DVD Review - Zorro, The Complete First & Second Seasons (Walt Disney Treasures)

Once again, Disney has dipped into its seemingly bottomless vault of television productions for another gem, the complete series run of Zorro, including all 78 half-hour episodes from both seasons, plus the 4 hour-long specials. It’s been difficult to see the series since its initial run, lasting from October 1957 through June 1959; shot in crisp black and white, the series suffered a grotesque colorization for reruns on the Disney channel in the early 90s (though some episodes were shown in their original versions to please us nitpicking purists). Disney had released small groups of shows in 3-4 episode spurts through the Disney Movie Club (which for us is a nice way of saying “out of print”) making this large scale release all the more tantalizing.

Upon the return of Don Diego de la Vega (Guy Williams) to the southern California (still under Spanish rule) estate of his father, Don Alejandro (George J Lewis) a wealthy and respected rancher, he learns that the region has fallen under the control of the villainous Capt. Enrique Sanchez Monasterio (Britt Lomond). Don Diego vows immediately to use his newly acquired swordsmanship and riding skills to resist Monasterio, but decides to do so behind a black cape and mask in order to protect his family. He christens himself ‘Zorro’ (Spanish for ‘The Fox’) and becomes a thorn in the side of the Captain and his men, particularly the oafish Sergeant Garcia (Henry Calvin). But when not protecting the innocent as Zorro, Don Diego adopts the personae of a foppish intellectual, incapable of even defending himself with a sword, while his faithful manservant, Bernardo (Gene Sheldon) pretends to be ‘deaf and dumb’ allowing him to eavesdrop with impunity. But Don Diego’s lifestyle of leisure deeply disturbs his father, Don Alejandro (George J Lewis) who whishes that is guitar-strumming son were more like the heroic Zorro.

New York City born Guy Williams worked as a fashion model before a string of bit parts in the 50s brought him to the attention of Walt Disney. Italian by birth, Williams slid easily into Zorro’s cowl, and the actor’s 6’3” frame and matinee-idol looks made him an instant sensation. Missing the original airing of these episodes (and though we enjoyed the Antonio Banderas retooling, Zorro-mania has heretofore been lost on us) we were startled by Williams’ effortlessly charming performance. The actor’s natural athleticism (he apparently did quite a bit of his own sword fighting) made a formidable match with his easygoing charm. But we also found ourselves falling for the comic buffoonery of Henry Calvin’s Sergeant Garcia (think of Schultz from Hogan’s Heroes in the Spanish army and you won’t be far off). In keeping with the Disney tradition of largely non-threatening villains, Garcia barely makes a move on-camera that isn’t accompanied by a muted trumpet refrain, but Calvin always made it work, and helped the show strike that elusive balance of comedy and drama that keeps it in the radar of both adults and children (we were incredibly relieved that the show was largely devoid of Apple Dumpling Gang-style hijinks.)

The first season is neatly divided into 3 separate 13 episode story arcs, making for an astonishing 39 total episodes (compare this to any modern network series, which typically top out at 26 episodes per season, or cable, at 13). Some episodes, like the first season’s Monasterio Sets a Trap and Zorro’s Ride Into Terror even flow together, cliffhanger-style. The above description accounts for the first storyline of the first season, but the core cast (minus Lomond’s Monasterio) remained through both seasons, with a rotating cast of villains against whom Zorro battled. The remaining two storylines of the first season involve a criminal conspiracy led by the mysterious Eagle (who was more of a presence once his identity was revealed and played thereafter by Charles Korvin). The second season played a bit looser with the story arcs, allowing for more flexible storyline lengths and even the occasional one-shot (Spark of Revenge, featuring an incredibly young Robert Vaughn) though our favorite features an extended guest appearance by Cesar Romero as Diego’s scheming uncle, Estavan. Sadly, the series came to an abrupt end after the second season due to an ownership dispute between Disney and the ABC network (which also extended to the Mickey Mouse Club). During that time, four hour-long episodes were produced (all of which are included in the new sets) Williams was paid full salary during the 2 years or legal rumblings that followed, but even after a courtroom victory, Walt decided that the Zorro fad had peaked, and did not bring the series back for a third season.

