Enter the Fat Dragon

[Drunk Monk]

So I watched Enter the Fat Dragon last night.  I found a scratchy dubbed version (with mismatched subs) on the web.  I recant my earlier comment that it is one of my all time favs.  Truth be told, I probably only saw it once before and I forgot a lot of it.  Sammo's impersonation of Lee is still amazing, but it's horribly dated and stilted.  It's basically Return of the Dragon but instead of Bruce going to Italy, it's Sammo going to HK.  His uncle has a restaurant, well, more of a food stall in the back of a ghetto alley, and they get terrorized by gangsters.  Sammo must fend them off, the twist being he's an uber Bruce fanboy and always tries to mimic him.  But he fights well, and even nails many of Lee's subtle gestures.  It's still worth the watch but my memory rose-tinted it far more than it should have.  Sometimes I think I should never go back for these things because it might spoil my fond memories, even if they are false memories.  

I only got an hour in before slumber took me.  It was late.  I'll probably finish it next week, just for the finale fight.

Ok reposted that above to reiterate.  So yeah, not nearly as good as I remember, but still interesting.  Yuen Biao appears in an opening credit scene fight.  Chiu Chi Ling has a small fight scene where he gets the crap beaten out of himself, quickly, like usual.  That always makes me happy. The mighty Lee Hoi-Sang is a Hakgwai - a 'black ghost'.  Yeah, in black face with a fro, red bell bottoms, gold chains and a purple satin shirt.  Horribly racist by today's standards but pretty commonplace representation of black peeps in Kung Fu flicks of this era.

Sammo sustains his Lee impersonation until the final fight with another Chinese Kung Fu fighter, and then he goes classic style.  The final fight is that dude, the Hakgwai and an evil Gwailo boxer in a warehouse full of Marlboro boxes, and rather mysteriously, kung fu staffs and fighting metal rings.  It's weak comedy Kung Fu but typical of the period.

I enjoyed it for what it was, and I'm glad to have seen it with Donnie's upcoming redux, which looks completely different. FWIW, Sammo is not at his fattest here, quite the opposite he's as trim as he ever was, and his Kung Fu is, as always, superb.  

No sword fights.  Not particularly DOOM recommended anymore.  But at least it won't be 4+ hours.

Which reminds me...

I'm not promising anything, but I'm going to try to finish Until the End of the World before you finish Enter the Fat Dragon.

Not that you really care.  But I do.  I need to set meaningful deadlines for myself, you know.

Woohoo!  I win.  I win again!!!  I love winning.