Snake Fist Fighter

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.

Rated R for Violence and Brief Sexual Content. Quebec Rating:13+(should be G) Canadian Home Video Rating:PG

I got Master With Cracked Fingers along with Fantasy Mission Force on VHS about five years ago.This is Jacie Chan's first starring role in a film.It was originally an incomplete film but after Chan got famous it used footage from the film Drunken Master and they filmed some more footage for the final scenes.I was not really impressed by this film.Its just like the millions of other cheap kung fu films from 1970's Hong Kong.The only thing stopping it from being your average Kung Fu film that plays on Drive In Classics occasionally is that Jackie CHan who is very famous in America now stars in the film.The film is about a young boy who learns Kung Fu from an old man(Jackie Chan and the old man who teaches him were both in Drunken Master together).The young boy grows up and completes his kung fu training.He works in a restaurant but a couple of thugs start wrecking havoc so Chan stops them.However his father punishes him for fighting and when he doesn't fight his master punishes him for fighting.MAster With Cracked Fingers isn't excellent but its a good cheap kung fu film and you will like it if you like these types of movies.

Runtime:80min

7/10

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 was Jackie's first lead role filmed (partly) in 1971 and originally called The Little Tiger of Canton. Jackie's father is killed in a feud between triad gangs leaving his young orphaned son to grow up, learn kung foo and avenge the death of his father. The problem is half way through the filming the director and producer did a runner leaving the actors unpaid and the movie unfinished. In 1978, after Jackie had become famous with Snake in the Eagles Shadow and Drunken master the film was finished using a dodgy Jackie look-alike. They even go to the extent of fighting blindfolded in order to hide his face. It's a shame because to spite the obvious low budget and poor script I found it fairly entertaining up to that point. So be warned unless your happy with half a Jackie Chan film (and not his best by any means)I wouldn't recommend paying the price of DVD to see it.

First off this is jackies first staring role. Secondly the producer quit the whole movie and left all the actors without a producer which means no movie. So if you add both those into account you have to finish the movie with what you have. This is a old movie and a young jackie.. Jackie does pull off a few good moves near the end on the dock fight if you watch closely and he's very agile. They added a lot of scenes after drunken master made it big. The blindfold fight, the training katas (drunken master clips) and a few other extras thrown in. Anything with the teenage jackie is jackie chan which most people know and the children and parent part is also part of the movie. The fighting in this is average but I found it pretty entertaining and the jackie double can movie quite well. There's a special edition of this movie with the real ending but I've never seen it. So try and get that version!