Each of Disney’s new Zorro sets feature an entire season spread across 6 discs, all kept in amazingly good order within a standard-size case (something Sony can’t seem to figure out how to do without resorting to disc stacking). The image is amazingly rich for a half-century old show, with the original black and white episodes looking wonderful – much better than most other shows of this era that we’ve seen recently and easily on par with Image’s Twilight Zone sets. Disney’s historical shows of the period were generally quite sumptuously produced, with lavish attention paid to period detail and production authenticity (see 1963’s Dr. Syn for our own favorite example). The first season set leads off with Leonard Maltin’s typically good-natured intro, and also features the exhaustive The Life and Legend of Zorro, a well-produced documentary on the production of the show, along with a Zorro-related clip from The Mickey Mouse Show (the second season set features the Behind the Mask documentary). In a striking – and pleasing – packaging change from previous Walt Disney Treasures collections, the outer boxes are black-lacquer in color, but feature the usual artwork and photo reproductions along with the ubiquitous Disney ‘certificate of authenticity’. And even though they never fit comfortably back into the outer tin once opened, we enjoyed the collector’s pins enclosed in each and will be wearing the crossed swords emblem fare more often than we should.

It’s impossible to say what children today might think of the Disney variant of Zorro, but we hope that the appeal of these wonderful sets isn’t limited to the adult collector. It would be interesting to get these shows into the hands of kids who haven’t yet developed an aversion to black and white programming, as it’s far more engaging than most current kids fare (including much of Disney’s own output) and, frankly, at least as smart as a good chunk of our present prime time programming.

A lovely image for Halloween Eve...

Thank you, Sir.

Been Cruising the Newsstands for Video Watchdog, Lately?

Greetings, readers. Those of you who’ve been following this blog from the beginning may remember our first post back on Sept 14th, 2007. Since William Friedkin’s Cruising was due for its digital premiere in the 18th, we thought it appropriate that the blog’s maiden voyage should be a brief chat about our long, curious history with the film.

From the days when it was first available on the CBS/Fox video label, we felt a strange kinship with this seemingly unwanted 1980 party favor, a film that its Oscar winning star pretends didn’t exist. We were fascinated by the picture’s view of the shadowy world of the meatpacking district’s gay leather bars painted on an unfashionably nihilistic canvas. Over the years, we realized that few (if any) people cared about the show, as routine investigations brought about precious little information on the film, almost as if it slipped into a black hole. Cruising was the subject of our first foray into long-form essay writing for a friend’s online magazine (though it’s still possible to search out the article, we beg you not to as we find to be just this side of unreadable now) and we were thrilled to find it quoted from in Warner Bros. press release for the film’s 2007 DVD release - apparently, more people care about the film than we thought!

So it’s fitting that the film should mark our doorway into the hallowed halls of Video Watchdog, long considered the Bible for serious writing on the cinema of fantasy and the fantastic. When its publisher, Tim Lucas, announced earlier this year that he would accept submission proposals for the first time, we immediately sent off our proposal for an all-new article on a film which we feel – with all humility – we know better than almost anyone else. The extraordinary news that the article was accepted has been eclipsed only by the arrival last night of our own copy of Video Watchdog #152, in which the DVD spotlight bears a familiar name.



As someone who has enjoyed the opportunity for writing on genre cinema for nearly a decade, VW is a height to which we dared not aspire. It’s the height of the form and we’re still having difficulty believing that we have been welcomed into the kennel. The magazine is not available online, and can only be had at better newsstands or from their website. Enjoy!

Paranormal Psychology

We badly wanted to see horror indy Paranormal Activity before the expected backlash had time to take effect, though we did hear from lots of interwebz folks that that the film was unworthy of the massive hype machine put in place by Paramount (who picked up the $10K budgeted flick after some positive festival appearances over the last 2 years.) The Blair Witch Project introduced audiences to the 'found footage' concept nearly a decade ago (in short, footage consisting of the film/video footage shot by the characters themselves) even though Ruggero Deodato's infamous exploitation gem, Cannibal Holocaust, had used the technique rather brilliantly back in 1980 (though there was a narrative framework surrounding the use of the footage.) We were lucky to have seen BWP in its opening weekend – too early for it to become hip to hate the film – and marveled at how directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez stayed true to the '3 kids with cameras' framework and made it feel real enough to send genuine chills down our spine when the characters on screen were sure that they heard something out there. It was years before thinking back on the film's much parodied final shot lost the power to utterly spook us out. Only the Spanish REC managed to improve on the method, by taking the cameras out of the hands of inexperienced kids and into the hands a professional camera crew working for a Barcelona news station following a reporter as she films a fluff piece on a local fire department, where a routine call to an apartment building turns into the requisite night of terror. REC is an extremely polished, professional bit of filmmaking, with the presence of a professional cameraman and equipment allowing for a less nausea-inducing theater experience (and probably also holds true for its Hollywood remake, Quarantine.)

