Sadly, David Carradine wasn’t the only martial arts star who died yesterday – we also lost Shih Kien, best known as Han in ENTER THE DRAGON. Apparently he’s also in DRUNKEN MASTER but I didn’t realize it at the time so if anybody remembers which character he played let me know.
DRUNKEN MASTER is Jackie Chan and director Yuen Woo Ping circa 1978, still old school kung fu era, when their movies were always period pieces about masters, training, fighting styles and duels. Jackie plays the Chinese folk hero Wong Fei Hung as a bratty little prick, always fuckin around in class, cheating, getting in fights, stealing. It’s all played for laughs but I think you’re supposed to think it’s charming and lovable. If so I’m not sure it works.
At first he seems kind of heroic because he defends a guy from theft. This guy is selling jade, some asshole tries to rip him off and then breaks the jade and refuses to pay for it. So Fei-Hung duels the asshole and leaves him in a bodycast (his own friend says “he looks like a dumpling.”) (read the rest of this shit…)
VERN has been reviewing movies since 1999 and is the author of the books SEAGALOGY: A STUDY OF THE ASS-KICKING FILMS OF STEVEN SEAGAL, YIPPEE KI-YAY MOVIEGOER!: WRITINGS ON BRUCE WILLIS, BADASS CINEMA AND OTHER IMPORTANT TOPICS and NIKETOWN: A NOVEL. His horror-action novel WORM ON A HOOK will arrive later this year.
