Hao xiao zi di er ji

It starts with Chan Wai-Lau directing the kids in a ninja thief attack of grandma's bedroom. Grandma is played by a 32 year old woman in a grey wig. They disagree in teaching the kids kung fu.

I have read this movie made a fortune back in Taiwan. There are about seven in the series. Today – just try and find a copy of any of them. I am a hard core fan of this genre and it took me years to find copies of these movies. The copies are rather pathetic. This one is a digital file from a "multi-generation" VHS tape with Greek hard subtitles and dubbed in English. I bet that VHS went around the world a few times. The kids went on to make very few movies beyond this series. The adults were some of the best stunt men ever and that shows in the final scene.

The semi-final scene takes place not in a traditional large tea house but in a huge cowboy bar. At about the 40 minute mark the set is first used and Dick Wei enters. Chan Wai-Lau does some fine action sequences but this is just a preview of the final fight.

The black guy – somehow uncredited – fights Chan Wai-Lau. Then, only in a nonsense comedy is this possible, three kids fight him in a rematch.

The final fight is in a common found set – the Victorian style lobby. You've seen this in Jackie Chan movies. Again, the stunt men were fabulous in this fight.

At about this time in the history of this genre sheets of glass were added to the fights. Jackie Chan's "Police Story 1" set the bar that has likely never been beat for breaking glass in a movie. This movie also has plenty of breaking glass. Even the kids break some glass.

My parents rented this for me in the 80's, I dubbed a copy and still watch it now and then. This movie is something like an earlier 3 Ninjas, it's about a trio of boys who learn martial arts from their grandparents. Grandma wants them to go to school while Grandpa wants to keep training them, so they have a duel. You've seen the scene in other movies where two combatants fight on top of tall wooden posts- here, they fight on top of dozens of soda cans stacked in the yard. Grandma wins with a dirty trick, so the boys get sent out in the world- hilarity and numerous painful groin shots ensue.

This movie is long out of print, you'll have to find it on VHS if you want to see it. Your boys will probably love it, we all wanted to be ninjas at some point.