Paramount's unusual ad campaign for Paranormal Activity has focused on the terrified reaction shots of preview audiences rather than film footage itself, almost as if the studio is bashful about the film being called out as a BWP knock-off. But having finally seen the film as part of Lincoln Center's Scary Movies 3 festival , I can attest to the veracity of all those jumps, gasps, and screams (okay, we didn't actually scream – honest.) Leaving the theater, we were trying to remember the last time that genuine fear had been felt inside a movie theater, aside from the feeling that car keys had been lost at the New Roc City multiplex. Paranormal Activity centers around the videotaped nocturnal activity of a spirit that Katie (Katie Featherston) feels is invading the modern San Diego home she shares with boyfriend Micah (Micah Sloat.) Micah's attitude is far more blasé, assuming that the culprit ultimately responsible for the noises in the night will turn out to be a neighborhood peeping tom rather than anything supernatural. Micah does most of the filming, playfully taping Katie as they cook meals and lay about on their couch, but also sets the camera up on their bedroom dresser when they go to bed, affording a view of the bedroom and the upstairs hallway through the open door. Time coded footage allows us to hear the odd creak and rattle – most of which happens in the middle of the night and go unnoticed until they play the footage back the next night – which quickly turns to loud bangs and door slamming. They enlist the aid of a psychic (Mark Fredrichs) who explains the difference between the spirit of a dead human being and a demon, the latter of which he suspects may well have followed Katie from childhood. Soon, even Micah becomes a believer, even to the point of bringing home a Ouija board to communicate with it – something the psychic explicitly warned them against. Attempts to communicate, he says, will only make their presence stronger (it also won't help to move or go to a hotel as the entity will simply follow Katie.)

This isn't a film that depends all that much on plot twists and turns, but it would be criminal to spoil any of what transpires during the tenser haunting sequences. Director Oren Peli has spent two nervous years dueling with a studio that first wanted merely to buy the rights to the film and remake it with big stars and effects to match (an act that would have shown such hysterically poor judgment we almost whished that they had gone ahead so that Paranormal Activity starring Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale would be appearing on Blu-Ray just about now) only to relent once Steven Spielberg – among others – had seen the film and spotted its potential. Nevertheless, Paramount sat on the film for what must have seemed like an eternity to Peli (particularly after the red hot reception which greeted the film at almost every festival it played at.) Peli expertly exploits the terror of lying in your bed in the middle of the night, having been awakened by mysterious noises and too petrified to leave the sheets to investigate the darkness. The usual 'cat jumps through open window' to the strain of a screeching musical cue type of scare is largely absent from the film, giving it an unusual rhythm that slowly but surely fills the viewer with an sense of escalating dread; once Peli and the actors convince us of the reality of the setup (within 10 minutes we stopped thinking things like "Oh, please, why would he be filming now") even the smallest shadow or unexplained noise had the power to turn our blood frigid. Now, we can't say that this psychology will work on everyone and we can hear the complaints that it was boring and that "nothing happened". Effects in the film are smartly limited (though we have strong suspicions where the studio mandated reshoots began at the film's conclusion) and most of the what occurs is left to the imagination of the viewer.

Paranormal Activity frightened us in a way we haven't felt for years in a theater; a window into the deep, spine-chilling creepiness that sneaks into our bedrooms in the middle of the night, taking our knowledge that the supernatural doesn't actually exist and throwing it out the window.

A Wolfen in Werewolf's Clothing

Wolfen, to use a grotesque yet appropriate pun, is an unusual beast. The only post-Woodstock directorial credit for director Michael Wadleigh (and his only narrative effort) was released in the summer of 1981, wedged between two high profile werewolf pictures, Joe Dante’s The Howling and John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London. Audiences thinking that the film made up the third horse in the lycanthropic trifecta left this decidedly odd effort left feeling cheated, as the filmmakers had something more profound in mind than a simple ‘monster movie’.

