A randomly comprehensive survey of extraordinary movie experiences from the art house to the grindhouse, featuring the good, the bad, the ugly, but not the boring or the banal.
He may look like the Lon Chaney Jr. of martial arts cinema, or the perfect Monster for a Chinastein movie that was never made, but that just means that Yang Sze, better known to history as Bolo Yeung, doesn't get enough credit for the pure manliness he has exuded consistently in his long pseudonymous career. In part that may be because he wasn't given enough opportunities to show his thespian range. At first glance, no doubt, directors and producers may have doubted his capacity for speech or reason. But every so often he was given a chance to shine, and he may never have glowed so brightly again as he did in the 1978 film Storming Attacks, released in the U.S. as Image of Bruce Lee. Of course, it was Bruce Li and not Bolo who was the titular image, though the fact is acknowledged only when his cop character, disguised as a cabbie, is told that he should go into the movies, since he is the .... and it is implied when, as a member of the police Special Squad, he must shimmy up the side of a building in a talismanic yellow tracksuit in a vain attempt to prevent a diamond merchant from committing suicide. So, no: Bolo is neither the image of Bruce Lee, nor a secondary hero, nor even the primary villain of the picture. Instead, we are to accept him as a Japanese gangster, Kimura, in league with a father-son team of counterfeiters. But this relatively small part gives him more character and dialogue than better known Bolo vehicles like Chinese Hercules. Here he appears as something for once closely resembling a human being, especially when it comes to clothes. Image is full of flamboyant fashion, its heroic cops being fond of big yellow scarves while, by comparison, the female lead often does without clothing entirely. But Bolo really stands out as the fashion plate of the picture, and an epitome of what it meant to be a man in Seventies exploitation cinema.
In cooler climates, or in front of pictures of them, Bolo prefers the dignified yet formidable look of leather.
In mixed company, portraying the smooth businessman, he has the best manners, perfected by years of rigorous training. He does not throw the woman over his shoulder and run off with her at the first meeting. All that comes in due time. Note his flexible ensemble, equally sporty with or without the jacket. Without, it is clear that the man was born to wear white, while turtlenecks become him equally well.
We're all used to Bolo the fighter, but Image of Bruce Lee gives us Bolo the lover as well, playful as well as suave, now in a blue jacket worthy of a yachtsman and glasses that express both sophistication and the vulnerability that chicks dig. He leaves a lasting impression on women. In this particular case the woman has a bruise on her breast where he slapped it.
But on a dime, Bolo can turn from lover back to fighter and master of suitcase fu.
Even on casual occasions, Bolo always has the winning look as he lives life to the fullest...
...and even if he loses a few, he's still a real swinger.
Image of Bruce Lee is actually a mildly entertaining film that comes off more like a crime film with incidental yet frequent kung fu fights. It has plenty of the garish sleaze that distinguishes kung fu films set in the modern day from period pieces, and Danna, the actress who plays the enigmatic "Agent Seven," remains a treat for the eyes even after her round of rassling with the ardent Bolo. But something is undeniably missing once the big guy quits the scene. Bruce Lee imitators pretty much grew on trees in those days, but there's still only one Bolo, a fact for which the world is eternally grateful.
Whichever of the purported directors of The Ninja Strikes Back came up with this image deserves to be considered the Rene Magritte of martial-arts cinema.
Two thousand years ago, give or take, the Flavian Amphitheater (known to us as the Colosseum) witnessed combat to the death from the mightiest killing machines of the age: the gladiators. In 1972, Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris revived the tradition, symbolically at least, by staging a mock mortal combat for the film Return (or Way) of the Dragon. Ten years later, Bruce Le and an international team of exploitation filmmakers continued that tradition in the film now under review, which is just a respectful way of saying they ripped off Return of the Dragon.
