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| Images courtesy of 88 Films |
Come Drink with Me and Drunken
Master actor and stuntman turned Shaw Brothers workman Hsia Hsu’s 1982
action-comedy thriller Kid from Kwang Tung was the actor’s first
official film in the director’s chair having codirected with Yuet-Sang Chin the
martial arts flick Roar of the Lion a year before. While ostensibly a screwball martial arts
comedy from the outset, over the course of the film it becomes increasingly
fantastical and starts to ratchet up the tension as familiar characters are
soon offed right and left. What started
out as an outright goofy romp about two competing martial arts clans pranking
one another with underhanded trickery gradually evolves into a death-defying
thriller boiling down to a scant few survivors up against an army of skilled
fighters. Though a comedy through and
through, it takes a serious turn midway and never fully looks back.
He (Wong Yu) and Wu (Chiang Kim) are on opposite sides of
the martial arts schoolyard fence, competing in wild costumed games of a man
dressed like a chicken against a literal human centipede of masked men when
they aren’t pulling practical jokes on one another. In between Wu literally tries to woo the attention
of Xiaowei (Sharon Yeung) not knowing she and her mother are working with his
schoolteacher Mr. Zhang (Yen Shi-Kwan) in an underhanded effort to restore the
Ming court. However, the screwball carefree
comic tone makes a drastic shift with the arrival of Luo Yihu (Hwang Jang-Lee)
who with his minions of the Northern Legs Clan proceeds to decimate the school
and its master, boiling down to three characters He, Wu and Xiaowei to try and
fight Luo Yihu and his clan to the bloody death.
Briefly a hoot and holler of tongue-in-cheek screwy martial
arts comedy including goofs on the The Shadow Boxing replete with spells
designed to supernaturally cart around the dead before cribbing a little bit of
Jerry goldsmith’s score for Alien, the film is a rather silly romp for
the first half. Then characters
shockingly start dying off brutally and the action martial arts choreography
intensifies to untold heights as the film goes on, becoming a mere shadow of
its former cinematic self. Scripted by Keith
Lee and largely designed by Hsu Hsia in conjunction with martial arts directors
Yuen Tak and Chui Fat, Kid from Kwang Tung becomes a steady exercise in astonishing
physical feats some of which crop up early on under the radar. Take for instance the aforementioned
chicken-centipede fight with several human costumed players taking up sections
of the centipede leaping onto a board simultaneously. Moments like this only seem to foreshadow the
ever-incredible action fighting to emerge later in the film.
Released in 1982, the film helped further establish Sharon
Yeung as a formidable force in Hong Kong action cinema while also ushering in an
edgier kind of action-comedy. Though
only the second directorial effort of Hsu Hsia, the fight choreography is astounding. Lensed beautifully by Cheung Hoi of Drunken
Master who films the action fights gracefully and with distance to capture
all the choreography and aided by a tense score (that sometimes cribs)
co-written by Stephen Shing and So Jan-Hau, Kid from Kwang Tung wins up
becoming maybe one of the strongest offerings in the 1980s Shaw Brothers canon. Funny and frightening, full of incredible
fight sequences, 88 Films’ new restored blu-ray edition comes with collectible
lobby cards, newly rendered original artwork by Sam Gilbey and reversible
sleeve art. One of the better genre hybrids
that just keeps climbing and climbing, Kid from Kwang Tung will delight
and thrill Shaw Brothers fans and admirers of the martial arts action-comedy in
general.
--Andrew Kotwicki