After breaking ground on his sprawling South Bronx real estate project, super-wealthy businessman Christopher van de Veer and wife Pauline slip down to Manhattan’s Battery Park, where the happy couple enjoys a cocaine-fuelled frolic around a replica of a windmill erected there by van de Veer’s ancestor, all under the watchful eye of his mountainous armed bodyguard. But the trio isn’t alone in the park – something silent and swift is stalking them in the darkness, something with acute night-vision that registers even the most subtle changes in the human body’s temperature. After a few moments, the creatures strike; ripping off the bodyguard’s hand before he can get a shot off with his gun, and tearing apart the wealthy scion and his wife. The odd circumstances of the crime bring one of the NYPD’s more odd detectives onto the case, the sarcastic and possibly alcoholic Dewey Wilson (Albert Finney, marking the actor’s first lead role since 1974’s Murder on the Orient Express) who is aided in his investigation by the equally unorthodox medical examiner Whittington (Gregory Hines) and criminal psychologist Rebecca Neff (Diane Venora) who is put on the case at the behest of a shadowy international security service that provides security for executives all over the world, and are anxious to see the van de Veer case closed quickly.

The investigation leads them to several terrorist organizations that might have a bone to pick with van de Veer (who was not, as Det. Wilson points out, exactly a friend of the third world) until the body of a derelict found in a particularly desolate area of the South Bronx turns up in Whittington’s morgue. Like the van de Veer case, the skin was torn with some incredibly sharp, non-metallic blade and numerous internal organs were missing, but the body from the Bronx contained several diseased organs that were left untouched – almost as if whatever killed him was somehow able to sense this and leave them behind. A few strands of non-human hair lead them to zoologist Ferguson (Tom Noonan; for the first time billed under an actual character name and not simply as ‘Man’) who confirms that the hair is, in fact, canis lupus – a wolf hair. Dewey’s investigations also lead him to Eddie Holt (Edward James Olmos) a former radical in an AIM-like Native American movement just released from prison and with one political assassination already under his belt. Speaking to Eddie requires Dewey to scale the Manhattan Bridge where Eddie works with other members of his tribe who possess uncommon skill at working Manhattan’s high steel jobs (based on the amazing story of several generations of Mohawks who came down from their reservation in Canada to work NYC’s skyline for over a century) Eddie eludes to an ability shared by some Native Americans to “shape shift” into certain animals – including wolves. With his investigation dead-ended by the supernatural, Dewey and Whittington set out for the ruins of a massive church in the south Bronx where the bodies of several derelicts have been found with their (non diseased) organs removed, armed with automatic weapons and high-sensitivity microphones.



Wolfen avoids the same trap that other ecologically themed horror films of the era fell into by managing to balance the potentially over preachy ecological agenda with effective storytelling and expertly filmed suspense sequences. Not only was this Wadleigh’s first (and, to date, only) narrative film, it was also his first time shooting with 35mm cameras and considering his inexperience the end result is startling. His Panavision cameras run, swoop and climb all over the city, making superb use of Battery Park and the financial district of downtown Manhattan, and the final sequence featuring several real wolves stalking the steps of Federal Hall says more in a few shots than 20 pages of “You have your technology, but you lost” soliloquies ever could. Much was made in 1981 of the film’s wolf POV shots, which were basically a re-jiggered thermographic image, but just as Terminator 2 overused the new-in-1991 morphing effect, so did Wadleigh (or his producers) lean on this trick a little too hard. Luckily, the non-POV location photography always gives us something interesting to look at; in addition to the sleek skyscrapers and ornately columned government and financial buildings of Wall Street, Wolfen also affords us a view of the desolate Charlotte Street area of the Bronx – an area of the borough that resembled a bombed-out European city just after the second World War throughout much of the 70s through the mid 80s. A wasteland of abandoned tenements and rubble strewn lots provide the setting for the long abandoned, cavernous, cathedral that the Wolfen use as a den (the only artificial set used during these sequences, incidentally.) The notion that a race of wolves with God-like hunting instincts living in and feeding off the garbage of our inner cities comes directly from Whitley Strieber’s novel, but the Native American mythology that serves as the creatures’ motivation comes directly from Wadleigh and co-writer David Eyre. Wadleigh’s portrayal of Native Americans is certainly meant to be respectful – even reverential – but he falls into the trap that caught many other liberal, well-meaning filmmakers by elevating them to a level of near deification. Wolfen wasn’t the first – or the last – film to imbue them with mythic qualities as a cinematic reparation for genocide, but we can’t help but groan at hearing how in touch Native Americans are over and over again. It would be quite a few years before they would be allowed to behave like normal people on screen (beautifully done in the little seen Powwow Highway) instead of a symbol of our lost connection to nature and a fashionable emblem of white guilt (we’re looking at you, Oliver Stone.)

