Return to the 36th Chamber (1980) July 8, 2007
Posted by Cal in : 1970s films, Kung Fu , trackbackDirector: Lau Kar-Leung Cast: Lau Kar-Fai (Gordon Liu), Wang Lung-Wei (Johnny Wong), Hui Ying-Hung (Kara Hui), Kwan Yung-Moon Action Director: Lau Kar-Leung Territory: Hong Kong Production Company: Shaw Brothers
The runaway success of The 36th Chamber of Shaolin pretty much guaranteed a sequel would be made. The trouble was, how could it work? San Te (Lau Kar-Fai) had already gone through the gruelling training required to become a master of the martial arts and exacted his promised revenge on the cruel Manchurian General. Last we saw of him, San Te had returned the Shaolin Temple to become a monk and had set up the titular 36th Chamber. What more could you do? Give him amnesia and make him go through the whole process again?
Thankfully, they came up with a much better idea – Lau Kar-Fai plays Chou Jen Chieh, a conman pretending to be San Te. This comes in useful when the workers at a small dye factory have a pay dispute with their Manchurian employers. Chou is brought in, playing San Te, to negotiate and subtly intimidate the bosses into paying the workers their full wages using a mock Kung Fu demonstration. Inevitably, the Manchu get wise to the con and pummel the workers into submission. Humiliated, Chou departs for the Shaolin Temple to undergo training for real. Here he meets the ‘real’ San Te (now played by Lee King-Chue), who continually thwarts Chou’s attempts at learning Kung Fu, and instead makes him erect a massive net of scaffolding around the entire Temple for future renovation work. Once complete, Chou is dismayed when, instead of finally being accepted as a pupil by San Te, he is told to tear down the scaffolding and promptly thrown out of the Temple for good. However, when he returns to his down-at-heel friends, he quickly discovers he might have picked up a few techniques after all…
Probably as a result of being made after Drunken Master (and being a sequel), there is a lot of comedy involved in this film. I’ve said it before, but I really don’t think the Shaw Brothers writers really ‘got’ comedy, and this is another largely witless and unfunny attempt. The exception is the great scene early on where Chou, imitating San Te, uses a series of tricks to make believe he’s the real McCoy. Apart from that, the humour is lame in the extreme and gets extremely tiresome after a while.
Thankfully, like the original film, this has a three-act structure, and the second and third acts are nowhere near as bad as the first. In the second act, the film picks up considerably when Chou starts his training (unbeknownst to himself). The section is not as good as in the original, but has plenty of good stuff in there – like Chou washing his face by throwing a large rock into well and using the splashback to his advantage. And of course, you’ve got all the scaffolding work, which doesn’t take a genius to foretell is going to come in useful at a later point. Unfortunately, the larking about during the first part of the film eats far too much time and we’re left with a rather curtailed training section when compared to the first film. But what’s there is good, and that’s the main thing.
The third and final act, where Chou takes on the dye factory bosses, is actually an improvement on the original film in that it doesn’t feel like an anti-climax after all the hardship the lead character goes through. Also, like Martial Club (and like a lot of Shaw films from this period), almost all of it was filmed inside the studio. When the climax comes, the players go outdoors for real, and this feels almost like the film is breaking out of prison.
It goes without saying that the action scenes are magnificent, this being a Lau Kar-Leung film. The only downside being that there aren’t any real action scenes early on. But as mentioned above, that early section does let the side down for many reasons. Don’t let it put you off, though, because after the initial segment the film is really an excellent example of the period. And one hell of a neat idea for a sequel.
Comments»
no comments yet - be the first?