Thursday, October 26, 2006

[1980] RETURN TO THE 36TH CHAMBER: Not that it has anything to do with the original 36th Chamber movie--but "Scaffolding Kung Fu" probably sounded unsexy. Gordon Liu starts off as a conman in this, and he's roped into helping the workers at a local garment factory by playing a Shaolin master and intimidating the factory's owner into raising their wages (those no good Manchurians have taken over, you see, and are forcing a pay cut.) Of course he's exposed as a fraud--so he goes off to learn actual kung fu! Of course, being a shady character he has to con his way into the monastery too, and he's caught, and as punishment has to build scaffolding around the entire temple. This is the film's vast training sequence--he's not allowed into the temple proper but the process of scaffolding (and watching the other students) teaches him kung fu while he works. And then he's ready to return and campaign for labor reform using the martial arts style of negotiation (shaolin scaffolding style, where your only weapon is the bamboo string you're using to lash your enemies to their own weapons and whatever's handy.) Oddly PG--the bodycount is 0. Nice, well-made fun, and it is amusing in parts (though they do play that "here comes the nutty part!" music a bit too much.) The Foreign Humor was the comic relief guy who wore huge buck teeth the whole movie--I didn't understand that.

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