The mere presence of Albert Finney classes up the proceedings immeasurably, though occasionally his performance seems to wander – the actor badly stumbles over a line in his very first scene – and we wonder if the inexperienced filmmaker was too intimidated to offer much in the way of precise direction. Finney’s appearances had been limited in the years prior to Wolfen, and his shaggy, disheveled appearance must have been jolting to those who remembered him as the essence of youthful exuberance in Tom Jones some two decades earlier (Finney did look a bit better rested in Michael Crichton’s Looker, out later that same year.) A bigger surprise is how handily Gregory Hines steals each of his scenes from his significantly more experienced co-star; this was the only the second major role for the world class hoofer and he lends the stock character a genuine, unforced humor that aids the film immeasurably. We re-watched The Cotton Club just a few weeks before checking out Wolfen for this review and suddenly found ourselves missing Hines in a powerful way. The almost always underused Diane Venora – a theater actress whose best film role to date is probably as Al Pacino’s unstable wife in Michael Mann’s Heat – is fine in a mostly underwritten role. Noonan, another Mann veteran, is almost too quirky as an eco-minded zoologist (though we loved the very inside NYC reference of having his character report a fire rather than calling the police – a jaded New Yorker in 1981 would have certainly known which call would generate a quicker response) but Olmos give a nice, unmannered performance as a not-quite-so-former radical (compared to some of his later performances that, frankly, you could slice with a knife.)



Wolfen turned out to be the filling of a wish sandwich when it was released in 1981 – the werewolf picture without werewolves. We’ve heard that Wadleigh wasn’t completely happy with the film’s final cut, as may be evidenced by the theatrical trailer included on Warner Bros’ DVD, which contains glimpses of several scenes not included in the film proper. Whatever the reason, Wadleigh never made another film in spite of the real promise shown here, and spends much of his time being interviewed about Woodstock and forgetting that Wolfen even existed. Warner’s DVD looks fine during the on-location daylight scenes, but nighttime and dark interiors can look quite pale. On the plus side, the Dolby Surround track is quite muscular, nicely supporting James Horner’s terrific score (so good that he used much of it the next year for The Wrath of Khan.) Sadly, no informative extras are included.

Blu-Ray Review - The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi

On Tuesday, Sept 15th, Miramax and Buena Vista will be releasing a welcome, if oddly grouped, selection of martial arts films, all making their Blu-ray disc debut. Called the “Ultimate Force of Four” set, which actually makes it sound like a poorly translated Japanese cartoon from the 80s, the set features four popular films starring Hong Kong sensations Jackie Chan, Donnie Yen, Jet Li, and even Takeshi Kitano for the sake of cultural diversity. Although some of the films share similar elements, other than being elaborately costumed period shows they have little in common save having been snatched up for American distribution by Miramax Pictures.

Takeshi Kitano has worn many hats in the Japanese entertainment industry over the last few decades; from wacky game show personality, half of a stand-up comedy act, master of ceremonies, not to mention writing, producing and directing a series of films that run the gamut from lowbrow humor to hyper-violent and deadly serious police/yakuza dramas. Like fellow countryman Takashi Miike, some of Kitano’s films have managed to break through the seemingly insurmountable cultural barrier that sadly keeps most Americans ignorant to the wealth of Japanese films that exist outside the limited realms of Akira Kurosawa and Godzilla. Kitano was first seen on this side of the Pacific in a major supporting role opposite David Bowie and Tom Conti in Nagisa Oshima’s 1983 POW camp drama Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, but Kitano’s fortunes were assured while filming Violent Cop for director Kinji Fukasaku (who would go on to direct him in arguably his most widely seen film, Battle Royale.) The aging master fell ill during filming and Kitano took over the directing chores, re-fitting the script and fashioning a tough guy screen persona similar to that of Ken Takakura, whose steely gaze often said more than whole pages of dialog. This contrasted sharply with the heavily comedic work that he had come to be known for on shows like the utterly mad Takeshi’s Castle (immortalized stateside as MXC on Spike TV.) Kitano fine-tuned this gangster persona several years later, creating one of his finest films, Sonatine, a festival favorite that won the actor a considerable international following.

