Fearless Hyena

Featuring Jackie Chan's mischievious early era screen persona, this low budget kung fu film showcases some exciting camera work and Chan's innovative trademark choreography. The title 'Fearless Hyena' refers to the 'emotional' style of kung fu that Chan's character uses in the final parts of the film, and the film itself is a fairly fun piece of comedy kung fu.

Chan plays Shing Lung, a rather aimless and lazy young man who learns the art of kung fu from his wise grandfather, Chen Peng-Fei (James Tien). Shing Lung falls in with a gang of knockabout conmen who decide to make him their champion, and he starts using his skills to win cash fights set up against other kung-fu clans. Unfortunately this attracts the attention of Yen Ting Hua, an evil kung fu master who inexplicably roams the countryside killing random good guys whilst looking for Shing Lung's grandfather.

Fearless Hyena is almost completely plotless, the first half of the film is little more than a series of sketches centring about Chan's character (witness one superfluous comedy sequence where Shing Lung tries to get a job as a second-hand coffin salesman). For most of the film Shing Lung is very much a comedy character, accompanied by Three Stooges-styled cheesy sound effects (and a ripoff of the Pink Panther theme tune), until the last half an hour or so where the film does an about face and turns into a semi-serious revenge quest (with Shing Lung having to grow up as a result). It's fairly silly a lot of the time, and the older characters are very obviously just young men made up to look old thanks to some grey hairspray, but hey - no one's watching this film for it's plot.

The main reason to watch it is for Chan's skill as a kung fu master... you can see a lot of Buster Keaton in the way he works physical comedy into his routines, though sometimes it can get pretty low brow (witness the sequence where Chan fights in the guise of a retarded gardener, or where he beats a massive opponent whilst dressed in drag as a shy, young woman!) One of the film's major highlights would have to be the 'fight' scene that takes place over a lunch of noodles, with most of the action being played out via chopsticks. The film's other big selling point is the invention of 'emotional' kung fu, where Chan battles his nemesis using a variety of ridiculous styles that mimic basic emotions such as sorrow or playfulness.

DIRECTOR: Jackie Chan and Kenneth Tsang
WRITER/SOURCE: Jackie Chan and Kenneth Tsang
KEY ACTORS: Jackie Chan, James Tien, Lee Kwan, Dean Shek, Yam Sai-kwoon, Chan Wai-Lau

RELATED TEXTS:
- This film is also known as Revenge of the Dragon.
- It was also followed by an exploitative sequel, Fearless Hyena II. Chan started work on this film but broke his contract quite early to join another picture company, leading the director (Lo Wei) to try and blackmail him via the Triad gangs. The dispute was resolved without Chan returning to the film, and Lo Wei created the rest of the film using outtakes and archival footage from the first film. Chan saw the end result and thought it was unreleasable, he even went to court to try and shut it down but was unsuccessful.
- There is also another film, often titled Fearless Hyena III (despite the fact that it was filmed between the first and second films), that apparently features a hopeless Jackie Chan look-alike named Jackie Chen.
- A lot of Fearless Hyena adheres to the same formula used in the earlier Chan film Drunken Master.