Films of Fury: The Kung Fu Movie Book by Ric Meyers Read Free Book Online Page A

Hong Kong filmmakers in the early 1970s could wrap up a normal production in seventy-two hours, a “big-budget extravaganza” in a week. Fist of Fury premiered in Hong Kong less than five months after The Big Boss , but proved to be at least twice the picture. It may have cost twice as much, but it made at least twice as much as well.
    Lee makes it clear from the very outset that a new age of filmmaking, fight choreography, and screen acting had dawned. When the audience first sees him — playing the now legendary character of Chen Zhen , student of kung fu sifu Huo Yuan-jia — he is so overcome with grief at the death of his master that he leaps into the grave and onto the coffin, clawing and crying. From then on, his body becomes an extension of his character. Set in the Shanghai of the late 1920s, the film depicts a society in which the Chinese are all but spit upon by the occupying Japanese. Using a series of disguises, including a rickshaw driver and, in a delightful turn, a grinning, mincing phone repairman, Lee discovers the murderers and takes them apart.
    Within the seemingly simple story, Lee invested a wealth of invention and imagination. But what truly set the film apart was the fierce sense of identity Lee infused the movie with. As great as so many scenes are, the one that changed everything for Hong Kong kung fu films takes place outside a park. There, Chen Zhen is prevented from entering, and made aware of a sign reading “No Dogs or Chinese.” A kimonoed Japanese (played by Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan ’s Peking Opera school classmate Yuen Wah ) offers to escort him in … if Chen crawls between the Japanese’s legs like a dog.
    Lee levels him, then does a Marlowe -esque kick to shatter the “No Dogs or Chinese” sign. I’ve been told by those lucky enough to have seen the film’s original run in Hong Kong cinemas that they had never sensed such a mass triumphant psychological release before or since. But Lee wasn’t done with them yet. The climatic moment in a movie filled with climatic moments came when Lee destroys a calligraphy that reads “The Chinese Are the Weaklings of Asia.”
    The icing on the cake was Bruce’s introduction of the nunchaku — two small clubs joined by a short length of chain. Lee supposedly learned the particular nunchaku skill with his star student Daniel Inosanto . However he learned it, he had chosen a particularly cinematic, esoteric weapon with which to dazzle viewers. To see Lee swirl and spin the sticks with ridiculous ease was to experience pure enchantment — despite the fact that the nunchaku is one of the least effective martial art weapons in the arsenal (given its difficulty of true control). It sure looks great though, doesn’t it?
    Fist of Fury ends by freeze-framing on a tremendous leap by Lee, seemingly right into his persecutors’ bullets, defiant to the end. To say the Hong Kong audience went crazy would be an understatement. Unlike Huang Fei-hong, Lee did not turn the other cheek or remain humble and unassuming. He stood up and shouted, “I’m Chinese and proud of it!” Then, perhaps even more importantly (certainly to his eventual international audience), he backed it up with on-screen kung fu skill hitherto fore unseen by anyone.
    Seeing even Kwan Tak-hing take on his movie adversaries with rhythmic certainty couldn’t compare with Bruce’s electric power. No one could. It was like comparing a dancing bear to Fred Astaire . Bruce’s kung fu clout, control and command was instantly identifiable as the real deal, and once audiences saw the real deal, they wouldn’t settle for less. Seemingly overnight, kung fu cinema convulsed into its first real era.
    Lee was not about to rest on his laurels. No more Wei or Han. After creating his own Concord Productions , he struck a deal with Golden Harvest to co-produce his next film — which Lee would star, direct, write, and choreograph (officially). Way of the Dragon (1972) opened in Hong Kong just