Opium and the Kung-Fu Master

i have watched a lot of shaw bros. from the late 60's to their end which was the mid 80's. this was one of the last films from shaw bros and in my opinion one of their best.

some of the reasons it was a notch above were that it was beautifully shot, the cinematographer really had a good eye. the main leads were actually actors and not stuntmen turned actors, so they were pleasing to the eye. the kung fu choreography was as good as any and the lead villain had a really cool and lethal weapon. the main actress is the legendary and gorgeous Liu Shuet Whah who went on to become the queen of melodramatic television serials in Taiwan.

being said that the main leads were all actors and actresses first the acting was pretty good also. ti lung in one of his final and better roles before he teamed up with John Woo and did the legendary " a better tomorrow ". you also had the shaw bros legend Chen Kuan Tai as the main baddie and oh yes lee hoi san is in here also...and yuen wah too!

all in all a very very entertaining and well paced movie with a great story about the evils of hard drugs and drug addiction mixed in with some good and beautifully shot kung fu.

this one's a winner and a top 10 in my shaw bros movies that i have watched.

Veteran action choreographer for the Shaw Bros. studio directed a total of three films on his own at the very end of the studio's existence. This was his last one and after that Tang Chia dropped out of the records. A contemporary of Liu Chia Liang, the other Shaw choreographer turned director, Tang Chia's style was very distinctive and some say defined the classic Shaw kung fu look. He had a fascination with elaborate weapons and apparently took to designing his own for many of the movies that called for something unusual.

A small town is protected by one of the famous Ten Tigers of Kwangtung, played by Ti Lung. The town is very safe as Ti Lung and his kung fu students patrol for criminals. Enter the rival kung fu school whom Ti Lung's students have beaten in a lion dance competition and then humiliated in a brawl. The rival school is joined by an opium dealing kung fu master who plans to turn the town into a community of addicts! Can Ti Lung's character fight this threat when he is quickly slipping into opium addiction himself?

Right off, the martial arts are excellent. Some of the best in any Shaw film. That is enough for some to find this film and I encourage them. The signature Tang Chia crazy weapons are not here but that doesn't lessen the quality of the martial arts at all. The story is quite unusual, you wouldn't expect a kung fu film to tackle the subject of addiction, usually drug dealers are just bad guys to be pounded and the issues of drugs are ignored. The film starts out as a light mixture of action, humor and slapstick. Halfway through the plot turns tragic and sometimes the old school theatrics are turned on full force. The action remains top notch. The ending is unfortunately telegraphed and that lessens the enjoyment a bit. Still the subject of the film is important and it was dealt with in an interesting way.

It too bad that Tang Chia apparently quit the business after this, his three films were quite good. Perhaps he felt that without the support of a studio like the Shaw's, he couldn't maintain the quality.

Recommended and check out the Shaolin "Zatoichi"!

I'm going to be writing about lesser-known martial arts movies for work soon, and though I've seen enough to talk about, I thought it gave me a good excuse to catch up on a few lesser-known ones I've yet to see. I've been pretty happy with the whole run so far, seeing a couple of cool Jackie Chan films, King Hu's The Fate of Lee Khan, and now a couple of Shaw Brothers movies tonight: Human Lantern and then Opium and the Kung Fu Master.

The latter was particularly good. Not perfect, and not quite top-tier Shaw Brothers, but quite good, and I'm glad to say it qualifies as under-appreciated. It has a little bit of an odd tone at first, feeling like a goofy comedy with some occasional martial arts, having more laughs than your average "competing martial arts schools" plotline.

But then opium works its way into the plot, one school wants to corrupt the town of another school by making them all addicts, and the drug is shown to start ruining lives. It doesn't handle addiction with care or in a particularly believable way, but maybe points for effort? It does end up pushing the film into more serious territory, and while that was jarring, I think it was for the best. The action - while good before - started to get even more exciting once the stakes were raised.

And it's always cool to see two well-known Shaw Brothers lead actors - Ti Lung and Chen Kuan-Tai, who were also both in Human Lanterns - face off against each other. I always forget how good of a bad guy the latter made, and when they go head-to-head, things get awesome.

It's a bit of a messy film, and some wild tonal shifts are contained within, but I generally liked what it was going for, mostly liked what the story ended up being, and found the action very entertaining.