The Ninja Strikes Back, which was known elsewhere and at other times as Bruce Le Strikes Back or Eye of the Dragon, is a collaboration between Le and exploitation maven Dick Randall, who had earlier worked with the star in such stuff as The Clones of Bruce Lee. On his own, Randall produced films ranging from The Wild World of Jayne Mansfield to For Your Height Only. Le co-directed this film with Joseph Kong (aka Joseph Velasco), the director of Clones as well as the film with the most sublimely illiterate U.S. title ever: My Name Called Bruce. While co-star Andre Koob isn't listed as a director in the film itself, the RareFlix DVD box cover adds him to the list. So we have as many as three directors, along with a producer with a certain style, for a production that sprawls from Rome to Paris to Macao. This is a volatile mixture even before we get to the plot.
"Bruce" lives in Rome, where he and his friend Ron Wong are muscle for "The Boss." We are introduced to our hero in the back room of a pool hall where he's playing a high-stakes poker game. Catching a competitor cheating, Bruce chastises all involved with flying feet and the requisite Brucian screams. While fellow Brucian Dragon Lee resembles Curly Howard somewhat in his vocalizations, Le sometimes comes closer to Jerry Lewis, were Lewis a Bruce Lee imitator.
The Boss sends Bruce and Ron to carry out a drug deal. The deal goes bad and Bruce gets a bullet in the leg. Nobly he tells Ron to get away, and is himself taken by the police. At this point, nearly nine minutes into the picture, the opening credits appear.
Bruce serves his time and is released. In the meantime, Ron seems to have risen in the Boss's organization. He's now bold enough to propose kidnapping the daughter of a newly arrived ambassador (from where? who knows?) who won't do business with The Boss. He's also eager to have Bruce back in the gang, telling our hero, "It's a great big one I owe you." But Bruce wants to make a clean break from his criminal life. Invited by The Boss to beat up a captive for old time's sake, he demurs. Ron does the honors instead, while The Boss wishes Bruce well.
So of course Ron and some goons disguised as artists try to kill Bruce a few minutes later (in running time) while he's on the town with his (presumably) Italian girlfriend Laura. Our hero's kung fu is strong, but the gang has him on the ropes until a redheaded woman with a gun scatters the criminals. She never gets a name, but she turns out to be a policewoman working with Inspector Marino. The actress is audaciously named Chick Norris, but is really Corliss Randall, wife of the producer (who himself plays the Ambassador). The Rome police are investigating Ron and The Boss. They have more cause to investigate when Ron's kidnap plan kicks in. Ron is a creative thinker. This is who he sends after Sophie, the Ambassador's daughter.
Go ahead and question the utility of a kidnapper in drag, but this film's attitude is why not? There'll be more proof of this later. Right now, the thing is still just getting started.
Red and Marino start roughing up the criminal element for information on Ron, whom they suspect in the kidnapping. But their interrogation techniques won't get them very far. Here's how they work: they corner a guy in a pool hall, and Marino punches him once in the gut. They ask him about Ron, but he won't answer. They give up. Bruce is little help, either. At the hospital after the last attack, he tells the cops that he'll settle his business with Ron on his own. But after the gang attacks him at the hospital, Bruce is ready to go to Paris with Marino to help track down the kidnappers.
There's just enough of a hint of the Italian polizioteschigenre to give this kung fu movie a little Euro-exoticism. And as our heroes go to Paris the film begins to burrow its way into a special little world of sleaze. The tone is set by their visit to a discotheque, where Marino gets information using a gun and a urinal.
This informant directs our heroes to their next stop, a porno studio. This is as good a time as any for an Exploitation Movie Quiz.
Q. The script calls for the protagonists to invade a porno studio. Do you a)go for shock value by following them into the studio and surprising the crew, or b)build up suspense by showing the making of a pornographic film.
The correct answer is b). Or at least I assume that Messrs. Randall, Le, Kong et al hoped to create some sort of tension in their audience by allowing the lesbian scene within the film to develop from kissing to groping to bodies grinding nakedly together before Bruce and the Inspector spoil things. Now they have to reckon with porno set security. Had this been twenty years later, they might have had to deal with Kimbo Slice, and they probably would have had an easier time than they do with this fat guy.
