong Kong action maestro. Predating the brotherly
bonds displayed in Hard Boiled and The Killer by decades while
utilizing the then-unrealized martial arts gifts of Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung,
the film is at once a bit of a wuxia with sword fighting and fine arts of the clawed
punch while also being a worthy competitor to the surge in Shaw Brothers movies. In addition to being the only time working
with Chan and Hung, this was the first time John Woo worked with Philip Kwok
who legendarily left his mark on Woo’s Hard Boiled years later as master
gunfighter Mad Dog.
One of two films shot by short-lived cinematographer
Yung-Chi Liang, the panoramic widescreen film while not quite displaying the
visual motifs fans of John Woo have grown accustomed to nevertheless is a scenic,
epic martial arts actioner with breathtaking wide-angled vistas interspersed
with the trademark Shaw Brothers fast zooms in and out of action choreography. The period wuxia score by eventual Woo A
Better Tomorrow (and tragically late) composer Joseph Koo is what you would
sonically expect from a film of this era with an emphasis on both orchestral
renderings and guitar riffs spicing up the action.
Doran Tan and the ensemble cast is generally
solid though most eyes will be on Jackie Chan as the lowly but noble (and very
young) blacksmith and Sammo Hung’s bucktoothed Lieutenant with a shit-eating
grin. Having seen Hung in other films,
the caricature being played comes as a shock as he juts his top rows of teeth
forward, making one wonder if he wore false teeth for the gag. Chan was unknown at the time of filming
outside of being a skillful stuntman and though he took some punches that knocked
him out and nearly cost him his eyesight, he’s fantastic in Woo’s film.
Though the film cemented Woo’s reputation as a demanding
director who preferred his actors do their own stunts over doubles, Hand of
Death or Countdown in Kung Fu as it was renamed in other territories
was a moderate success for the then-fledgling Golden Harvest production
company. While not as strong as some of
the other more renowned wuxia out there and certainly nowhere near what John
Woo and his creative collaborators Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung would go off and
do on their separate ways, it is nevertheless exciting to see the three having
worked together at all. Three of the
most important action movie figures in Hong Kong let alone global cinema
Eastern and Western working in unison to create not the greatest kick-and-punch
action fighter out there but certainly a serviceably solid one at best littered
with traces of what would or would not come from these guys in the near future.
--Andrew Kotwicki
