The first building that we're gonna see, which is in Barcelona, where the whole of the film was set, the whole of the film was shot over a 4 month period, that building there is the Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada, Familia, the Expiatry Temple of the Sacred Family which was designed and built by the genious Italian architect Antoni Guadi. His architecture actually very key role in this film, so I'll mention his buildings when we see them throughout the film. Credits for Jackie Chan and Yuen Biao, the two leads of the film, nowhere to be seen in the opening. I think at the time the film came out the traditional way was that when an actor first appeared onscreen you'd actually get his name appearing onscreen in writing next to the face of the actor concerned.

This was a great sidegag, I remember getting a big laugh at the theater, the idea that the two rooms, the two xxx rooms actually being one. And we get this quick flashback here to the ... days of Prodigal Son, Bai Ga Jai, as Yuen Biao is showing off his Wing Chun dummy technique there. And this is kind of a fun moment here with Jackie. All we get from him is one Double Gaan Sau  and then we'd had to wait all these years until 1996 to see him finally working the dummy in "Rumble in the Bronx". This movie actually we get to see like the beginning with really sat in the transition from Kung Fu to Kickboxing, because they start off using the dummy for a few of those traditional Kung Fu movements and then we're into Kickboxing. So immediatelly, right off the bat, Sammo Hung defining what is gonna be the action style, not just of this film but of the new era and establishing his two guys as like kind of these fighting fit young fellows living in Spain, they're running a fastfood van, they're also training every morning, there's like a logic to why they'll be able to fight like they do.

Mentioning the music score there're ctually two very different scores to the film. One composed by the veteran Hong Kong composing team of Chris Babida and Tang Siu Lam, and the English score by Keith Morrison, and they're very different scores and kind of like one is more Asian theme and one is more international. And it was like different songs in the Japanese version of the film. Japanese version of the hot Jackie Chan movies made in Hong Kong at that time were always slightly different to the versions that you saw released in Hong Kong.

The whole film was shot in Barcelona over a 4 months period. Quite a challenge, because at that time Jackie spoke some English, Yuen Biao not much, Sammo not really that much, and here they were shooting in Spain where English even in Spain is like a second language, so people aren't really speaking English that fluently, so you had 3 or 4 languages operating on the set, and it was like kind of a Tower of Babel, but I think everybody's pulling in the same direction under Sammo's guidance so obviously wasn't that much of a challenge for them.

The film was released 17th August, 1984 and earned 21.4 dollars and in Hong Kong that was a major hit. That's actually a very rare moment there, somebody doubling for Yuen Biao. Normally Yuen Biao is the guy they pull in as the all-purpose double for other people, but actually there was somebody doubling for him for the fall, and you'll actually find throughout the film whenever you get a moment when Jackie or Yuen Biao is actually a performing a movement where their spine has to slam into the ground, you get a double. And the reason you do that is that you look at the martial arts and all the other acrobatic movements you can actually could have perform these again and again even though there is somewhere in tear you can keep going(?), but when you're actually repeatingly keep slamming your spine into a solid object take after take it's pretty hard to get up and keep running around doing further action. So there's a tendency when you get any that kind of stunt, you got a doubling. It is not because these guys physically couldn't do it, it's just because it's harder to recover and carry on with whatever you're doing, you need some recovery time, 'cause you gonna get bruised, 'cause of course even though we see one final take in the finished film, the actual stuntman would've jumped off the front of that store a bunch of times and slammed down into the street below.

... everyone's wearing primary colours all the time. I got a theory that Jackie and Yuen Biao and Sammo were all hit 'round the head so often when they came up as stuntmen that now their eyes, they only register ridiculously bright colours, so you get everybody's wearing a different yellow. I mean, Sammo has a very nice yellow hat later on the film, and because the van itself has a particularly ...  yellow colour I think it's to kind of just give the film a whole summer feeling, this was a huge summer release in Hong Kong and hugely appreciated by the audience. People really wanted to go and see a movie like this, 'cause it had a mixture of comedy, it had kung fu and also pretty girls and this is what you look for when you saw the names Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao above the title. Should mention that Yuen Biao there was known at the time as Bill, was referred to by Golden Harvest in the credits says Jimmy Yuen Biao, 'cause they were kind of launch him as kind of a skinner version of Jackie. So they had Jackie Chan and it was Jimmy Yuen Biao. But he himself never knew that his stage name and people would come on and say "Hi, Jimmy, how are you?" and he would look around to see who they were talking to 'cause as far as he was concerned his name was Bill, Bill Yuen...

Here's Sammo with the perm. Sammo Hung as a director, action star for the movie. You also see him with this hairstyle in the movie "Pantyhose Hero", one of the latter Sammo Hung films that's kind of vanished off the face of the Earth. It was a kind of remake of the movie called "Partners" with Ryan O'Neill and John Hurt, with Sammo and Alan Tam. Sammo of course is a legend in Hong Kong action cinema and known to international audiences through his work with the CBS TV series "Martial Law". Still very much on the scene and I just worked with him on the film called "Dragon Squad".  So here is the character called Moby, obviously reffering to his whale-like proportions. It's interesting the way he 's kind of set himself a little bit apart from the other two guys, you've got Jackie and Yuen Biao partners, and Sammo's kind of walking his own road as a detective. But all of the stuff that we see here was shot on location Hong Kong.