Kitano had some initial trepidation in taking on the role of the blind swordsman (and masseur!) as it was so heavily identified in Japan with Shintaro Katsu, who owned the role thanks to a 26 films and a TV series that stretched from 1962 to 1989. But Kitano, who directed and starred, as usual, under the Beat Takeshi moniker, changed the more traditional good against evil tone of the early films, mostly by giving the villain of the piece, a Ronin bodyguard (Tadanobu Asano) a tragic backstory that allows for empathy. The plot of the film, which finds Zatoichi working with a group of poor farmers who are caught between two warring groups of Yakuza, is as old as the hills, with roots back to Italian westerns of the 60s, which were, in turn, inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s jidaigeki films of the 50s, Yojimbo and The Seven Samurai. But Kitano adds a few new twists, like buckets of stylistically-rendered CGI blood (Kitano seems to be the only filmmaker that knows how to apply this technique properly) and a large-scale celebratory tap dance sequence that will strike many as unusual to say the least, but as a director, Kitano isn’t known for emotional pandering and the scene makes for a joyous and touching way to cap the proceedings.

If Zatoichi was given a US theatrical release, we missed it, but Miramax has obtained the US home video rights, which usually means a regimen of cutting and dubbing, but the news isn’t all dire. We do get the uncut feature with an original language audio track, but (as with the other 3 films from the box set) only the English dub track is accorded a lossless DTS audio track while the original Japanese audio rates only a DD 5.1 mix. the transfer, however, is a mixed bag; initially the picture appears bright and clear, but closer inspection reveals some distractingly noticeable edge enhancement, as if the sharpness was turned up too high, which gives the illusion of fine detail when the actual effect is just the opposite. The brightness also appears to have been artificially boosted, giving the film the over-lit feel of television product. It’s by no means unwatchable, but we also feel that a little more care should have been accorded to Zatoichi – a box office and critical smash in Japan that could have made Miramax some major coin in the US had it been handled better. An excellent 40min making-of docu is included, along with a collection of short, individual interviews.

Blu-Ray Review - The Legend of Drunken Master

On Tuesday, Sept 15th, Miramax and Buena Vista will be releasing a welcome, if oddly grouped, selection of martial arts films, all making their Blu-ray disc debut. Called the “Ultimate Force of Four” set, which actually makes it sound like a poorly translated Japanese cartoon from the 80s, the set features four popular films starring Hong Kong sensations Jackie Chan, Donnie Yen, Jet Li, and even Takeshi Kitano for the sake of cultural diversity. Although some of the films share similar elements, other than being elaborately costumed period shows they have little in common save having been snatched up for American distribution by Miramax Pictures.

The next film, chronologically speaking, is 1994’s The Legend of Drunken Master starring Jackie Chan in another film inspired by the Wong Fei Hung legend – although this time with a far more humorous take. The Wikipedia page on the revered martial artist and doctor says nothing about his ability to drink large amounts of accelerant and fight off Imperial interests “drunken monkey” style, but then again, this is Jackie Chan’s Wong Fei Hung story (actually his second, counting 1978’s The Drunken Master, one of the star’s earliest successes.)

