Rivals of Kung Fu (1974)

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

RIVALS OF KUNG FU is one of many Wong Fei Hung movies made in Hong Kong over the last few decades. This one is made by Shaw Brothers, featuring the virtually unknown actor Shih Chung Tien as the eponymous healer and fighter, and ENTER THE DRAGON bad guy Shih Kien as his ruthless rival, a role that the actor had played many times in earlier Wong Fei Hung movies in his career.There's plenty to recognise here in scenes of a careful and controlled Fei Hung healing members of the community and doing his best by everybody, and in the hands of Shaw the production values are exemplary. It's not an action-packed spectacle, but there's a huge brawling fight that begins in a tea house and ends up with a massive showdown in the streets. This takes place around the mid point and is the highlight of the movie, with the climactic lion dance a slight anticlimax afterwards.The supporting cast is generally interesting, and features femme fatale Lily Li in a non-fighting role, although she gets plenty of screen time. Kien is a delight, as always, while Chan Shen makes for his usual menacing hero. Fans of '80s comedies like MR. VAMPIRE will be delighted to see Ricky Hui in a small role and, yes, he gets a funny comic sub-plot involving some macabre shenanigans. Bruceploitation star Bruce Le also randomly shows up and gets the opportunity to kick some backside. This isn't one of Shaw's best films, but it's a solid effort from them regardless.

RIVALS OF KUNG FU (1974) is the second Wong Fei Hung movie made about the character after the long-running series starring Kwan Tak Hing as Wong (99 films, 1949-1970) ended. It followed MASTER OF KUNG FU (1973), also from Shaw Bros., which starred Ku Feng in the role, but in the physician/martial artist's later years. RIVALS was even directed by the man who directed nine of the last films in the earlier series and it co-stars Shih Kien as Wong's antagonist, a role Shih played in most of the films in that series. So it may not be idle speculation to consider this film an unofficial continuation of that series. (Kwan Tak Hing would make guest appearances as Wong in numerous unrelated kung fu films over the next decade or so.) RIVALS stars Shih Chung-tien, a relative newcomer, as Wong, his first and possibly only starring role.RIVALS is rather loosely plotted and its main plot line, about preparations for a Lion Dance competition and the question of who Wong will aid in getting the trophy, goes by the wayside quite frequently for comic vignettes or violent confrontations involving other characters. One subplot involves Wong's offer to "treat" the effeminate tendencies of his benefactor's only son, who's due to get married, and the treatment seems highly suspect. In any event, when the triumphant wedding procession begins, the film cuts abruptly away to some other business and never comes back to it. I found this meandering style of narrative tiresome in parts, but the film is worth sticking with until the end, since the Lion Dance finale is lengthy and quite detailed and ranks with some of the best Lion Dance sequences I've ever seen in a kung fu film. The film was shot entirely on Shaw Bros. studio sets.Shih Chung-tien came to the film with a strong background in martial arts. According to the biographical info provided on the Celestial R3 DVD, he was a judo and karate coach at the Taiwan Police Academy. He's not the most charismatic kung fu star I've seen, but he carries himself with some authority and handles the fight scenes very well. He went on to appear in dozens of subsequent kung fu films, many of which I've seen, but I can't identify any other starring roles he had. His chief student in the film, a wiry and scrappy fellow named Ah Chi, is played by Liang Chien-lung, aka Huang Chien-lung, the name given on the DVD case, and also known as Bruce Le. He has a substantial martial arts background, too, and went on to make many more kung fu films, although I've seen very few of them. He has more than a few good fight scenes in this as well. Both of them fight Master Shen (Shih Kien, who had played Han in ENTER THE DRAGON a year earlier). Wong's final fight with Shen is especially exciting.There are a number of notable performers among the supporting cast. Ricky Hui, one of a trio of brothers who became prominent comic actors in Hong Kong films (the others being Michael and Sam), appears as Little Rat, a hanger-on in the entourage of Master Shen, and has a funny scene involving grave-robbing. Two fighting femmes, Lily Li and Sharon Yeung Pan Pan, who would excel together in Lau Kar Leung's 8 DIAGRAM POLE FIGHTER (1984) a decade later, play Wong's female students. Lily has no fight scenes but she does participate in the Lion Dance. Sharon has one fight scene. Ching Miao plays Boss Chou, Wong's wealthy backer and the one who pressures him to join the Lion Dance competition, while other familiar Shaw Bros. character actors play other key roles in the tight-knit Guangdong community depicted in the film.Given the timeline of Wong Fei Hung's actual career, I would guess that the film is set in the 1880s or 1890s, which makes the inclusion of a hospital truck and a motorcycle in the final sequence something of an anachronism. (Wong lived to see such conveyances, but he would have been in his 60s or 70s by then.) While this isn't one of the best Wong Fei Hung films I've seen (which are too numerous to list here), it has its distinct pleasures and should be seen by fans of this unique kung fu subgenre.

Everyone's looking to win the annual Lion Dance trophy, including Huang Fei Hung (Chung Tien Shih). The kindly physician has only 20 students, but when he decides he wants something, he usually gets it. Among his students is "Ghostly Legs" ("ghostly" meaning fast) Ah Chi (Bruce Le, channeling the spirit of Bruce Lee). At one point, the opposition, led by Shen (Shih Kien, who played Han in ENTER THE DRAGON), tries to frame Huang Fei Hung by placing a decomposing corpse in his village hospital. This gives Lu Wei the chance to pretty much steal the show: he's a corrupt cop who's more than willing to look the other way when it comes to The Law- as long as he's being properly compensated. He's more than willing to charge Hung with harboring a criminal (because the dead man was a pickpocket), drug dealing (the man was also an addict) and murder (since the man is now dead). There's also a funny scene involving a "director" who appears to be sleeping through one interrogation (which quickly devolves into a transaction); whether the filmmakers were poking fun at movie directors who were said to fall asleep while directing (Lo Wei, for one; Alfred Hitchcock for another), it's a very funny scene. On top of all this, there's an heir who needs to grow a pair ("I don't want to be a man!" he wails at one point) and the almost throwaway scene where a henchman is told to give his clothes to a rotting cadaver (the one used in the frame up). RIVALS OF KUNG FU is funny, if nothing else.