Punhos de Serpente

Apparently Jackie himself, merely 17 when this film was made, says to stay away from this movie. I shoulda learned that earlier. It's at least two movies Frankensteined together, and new footage (with the old master beating up the flamboyantly gay landlord, farting in his face and avoiding his Popeye-themed attack (complete with Popeye's theme music - calling all lawyers)) was added years later to complete the "film", such as it is.

Plot? Barely there. Jackie plays an evil warlord who kills one of his men (who squirts blood out of his mouth in an unintentionally hilarious scene reminiscent of Monty Python's Black Knight), whose young son (Jackie again) is raised by another former henchman, who does not want Jackie to be a fighter. "You want to destroy life? Well, kill flowers!" he yells, tossing potted plants at his wayward stepson. However, Jackie's been training in secret with a crazy old guy in the woods since he was 6 (in a series of disjointed and somewhat creepy flashbacks), and there's only so much he can take before springing into action, especially since people attack him and his sister on a daily basis. He fights through a bunch of generic thugs as the camera whips around randomly, the canned soundtrack saws away pompously and dubbed threats ("I will take care of you now! Hum!") assault the viewer's ears. Characters mostly pop up to get killed (foster dad, a young pickpocket), or disappear after a few scenes (Jackie's uncle and sister).

The editing is such a mess it's usually impossible to tell exactly what's going on. When Jackie's pickpocket "friend" (I put that in quotes because they only met three times beforehand) is threatened by being tied up high on a pole, Jackie fights off the thugs around him. We cut to a thug falling into the water, and then the pickpocket just falls from the pole he was shown to be snugly tied to (shown by a dummy falling towards the camera), a musical sting, and Jackie looking... kinda bummed. "Goodbye, my little friend." Then a suddenly shirtless Jackie points at the villain (actually, he points at the camera - most of the dialogue scenes are played in separate shots) and declares "YOU killed him. YOU are responsible for his death." I dunno, Jackie. Was he the one who made the ropes magically disappear?

The dubbing is horrid, the characters either having British accents or Brooklyn accents, neither of which match the tone well at all. It sure is weird hearing Jackie's voice dubbed over by somebody else, and the endless "Ho! Hah! Huuuh!" during the fights is the fine line between hilarious and unbearable. Every blow, even light smacks, get a loud *CRACK* sound effect, and at one point Jackie holds a conversation with a villain while we hear a hilarious number of loud *CRACKS* in the background!

And then there's the final battle with the warlord, now elderly and played by a tall actor who looks nothing like Jackie (same dubbed voice, though) and a fat guy who follows the Way of the Fish, which Jackie easily disposes of, Old Master cheering from the sidelines. Jackie and the warlord blindfold themselves, which is cool, but it mostly is a desperate attempt to hide the fact that even Jackie is played by a different actor now. The bad guy whips around and whinnies like a horse. It's that kind of movie.

Don't fret though, fans. Pseudo-Jackie beats the villain by knocking him over, breaks his neck by turning it slightly to the right - complete with spaceship sound effects - and Old Master says Jackie has earned the right to carry a blue flag. Jackie waves it triumphantly, the movie ends five seconds later, and the soundtrack grinds to a halt.

Only for people who want to see Jackie's first starring role. Other than that, you won't find any of the elaborate choreography and set-pieces you'd expect from Jackie, although some of the hand-to-hand stuff is pretty well done, from what you can see of it through the insane editing. You'll likely have more than a few laughs as well, albeit the uneasy kind.

Rated R for God knows what reason. The violence, save the blood squirt, is clean, there's no swearing, and a really cheesy attempted rape scene involves a fully clothed couple wrestling while the woman screams. Norway banned it, although in retrospect that was a really good idea.

Teen age Jackie Chan stars in this exciting kung fu action movie.

Jackie Chan (Jackie Chan) has been practicing kung fu under the tutelage of his old master since he was young. He works hard both at his work, and on his kung fu. One day he meets a girl, and he's smitten right away. Bully tries to rape her, and Jackie intervenes. This sparks a feud between the gangs and Jackie. It's a duel to the death between the gang boss and Jackie while being blind folded for both of them.

Young Jackie Chan looks soooo good. He's a handsome young man. His good personality also shows in this movie. His moves are very polished for a 16 year old teenager. No wonder he became the premiere action star. This is an old school kung fu movie but is refreshing to see young Jackie doing his moves. He already looks like a master at 16.

Some of the action sequences are amazing in this movie.

Good if not great kung fu movie from the early '70s.

Contrary to popular belief and even in contrast to Jackie Chan and many other sources, "Cub Tiger From Kwang Tung" (aka Little Tiger of Canton) was finished and even had a small release (probably around 1973 or 1974, I currently cannot find exact details) though it was filmed a few years earlier in 1971, done a little before his stunt work in "Fist of Fury". Chan was given an opportunity to star in this movie by his "biggest sister" from his Peking Opera youth whom was now an assistant to a film producer. In Chan's autobiography "I Am Jackie Chan" he has nothing good to say about this experience stating "One night, the director and producer quietly disappeared, taking with them any hope that the movie would be finished." It is not his first film either, he had done several movies as a child actor in the 60s with "Big and Little Wong Tin-Bar" (1962) being his first appearance in a movie. He looks quite young though and slight of build compared to his later appearances.

Jackie Chan (he uses the screen name Chan Yuen Lung using Sammo Hung's old opera name) portrays Hsiao Hu, an adopted precocious martial art youth who has been brought up by a semi-sadistic foster dad (Tien Feng: Fist of Fury, Young Master) and enjoys sparring with his foster sister Hsiao Lam (Shu Pei-Pei) when he is not working for his Uncle Chiang at Chiang Kee Noodles. Hsiao Hu does not know that his real Dad died absorbing Lu Chi's aka 3rd Brother (Kwan Chung) "Leg of Doom" (the move sounds good, does not look that impressive though should be named "Leg of Partial Hurt") so Tien Feng could get away and raise his Hsiao Hu.