But all of this effort only gets them another name and another destination. Coitus interruptus is the common motif here as our heroes catch Jean Pierre in the act. This only incites a chase scene and a hostage standoff on the Paris Metro. Then Jean Pierre ditches the kid and runs for it. He deserves what he gets: a beating. But when he tells the good guys what they want to know, they tell him to go home. He reveals that the ninja has taken Sophie to Macao.
The who? The whaaa? This is the first time anyone's mentioned a ninja in the movie, if you don't count those almost subliminal images from the opening credits. Who is this ninja person, anyway? The question takes us to Macao, still ruled by Portugal at the time, where young women are turned into doped-up nymphomaniacs in order to get prominent men into compromising positions.
And Yang Sze wants a piece of the action. Yes, it's our old friend Bolo Yeung taking his pick of the crop. Except he has to answer to none other than Harold "Oddjob" Sakata. And in case you had any confusion as to who he is, a bit of, er, borrowed James Bond music plays every time he shows up. Poor Bolo is Oddjob's bitch. The once-mighty "Chinese Hercules" lives in fear of Sakata-san's dreaded iron glove. It makes him whimper, "Put it away....I won't touch her, I swear it!"
But these mighty men are merely minions of the ninja, whom we see (for now) only from the chest down. To make sure of this, the camera freeze frames in the middle of a pan up they mystery man's ninja-clad body before the film hurries back to Italy to get Bruce back in the action. You see, it was one thing to tag along to Paris with the inspector, but Bruce would rather hang out on the beach and oil Laura's naked back than fly out to Macao.
Too bad, Bruce: a clumsy sniper blows a hole in Laura's head that was meant for yours. Ron isn't done with our hero yet, so Bruce isn't done with the search for Sophie. Of course, $50,000 from the Ambassador helps firm up his resolution. "Bring my daughter home," the diplomat pleads. "I will," Bruce says, "I promise...honest."
Now it's personal for Bruce, and it's only going to get more personal. Macao is Bruce's home town. His father drank and worried about him there, and Bruce's first thought is to pay Pop a visit. But the house is empty, except for a friend who appears to explain that two Japanese men (Oddjob and Bolo to you) showed up two months ago to kill Bruce's dad and kidnap his sister. "They were ninja," the friend says, "I'm sure of it." But not the ninja, of course.
For all his travails, sometimes it's still good to be Bolo Yeung.
All right, then. Randall's gang has been sort of teasing us with this ninja business for over half the picture. Here's where they start making up for it. Ninjas attack Bruce and his friend at a cemetery in all their pajama-clad backflipping splendor. These are full-tilt ninja, too; they have the power to vanish. I didn't say they throw smoke bombs and run away. I mean that they vanish into thin air. They also can burst out of the earth when they need to. And they decapitate people.
Bruce is hard pressed to put an end to this silliness.
But he prevails here and against both Bolo and Sakata, the latter on a boat with Sophie tied to the mast. For the occasion, our villain is sporting his old Oddjob hat, for all the good it's ever done him.
Hooray! Sophie and Bruce's sister and the other drugged-up nymphomaniacs are saved, and Bruce brings his prize back to Rome. But not all scores have been settled yet. With Marino and Red tied up in traffic, Bruce has barely deposited Sophie at the Ambassador's residence before she's kidnapped again, and the Ambassador himself is killed. You all forgot about Ron and The Boss, didn't you? But Ron forgets nothing. He calls Bruce and challenges him to fight the ninja to the death at the Colosseum to save Sophie. Funny thing is, when Bruce shows up and fights his way through a bunch of pretenders, the only dude left to face him is Ron himself. No pajamas, no magic tricks. So is Ron the ninja, after all, or did distributors simply require our filmmakers to use the word "ninja" a certain number of times in the script? We may never know. But there remains one more thing to be ripped off: the anatomical analysis of carnage innovated by Mr. Sonny Chiba.