Some of the stuff with Sammo kind of plays I think a little flat to international audiences, some of the non-physical comedy doesn't really plas as well it would for Hong Kong audiences, because a lot of it dependent on the language and the delivery. Sammo, even when he's doing exposition or even when there's dialogue, he always finds an interesting way to shoot the sequence so that there's movement or an interesting camera angle. You hardy ever see very static shots, very talkie shots and comparing to another action director like Stanley Tong, Stanley has his strong points, one thing Stanley tends to do is when there's no action on the screen, when the people're talking, it's all very static and I notice with Sammo it's very unusual for him to have static shots, he'll always try to find stuff to do, bits of business to do in the midst of all the dialogue so that it's kinda broken up, so that the camera keeps moving with the story, keeps moving along. At this stage of his career he was nicknamed Dai Go Dai which basically means Biggest of Big Brothers, like Dai Go is big brother, so Dai Go Dai is Big Brother Big, so it was implying that even though Jackie Chan was a Big Brother, biggest still then he was Sammo. Sammo was really at the height of his powers at Golden Harvest. And you notice, what's interesting is the case of both Jackie Chan and Yuen Biao, they both their best work when directed by Sammo. I think the reason for that is that Sammo himself is/was a natural successor of Bruce Lee in terms of sheer martial arts choreography and martial arts movie making. But Jackie and Yuen Biao both had thier strengths in terms of comedy and film making and acrobatic stuff, in terms of pure martial arts Sammo was the guy, so when he would do it, because he was the Big Brother and nobody could say no to him, he would actually get hold of his guys and say: this is how the choreography is gonna be and you guys gonna do it till you get it right and that is why when we see them working for him, nobody dares to say no, and therefore they did their best work. There's an old saying "Art is born of constraint and dies of freedom" and I think... when you're constrained by Sammo you're pushed to do your best work.

... The skateboarding stuntdouble for Jackie is Shigeru Ishihara who was also the skating double for Winners and Sinners and I believe also did the skateboard work on later film City Hunter. So everytime you can't see very clearly that it's Jackie, it's actually a Japanese skateboard and skateing expert who was call in to double and choreograph those sequences.

Many of the exteriors by the way that we're seeing here were shot in the gothic quarter which is a particularly stylish are of Barcelona and it films very well. And I think Sammo made a conscious effort when he came to Spain when he had backdrops, he really wanted to highlight the fact that we're in Europe, we're in Spain, that they weren't just shooting parts of Hong Kong and saying and cheating it like it has been done in the past, people have shot Hong Kong for US, for Spain, for other places.

Sammo was talking in an interview talking about the difference between film making in Hong Kong and filming in Spain. At the time you made this movie, shooting any of this kind of stuff in Hong Kong would've been next to impossible, firstly, because these guys are so famous they could really not walk the streets xxx, secondly, if you try shooting in Hong Kong you couldn't get a permit, and the police would chase you down the street, treating you as a bankrobber.So when they went to Europe there was this great freedom cause you basically go to the local film office  and say, "We'd like to shoot a movie" and they would say "Great" and allow you to shoot wherever you wanted to and you get permission and do what you wanted to.  This was why increasingly throughout this era you saw Jackie and Sammo filming overseas more and more.

Benny Urquidez pointed this out, Jackie is someone who loves to be around people, which is why his favourite time is on a movie. 'Cause on a movie you always got people around, and he would even get xxx of a scene Jackie and not go home to the hotel, he'd actually sleep on the floor, on the set and then get up the next day or after a few hours' sleeping and get back into it again. I don't think I worked with anybody with more stamina and more enthusiasm for the sheer process of filmmaking than Jackie has. He is just happy in a trailer, in Hong Kong he doesn't have a trailer he just got his little tent now. In the old days he used to sit on a chair but now he has his little tent that he hides in between takes, but that's about it, and he is happy as he can be. He is less happy when he's by himself, doing other work between projects, he's kind of always looking who'll hang out to have dinner with, to have fun with, he's such a social person. So for him a movie set is the best place to be 'cause he has a captive audience for his fun, for his stories and people to talk with.

It's a nice example of Sammo's technique. If he has to have somebody talk they won't just stand and talk, he'll move them and he'll move the camera as I think, as I mentioned before a xxx problem with action filmmakers is that when you have an exposition scene, the drama just kind of stops in its tracks and the camera stops moving, and you do get xxxx but with Sammo, he tries to find a way xxx the pose stillness with actual shots of the camera, moving the camera, moving the people around while they're delivering their dialogue, so that there is something for the audience to enjoy.

I love this, this is a great throw away moment, very very Sammo Hung. He never misses an opportunity to milk a situation for whatever he can and I don't think there's ever a time in a Sammo Hung film when he sits back and goes OK, that's kinda good enough, I mean, he's always looking at ways you can actually enhance a specific sequence and make it more fun.

Benny really looks fantastic in this film and Dragons Forever, the second film where he and Jackie Chan fought, but in the other movies he's made in the west he's never really reached  that same level of physical dexterity. So even though he's a terrific martial artist you'd still need somebody, like Sammo, to make you look great.

I meantioned before Pepe Sancho is not really a physical fighter in the way the other guys are, but he has that presence as an actor xxx, but for all the sequence here you see him in the closeup and then everytime Sammo's reacting to the guy with the foil it's always Yuen Biao. The hardest working man in Hong Kong film industry. Because he was acting in roles and also basically doubling anybody who'd need a double under any circumstances and quite a challenge.

It's a shame, Sammo never did a full on kind of Zorro movie or Scaramouche or a Three Muskateers film with swordplay, because he's so brilliant even in this unfamiliar terrain of olympic star fencing, he could really come out and do fascinating good work and make it really exciting.