The film was released in Hong Kong in 1994 – the same year that Jackie Chan celebrated his 40th birthday and the last film of Jackie’s “golden era”. The previous 10 years had yielded a stupefying array of breathtakingly choreographed martial arts mayhem in films like the Police Story series, Armor of God, Operation Condor, and Project A; all serving to elevate the Peking Opera-trained star’s reputation as the preeminent performer in the post-Bruce Lee era. Chan’s early career actually overlapped with Lee’s, as the stars can clearly be seen trading blows during the climactic fight in Lee’s swan song, Enter the Dragon (1973). Lee’s template of the stern-faced hero cast a shadow over Hong Kong cinema for years after his death, with many young stars being shoehorned into increasingly formulaic roles. Though Chan’s more successful early pictures, like Snake in Eagle’s Shadow and The Young Master, flirted with a more comic tone, Chan’s early pictures haven’t aged all that well. Early forays into the coveted American action film market yielded the disappointing Battle Creek Brawl in 1980 (seriously, did Robert Clouse really direct Enter the Dragon?) and the unwatchable Golden Harvest-Warner Bros co-production The Protector in 1985. Ironically, Chan seemed far more ‘at home’ in his extended cameo in The Cannonball Run, which reportedly inspired him to use outtakes during his closing credits (“I want you to take these bleeds…”) But once Chan set aside plans for American conquest and concentrated on his Hong Kong films, he quickly blossomed into the most innovative martial arts performer of his – or, frankly, anyone’s – era; comparisons to Buster Keaton aren’t used lightly, and Jackie’s comic inventiveness and creativity was seemingly boundless. Age finally began to catch up with Jackie just as his star was finally ascending in the States; a re-edited and dubbed Rumble in the Bronx served as his official breakthrough American film in 1995, but the film was severely weakened by New Line Cinema’s editing of nearly 15min, loosing most of the show’s more comic moments (some of which can still be glimpsed in the film’s end credit outtakes) and the fact that an injury to Chan’s foot hampered the star’s usual kung-fu theatrics. But Chan’s success in America was assured, and the Shanghai Knights and Rush Hour franchise became world-wide smashes, even if his physical prowess was on a slow, but steady, decline.

The Legend of Drunken Master is the 2000 Miramax retiling of 1994’s Drunken Master II, easily one of Jackie’s best films, and one of the last made during his physical peak. At 40, Chan might seem a bit too young to play the seemingly teenage Fei Hung that we see here, but accuracy has never been the strong suit of the Wong Fei Hung films (a Hong Kong tradition going back to the Second World War) and this is easily the most entertaining that we’ve ever seen. The film begins as more or less a domestic comedy, with Fei Hung caught between his stern father (Ti Lung) and mahjong-playing mother (the late and much missed Anita Mui). Fei Hung’s keen ability at drunken boxing (actually a legitimate form of Wushu called Zui Quan, incorporating movements that make the practitioner appear intoxicated) is frowned upon by his father, even when he uses it to protect his mother against a group of street thugs. But soon Fei Hung runs afoul of a group of smugglers working with a “foreign power” to spirit historically important Chinese art treasures out of the country, culminating in some of the greatest fights in the star’s career.

While watching any of Jackie’s golden era films, we’re always struck by his incredible sense of the proper pacing of the action sequences. While a large scale opening sequence was becoming standard in most HK films of the era, Drunken Master II builds its rhythm slowly; the first one-on-one fight around a stopped train and the aforementioned engagement between Jackie and several street thugs seem to be the equivalent of a martial arts warm-up lap, allowing Jackie (and us) to get used to the drunken boxing style (and no one has ever done this to better effect) so that each subsequent sequence trumps the scene before it. We first saw the film at NYC’s Cinema Village in the mid 90s, and I’m sure that I thought that there would be no way to top Jackie’s encounter with the ‘ax gang’ – a hypnotic sequence involving a two story restaurant and what seems like about 300 ax-armed assassins – until the final fight in the foundry. Jackie’s fight with Ken Lo (a member of Jackie’s lauded stunt team and his personal bodyguard) who amazingly stepped in at the last minute when an injury sidelined the actor slated to appear. Lo’s character, Jon, is a perfect example of the classic martial arts villain, sitting back throughout most of the film wearing a suitably smug expression, just waiting for that perfect moment to show you what an utter badass he is. The sequence is one of Jackie’s very best two-man fights ever filmed. But another supporting actor deserving special mention is the fabulous Anita Mui, playing Jackie’s mother while the actress was almost a full decade his junior. Her scenes with Jackie absolutely sparkle, and the two would be reunited in Rumble in the Bronx. Mui’s comic timing is flawless, taking what could have easily been a forgettable role and making it into something special. Mui had an equally successful career as a pop singer as well, and remained one of Hong Kong’s most beloved entertainment figures until her death from cervical cancer in 2003.