As I've attempted to demonstrate, The Ninja Strikes Back has something for just about everybody, except for good taste. It has a soundtrack stolen from other movies, it has a Bruce Lee imitator as well as the real Bolo Yeung, it has quasi-pornography, appallingly Euro-fied disco music (the 70s seemed to end later on the Continent), tons of tourist footage of Rome, a decapitation, toplessness at every opportunity, and just when you start to think the title is a rip-off you get ninjas up the wazoo. The combination of disco and ninjas leaves the film poised on the border between 70s and 80s trash, as if a new era of exploitation cinema was struggling to be born. Randall, Le and Kong simply pile on as much junk as they can find to make a bigger bonfire, and it burns pretty good for a while. Their film has a cumulative effect as events grow more outrageous. The fun of it is wondering what they'll think of next, and when you reach that point the story doesn't really have to make sense anymore, which is a good thing for the story.
The Ninja Strikes Back is part of the RareFlix Triple Feature Vol. 3 box set, along with Lady Street Fighter (see below) and the Leo Fong starrer Revenge of the Bushido Blade. While Lady Street Fighter is strictly for the serious connoisseurs of bad moviemaking, Ninja is probably more accessible thanks to its more competent action and its flaunting of impressive locations. It also looks as good as it probably can in a widescreen edition straight from the rights holders. While I expect "good" things of the Fong film, I can say pretty confidently that the two movies I've seen make the set worth seeing for exotic cinema buffs.
The movie more correctly known by its officially translated title as "Freedom Strikes A Blow" is the story of a fighter overcoming his guilt at having killed an enemy by accident by learning that it's worthwhile to fight for a good cause or, more specifically, for the common people. You would be forgiven for thinking that the famous trailer for the American rendition of the film is advertising an entirely different movie.
You can split the difference if you think of CHINESE HERCULES as a monster movie. Like many a good monster film, it makes you wait for the title beast to appear. Until he does, we follow the sad career of Lee Hsi, an ardent martial arts student ("I never sleep. I practice every night.") who has issues with his girlfriend's brother. The brother provokes a fight ("It's no fun just hitting you.") and gets the worst of it. As his cronies cry out that he's dead, our horrified hero flees into the night. He heads out to a rocky beach and smashes his best fighting hand on the rocks, swearing that he'll never fight again.
He changes his name and begins a new life in a crappy village, apparently not far from the earlier beach, where the people depend on ships arriving at the pier for their livelihood. He goes to work under the name of Chung San (that's my best guess), but some astute co-workers figure that he's hiding something about himself. The anamorphic widescreen edition from BCI that I saw gives the location a picturesque squalor, but the business practices are even more squalid. The paymaster takes an instant dislike to our hero and dumps his first roll of bills on the ground to humiliate him. Our man then gets on the wrong side of the boss by intervening when the boss's goons set about beating two petty thieves to death. Since the hero will not fight, he offers to pay for what they stole. The boss says he'll pay for everything the urchins stole in the past, too, and if he can't, then he can take their beating. He's got two friends to stand up for them, only one of whom can fight (the other being a pudgy comic-relief type), so it's up to old Uncle Lo, the foreman, to save Chung San's skin by begging for mercy.
Later, Lo lectures his men. "Our boss is a real bastard, and don't forget that," he says, as if this were the Dilbert of martial-arts films.
In any event, our hero's ordeal has endeared him to more of his co-workers as well as the poor thieves. He chides the pair for doing stuff that could get people killed, remembering his own indiscretion. Meanwhile, the boss is fawning over a wealthy visitor who represents The Syndicate. The Syndicate wants exclusive use of the pier for their traffic in "special girls." No other ships must be allowed to dock there, and the current work crew must all be fired. The boss has a moment of conscience, telling his guest that the people of the village have no other means of support. The Syndicate guy opens a suitcase full of gold ingots. End of discussion.
