Drunken Master

"No one calls my dad's kung fu shit!"

There's something special about kung fu films from the 70s and 80s... the hairstyles, the dodgy facial hair, the exagerrated sound effects (even punches that don't connect make a dull whooshing sound through the air), the overdubbing, the dramatic zoom-ins, wacky comedic characters and freeze-frame scene endings are all vital and wrong-sounding ingredients to a recipe that defies the laws of good taste to create something magical and delicious. A lot of this sort of thing can be attributed to (and is found in) Drunken Master, Jackie Chan's first big super-hit as actor and stunt co-ordinator. It's a film that continued on the promise of Chan's previous film (Snake in the Eagle's Shadow) in that it combined kung fu with more comedic elements, a stylistic decision that went a long way to solidifying Chan's success and screen persona whilst also ensuring the survival of the kung fu genre in the wake of Bruce Lee's death.

Chan plays Wong Fei-Hung (or Freddy, if you're going off the English dub), the resident clown of his kung fu school. We follow his cocky and mischievous misadventures as he shows off his kung fu knowledge and gets into scrapes with other troublemakers from a rival kung fu school. When Fei-Hung's misbehaviour becomes too shameful for his father to bear he is entrusted into the care of his uncle Su Hai (Yuen Siu Tien), a drunken beggar to be both feared and ridiculed. Su Hai proceeds to teach and train Fei-Hung in a secret martial art style known as 'the Eight Drunken Immortals', a skill that he will need to call on if he is protect his father from the assassin known as Thunderleg (Hwang Jang Lee).

Wong Fei-Hung is actually a real historical figure from relatively recent Chinese history, a folk hero from the late 19th century who specialised in the Hung Ga style of martial arts. You wouldn't know it from this film though, Chan portrays the character as a loveable but insolent teenager who must be humiliated before he will accept his uncle's brutal and unorthodox training techniques. He gets disowned by his father for both good and bad reasons, whether we see him as a hero or not is entirely dependent on Chan's charisma and impressive comedic timing. The scene where Fei-Hung is first defeated by Thunderleg in battle becomes important tragi-comic dramatic fodder, with our unlikely hero later reliving the lowpoints of this battle in his mind as shamelessly manipulative music echoes plaintively. Chan isn't afraid to really run with this in the grand over-the-top manner of film history's great comedians. In fact, a lot of this film's success is due to Chan's willingness to break so completely free from the Bruce Lee tradition of the stoic martial arts hero - no joke is too crude for Chan to exploit!

Another great aspects of this film is So Hai, who is built up before his appearance as some kind of monster and then appears contrary to our expectations as a drunken and good-natured old man afflicted with the DTs if he fails to get his daily wine. Also, the film makes entertaining use of a variety of hilarious and semi-real kung fu styles - the "devil's kick", "ironhead style", "monkey" kung fu, "five animal style", and of course - the eight "drunken" styles employed by Fei-Hung in the film's climactic battle. A lot of this stuff is energetically and intricately choreographed by Chan, who was eager to make his mark at the time - leading to some amazing and deceptively-effortless looking fight sequences. The camera does it's best to keep up by using some interesting angles to capture what it can, but all the talent is in Chan's rhythm. He would go on to stage an exponentially dangerous series of stunts for his blockbuster films in the 1980s, but it's these late 70s 'traditional' kung fu films where you really see him pushing his body to its limits.

DIRECTOR: Yuen Woo-Ping
WRITER/SOURCE: Lung Hsiao, Yuen Woo-Ping and Ng See-Yuen.
KEY ACTORS: Jackie Chan, Yuen Siu-Tien, Hwang Jang Lee.

RELATED TEXTS:
- Chan and director Yuen Woo-Ping pioneered the comedy/kung fu crossover genre in Snake in the Eagle's Shadow before hitting the big time with Drunken Master.
- Fearless Hyena, another late 70s Jackie Chan vehicle, is virtually a complete retread of Drunken Master.
- Chan reprised his character for a 1994 sequel, The Legend of Drunken Master.
- Yuen Siu-Tien also reprised his character for a series of spinoff films; Dance of the Drunk Mantis, Story of Drunken Master and World of the Drunken Master. Siu-Tien also directed the recent prequel film, True Legend, but doesn't actually appear as it features a young version of his character.
- There have been quite a few knock offs of this film, including but not limited to: The Drunken Fighter, Shaolin Drunken Monk, Drunken Tai Chai, Revenge of the Drunken Master and Drunken Master III.