GRAND MASTER OF SHAOLIN KUNG FU (1978)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

GRAND MASTER OF SHAOLIN KUNG FU has received only two online reviews that I could find, and even these aren't certain as to whether or not schlockmeister Godfrey Ho might've co-directed this item. If so it must've been around the same time as his helming of THE DYNAMITE SHAOLIN HEROES, and like that film, MASTER is at least marginally comprehensible within the standardized tropes of the kung fu flick. Both seem to star a handful of Chinese actors amid a Korean support-cast.

Before even meeting the hero, the viewer sees a talisman that will change his life: a mystic pearl that passes from one pair of hands to another. The pearl has the power to get the owner into a special Buddhist (and Shaolin?) temple, and it's shown shining an intense ray that opens the way for the seeker, though I'm not sure the pearl is literally magical. However, one of the people who steals the pearl falls afoul of heroic Chun (Philip Cheng), who kills the man in defending an innocent. Chun innocently displays the pearl in front of a tavern of reprobates, and suddenly everyone in the tavern tries to kill him and take the pearl.

Though at first Chun seems to be aimless, he actually burns with passion to be avenged on a criminal gang that killed his parents. (Hey, just as DYNAMITE SHAOLIN HEROES had a few Superman tropes, MASTER seems to be grooving on Batman.) Chun makes his way to the temple and, after proving himself in a fight with a Shaolin monk, the young man is accepted as a student. Perhaps to get past a long sequence of training montages, the old monk gives Chun a "medicine" that will beef up his kung fu abilities. Additionally, he tells Chun that what everyone wants from the temple is a special kung-fu training manual, written by "Dalma" (possibly a corruption of "Bodhidharma," a legendary teacher credited with inventing kung fu). The mentor puts Chun in charge of guarding the manual while the teacher goes off for some reason.

The gang, bossed by a fellow named Ma, starts attacking Chun in various ways whenever they can. Oddly, these crooks also find time to hassle a ferryman because they don't want to pay him for his services. At first the ferryman fights off the thugs, but he's blinded when one criminal pulls a bird out of his robe (?) and the bird flies up and lays an egg (??) in the ferryman's face. But the thugs are then routed by a new arrival, a woman named Ah Kim (Pearl Lin)-- and since she's engaged to marry Chun, clearly the main reason that the ferryman's in the story at all was to provide an introductory scene for Ah Kim.

Ah Kim joins Chun at the temple, even as Ma's crooks make new attempts to get the manual. One assassin masquerades as a monk and almost kills Chun with a cup that shoots lethal darts. But the winning gambit comes from Ma himself, when he laces Chun's drink with an aphrodisiac. Inflamed by the potion, Chun has sex with Ah Kim, and suddenly the bad guys are able to conquer Chun. (Having sex doesn't seem to impair Ah Kim's fighting, but she gets overwhelmed and killed anyway.)

Chun does get his mojo back, and confronts Ma in the temple.  Briefly the hero has to fight a bunch of gold-painted guys-- not sure there were eighteen of them, like 1976's 18 BRONZE MEN-- and then he takes on Ma in a fight to the finish. 

One review claimed that the falcon with the egg was meant to be a robot, and indeed, when the bird comes back to its owner, he just sticks it back in his robe like a non-living thing. So it's one of those inexplicable weapons, like the rotary saw in BANDITS, PROSTITUTES AND SILVER, that can't be easily categorized as magical or scientific. But diabolical devices to one side, the martial battles between Cheng, Lin and their foes make this an okay opus.