The situation deteriorates as the workers fight back against the downsizing effort. One of our hero's friends storms the boss's compound while he's fondling and kissing the ingots and ignoring his mistress. As she watches dispassionately, the boss's goons eventually beat the malcontent to death and bring his body to the beach where the workers have gathered, apparently for the funeral of the fat guy's dead bird. The boss's taunting is more than Chung San can bear, but then again, it isn't. Still unwilling to fight, he faces another beating until Uncle Lo steps up and says he's had enough. It just so happens that he once killed someone in combat, also, and also vowed never to fight again, but this is more than he can stand, he can't stand no more. The boss "needs a lesson" and gets it. Uncle Lo is the "old" in the trailer, but easily outclasses and cripples the boss.
The boss licks his wounds at the Syndicate guy's compound, where Chiang Tai, aka Chinese Hercules, is lounging at a table in an open shirt. We saw him briefly when the Syndicate visited the pier, but now, more than halfway through the story, he begins to take a more active role. After the pier boss explains his failures, CH gets up and strolls over to him with a cup of tea, only to swat him to the ground. CH whips his shirt off so the director can study the massive back of Yang Sze, the artist latterly known as Bolo Yeung. Then he sets to work crushing the boss's skull with his bare hands. When the Syndicate guy asks who the second-in-command was, the boss's underlings take that as a threat and say nothing, but the mistress appoints herself to the post, promising the Syndicate that "I'm very cooperative."
Yang Sze, who eventually acquired the name of his character "Bolo" from Robert Clouse's Enter the Dragon (1973)
At approximately 56 minutes into the picture, it's time for Chinese Hercules and his handler to visit Uncle Lo. The handler explains to Herc that Uncle Lo is a fool, then quizzes the big guy on his catechism in a motif to be repeated later.
Syndicate Guy: What do we do with fools?
Chinese Hercules: We kill 'em and dump 'em.
It's a surprisingly even fight, and old Lo is actually getting the upper hand when the Syndicate guy flicks a lit cigarette into his face. That gives Chinese Hercules the opening he needs to, as the trailer will put it, put a crush on Uncle Lo. Herc is a poor winner, however, turning on his minder and throwing a childish tantrum. "I DON'T NEED HELP!" he screams, but the Syndicate guy mollifies him by explaining that he just compulsively throws lit cigarettes around. It must be a nervous habit.
Meanwhile, a lone ship appears to break the ban on docking at the pier. Alas, the only cargo unloaded is our hero's girlfriend from the start of the film, searching for her lost love. Describing him as a great fighter, she gets little help from the workers, since the only recent arrival, Chung San, "has no idea how to fight." At the same time, the two thieves have literally stumbled across their dying Uncle Lo, who tells them to fetch Chung San. On their way back with him, they cross the girlfriend's path. He denies his identity and runs away from everyone. The delirious Lo doesn't know the difference and tells the absent hero that "I know you're a fighter....You're one of us, now. You've got to help them." The object of his concern has slunk back to hear the last of this from outside. He flees again.
Now everyone is very sad, and it is time to bury Uncle Lo. Our hero watches from a distance, but the girlfriend sees him. He may be a coward, she thinks, but she's not. She promises the workers to lead their resistance to the Syndicate, in combat if necessary. The two thieves still believe in our hero, but he's sinking deeper into self-pitying madness. "Can't you see it?" he insists, "My hands, they're full of blood!"
We get some front and back views of Chinese Hercules as he practices for his handicap match against the pier workers. A stroll on the beach with the Syndicate boss brings him face to face with an angry proletariat. The boss is dismissive.
Syndicate Guy: Chiang Tai, there are a lot of people here. What are they waiting for?
Chinese Hercules: For death.
Let's give the workers credit for taking the battle to Chinese Hercules. This melee is where most of the footage in the trailer comes from. It's pretty one-sided. By the way, if you pay close attention to the trailer you might notice that Chinese Hercules doesn't actually fight the hero's girlfriend. That honor goes to the Syndicate guy. Syndicate kung fu is actually pretty good, as he gets the better of the fight and invites her to surrender and go to bed with him. Fortunately, a surviving elder solicits a truce before Chinese Hercules kills everyone or the girl suffers the fate worse than death. The defeated workers will now have to pack up and leave.
