Stoner (1974)

[Drunk Monk]

Never fear, dear cranefly, you're not alone. Stoner is a guilty pleasure for many of us. The shaolinrasta who lent it to me is so into it that he's been searching for vintage posters on Ebay. Angela is great in this - one of kung fu's earliest kung fu babes. She's sooo petulent, and we love her for it. George is so freaking awful he's an embarrassment to the brotherhood of Bonds. No wonder he only Bonded once. Sammo is great too. Sammo is always great. He's like Queen Latifah, totally outside the celbrity 'mold', forging his career to the best of his ability. He struggles to make George look good in the fights, and even though George is a good head taller than Sammo and strapping, Sammo could just whup his ass any time, any time at all.

I think you're mixing up two scenes - when George & Angela are drugged in the cage, they can clearly see each other. There's another scene when they are both sneaking into the temple and it's supposed to be dark, fighting each other as an unseen foe. Interestingly enough, that's an homage to "Night fight" (not sure of the actual title) but it's a classic comedy/martial arts routine that's stage in Chinese Opera. It's great to see live performed by true Opera stars - captivating, humorous, a brilliant fight scene. A lot of the plot quirks of kung fu movies stem back to the roots of performance martial arts - opera and street theater - as well as pulp fiction - George & Angela's night fight was a perfect example of this.