Meanwhile, back at the noodle shop, a group of ruffians order a plethora of food, yet refuse to pay. Hu's superior Kung Fu is shown as he destroys them in fighting. Lu Chi just happens to be their boss and this angers him immensely when he finds out. Hu's foster dad is perturbed by his fighting and tortures him with excess work. At first it is just moving extra pails of water, but after another incident (even though he saved his sister) he is forced to put his hands into broken glass (great dad). Later, he forces Hu to "really" fight his foster sister (later in the film though he states that they were made for each other). Of course, Hu's foster dad is only trying to prevent him from using his Kung Fu so he won't be found out by the vengeful Lu Chi (though I do not think this point is ever explicitly said). As in any martial art movie I can only recommend this for Jackie Chan or martial art movie fanatics for completeness. The editing is quite bad and the story is a bit hard to follow leaving lots of floating plot points. The lifted score (I am pretty sure this is not an original piece) is quite annoying as it is repetitively used. The martial art action is decent though, Jackie Chan looks quite better than everyone else and so the pacing is sometimes off in the fights. The finale works as well as it should though the highpoint of the film is the demonstration of skills during the beginning credits where Chan gets to show off his technique and acrobatic skills (the 70's Jackie films show Chan do more of his Peking Opera background than later films as well as this film shows him pre-eye surgery).

The film quality of the Rarescope R1 edition is quite poor with a cropped picture (shown 2:35:1, but a lot of image is missing), burnt-in subtitles that are occasionally replaced by "other" subtitles when the cropping interferes (and that replacement also has typos and grammar mistakes) and copious amounts of damage. Also, the back cover description has many mistakes with its summation of the plot. The funniest is the combo of "his father has forbidden him ... from learning the martial arts" and "... killed his father many years before." Still it is nice to have available in a non-"Master with Cracked Fingers" version shown close to what it originally was.

The extras are a hodge-podge of trailers, still gallery and a 6-plus minute questionnaire and answer with Jackie Chan. The still gallery is not too bad with what looks like lobby cards and stills from the movie. The Q and A with Jackie Chan is a shaky camcorder print of Jackie being questioned after a showing of "Rumble in the Bronx" (quick talk about the longer HK cut). So this was probably originally filmed around 1997 in the UK (the year it came out in UK) with other clues such as the accents and he talks quickly about future projects: Police Story 5 (probably talking about New Police Story though that would not come out until 2004), a western story (obviously talking about the future "Shanghai Noon" (2000)), a South African story ("Who Am I" (1998)) and about finishing A Nice Guy (later known as "Mr. Nice Guy"; though filming was done in 1997). Not much is learned from this extra other than a quick mention of the "fireman story" that never came about and audiences that are annoying are ubiquitous. Jackie is asked to perform some moves (which he absolutely hates to be asked to do) and he feigns a previous knee injury though later he can be seen bouncing around without any problems.

This movie is not very good. Jackie Chan fights the same few thugs over and over again. Also if you watch the last fight scene closely, it is not Jackie Chan fighting, it is a double. In the rest of the movie you can clearly see Jackie's face in the fight scences, but in the last one the camera zooms out and avoids angles where you would see that characters face.

This movie came with another one, New Fist of Fury, which was a poor pseudo-sequel to Bruce Lee's original masterpiece. You'll sometimes see Snake Fist Fighter sold in mall stores as "Master With Cracked Fingers", complete with deceiving, fancy cover. Got mine from Wal-Mart, actually. Anyway, this movie features the always-watchable combination of Simon Yuen (you know.. he's ALWAYS the drunken homeless guy who whups everyone's ass with a bamboo stick) and Jackie Chan. These two you'll find in Drunken Master, Snake in Eagle's Shadow, many many others. Obligatory evil warlord kills Jackie Chan's dad in a duel, and he (his dad) leaves Jackie (that's what he's called in the movie, no original name given) with his friend and fellow warrior, who adopts him as his uncle. Young Jackie trains with Simon Yuen (known in this movie as "The Man Who Isn't There") to be a great kung fu guy. He has to use his skills when thugs reak havoc in his family's restaurant. Turns out these bullies are the obligatory evil warlord's henchmen. His uncle punishes him several times for fighting ("carry 50 buckets of water back & forth from the well, oh, uh.. catch these heavy flower pots.. and, uh.. oh yeah, stick your hand in this broken glass.") throughout the film, and it kinda gets annoying after a little while. There seems to be a slight incestuous undercurrent between Jackie and his adoptive sister, too..

Very weird. (similar to Fists of Fury in that the hero is tempted by a female member of his immediate family.. in Fists it was Bruce's cousin who wanted to hit it off. is this a recurring theme in kung fu flicks? I haven't watched enough of 'em to really tell.. if I see one more with that sorta stuff, something's wrong.) Okay, so Yuen fights Casanova Wong (a great veteran actor, usually in the comedy-type kung fu films), who plays an effeminate landlord who extorts money from Jackie's uncle. Not only does he defeat him, he adds insult to injury by farting in his face. Pretty typical kung fu humor. (Wong, inexplicably, eats spinach and uses his "Popeye Special.") After some disjointed flashback scenes and stock footage from Drunken Master, Jackie fights the obligatory evil warlord, and (suprise suprise) beats him. Breaks his neck, too. That's almost always how it works in these sort of films. It's an okay movie, actually.. Jackie's voice actor isn't too overbearing, and there are some familiar faces in the film too. It's one to pop in the old VCR now and then.