Our hero watches sulkily as the peons move out. The fat guy spits on him. The girlfriend goads him; "if you really think you're guilty, why haven't you killed yourself?" she asks, "If you're trying to live, at least try to redeem yourself." At this he walks away. She takes this to mean he's now going to fight the bad guys. That realization inspires second thoughts, since "he hasn't practiced in three months." She also explains to our hero's erstwhile pal the fat guy that, her last statement notwithstanding, her brother isn't actually dead. He only got knocked out on that fateful day. She saw fit not to tell her boyfriend about this important detail because maybe he needs to fight Chinese Hercules, or die trying, to be a man again. "Perhaps I'm wrong," she allows, and through this the fat guy looks like he's thinking what I'm thinking.
So now our poor doomed man faces the enemy on the beach. The boss is surprised to see even one holdout.
Syndicate Guy: He must be a dead man. What do we do with dead men?
Chinese Hercules: Pick 'em up and dump 'em in the sea.
This proves more easily said than done, despite another timely flick of the cigarette from the gangster and another tantrum from Herc. You can guess the outcome but I'll leave you to see how the hero does it for yourselves. Before moving on to a more general topic, let me add that Chinese Hercules is part of a Grindhouse double feature disc, accompanied by Black Dragon, which boasts a commentary track from star Ron Van Clief. You can watch the films individually or opt for the "grindhouse experience" including trailers and snackbar ads. I don't know if better copies of Chinese Hercules are available, but I'm pretty sure that worse can be had quite cheaply. You may as well opt for the pictorially sound copy, since the action is reasonably well staged (though sometimes the dubbing is badly timed) and widescreen really does justice to the location work. It's an entertaining film and the real star really sells his character arc to hold the story together. It also has that quality I find lacking in many more recent martial arts films....
* * *
"So when, three decades ago, kung fu films became popular, was it not obvious that we were dealing with a genuine working-class ideology of youngsters whose only means of success was the disciplinary training of their bodies, their only possession?"
- SLAVOJ ZIZEK
I don't know if they make movies like "Freedom Strikes A Blow" anymore in the Chinese-speaking world. If they do, they're not getting exported to the U.S. like they once were. My memory's first impression of "Kung Fu Theater" is of a poor people's cinema, just as kung fu and other (usually) weaponless disciplines are poor people's martial arts. The grungy milieu of Chinese Hercules reminded me of The Big Boss and countless other films that seemed to root the genre in the working class experience, or a working-class fantasy of power. There were always period pieces as well, and I know now that the more fantastical wuxia (swordplay) films were being made all through this period, but now it seems like wuxia products like House of Flying Daggers are China's primary cinematic export, while no one seems to have filled Jackie Chan's shoes by making more mundane martial-arts films. The nearest I see anywhere to old school "Kung Fu Theater" are the Thai action films of Tony Jaa and his peers. But I bet that when Thailand gets richer we'll see more FX-laden legendary stories and less does-his-own-stunts meat & potatoes martial arts. Maybe the way the Chinese see it, the old-school kung fu movie was their equivalent of the American B-western and nobody wants to make those kind of movies anymore. But maybe it's a sign of cultural confidence and affirmation that they can make these state-of-the-art epics instead of movies about working-class fighters.
This isn't meant to reflect on the Chinese, either. You can see what you might call a bourgeois-ification of genres elsewhere in the world. American comedy is a great example. The silent slapstick classics were mostly set in a working-class milieu; a lot of the comedy derived from workplace props and seemed rooted in workplace experience or mass anxieties about workplace performance. But I don't know if there's been sustained working-class comedy since the Three Stooges. Would Cheech and Chong count? The prevailing comedians today all seem to be firmly middle-class, and I don't know how often you might find blue-collar workplace humor in American movies today.
I'm not saying working-class genres are superior to all others, because the bad heavily outweighs the good in Chinese martial arts movies and American slapstick. But something does seem to be missing, or at least I'm missing it, when the movies can't find material in the experiences of the majority of their viewers.