The Magnificent Butcher (1979)
'I’m particulary happy to be able to talk about The Magnificent Butcher as the main character in the film and in fact the title character, Lam
Sai-wing is actually the great-great grand Master of the Kung Fu style
that I’ve been practicing for quite a number of years now, which is
called Hung Gar or Hong Kuen and my instructor’s instructor’s
instructor was Lam Sai-wing. So Lam Sai-wing was a real life historycal
figure, a Kung Fu Master, the most famous of the students of the
legendary Wong Fei-Hung, and I think he can be described as the single
most famous figure in the history of Kung Fu in Hong Kong. He didn’t
just popularize the Hung Gar style but I think popularized the
Southern Kung Fu styles in general. And he was in real life quite a
colourful figure, we’ll talk abut his biography more as we go along. In
the meantime we get to enjoy the terrific performance by Hung Kam Bo,
Sammo Hung, in a role that he was born to play.''The Magnificent Butcher had a kind of troubled production in its early stages because originally it was meant to cast Hung Kam Bo as Lam Sai-wing opposite a Drunken Master character, very similar to the one that was played by Yuen Siu-tin in the movie Drunken Master starring Jackie Chan and this was another historical character, Su Hua Chi, and this character was kind of brought back. He’d been in the original old black and white Wong Fei-Hung movies, that had kind of established the Kung Fu genre in Hong Kong – and he was recreated in Drunken Master by Yuen Siu-tin, the father of Yuen Woo-Ping, a famous action director and director of this movie, who later became famous with directing Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Matrix. So the original plan was that Yuen Siu-tin would reprise his role of Su Hua Chi, the drunken beggar in Magnificent Butcher and they begun shooting and there were scenes actually shot with Yuen Siu-tin playing the role and after a week or so unfortunately he passed away unexpectedly and so the scenes had to be reshot. I think there are footages probably still locked away somewhere in the Golden Harvest vaults but the stills survived and they show a number of the key players in the film cast in quite different roles. So obviously after the film had to suspend the production for the recasting of the Su Hua Chi role. They recast the rest of the parts and they kept the same actors but they gave them different roles to play in the finished film.'
'In the original cut of the film this scene (beating the old gentleman) was immediately followed by a sequence that’s been cut. And in that scene Lam Sai-wing, Sammo Hung’s character takes the injured guy back to the Po Chi Lam Kung Fu School of Wong Fei-Hung for some
treatment
and tries to give him Chinese herbal medicinal treatment for the
injuries that Lam Sai-wing himself has caused, but unfortunately his
medical skills are not nearly as effective as his fighting skills and
so he causes even more damage and Wong Fei-Hung comes in and confronts
Lam Sai-wing and there’s like an exchange between them and the injured
man staggers off and Wong Fei-Hung gives a mean stare at Lam Sai-wing
and that’s the end of that sequence. But it was felt that it was better
to cut from there to this introductory sequence in which that we see
the guy who’d be the main villain of the piece, Master Ko, played by
Lee Hoi-san, who’s a veteran Kung Fu movie bad guy. In the original
version of the film, the version that was abandoned after the death of
Yuen Siu-tin, he was playing a very comedic character… very different
to this incredibly powerful martial arts master that you see here.''In history and in the movies Wong Fei-Hung is a man who (had) all the Chinese vertues of courtesy, education, of patience, and he apart from practicing Kung Fu was a highly respected medical doctor and calligrapher. And Kwan Tak-Hing who sadly passed away a few years ago, was probably the nearest thing you can ever have to an actor who became in real life the perfect equivalent of his most famous screen character. He was like Wong Fei-Hung a Kung Fu master and also an expert on Chinese medicine and also an expert in calligraphy. Kwan Tak-Hing somebody who began his career as an Opera performer and made his debut in a black and white movie, actually shot in America, which was called The Singing Lovers and he’d been in a variety of different films before he was cast in the role of that he’d become synonymous with, which was Wong Fei-Hung. The first of the films, The True Story of Wong Fei-Hung established the character and established the longest running series of movies, at least 77 continous films with the same man in the leading role, which is a record…'
'This sequence we’re seing now makes fun of the very distinctive
speaking voice of Kwan Tak-Hing and in the Cantonese version actually
it’s Kwan Tak-Hing dubbing the impersonation that Sammo Hung is doing
of his very pronounced delivery in the way he speaks. It was very
distinctive, audiences who’d grown up with the old black and white Wong
Fei-Hung films, which were shot in sync-sound, were very familiar with
Kwan Tak-Hing’s speaking style and so this really played to that
audience.''Every major action genre has its own conventions. One of the staples of the old Kung Fu movies is the Teahouse fight. And if you go back to the old black and white Wong Fei-Hung films, there were always there brawl happening sin Teahouses. And this was because in Southern China, in Canton, where these films were set, the Teahouse was a center of daily life. People would spend hours there chatting, drinking, eating and so it was obvious if they were gonna encounter people and they were gonna have dialogue sequences and all this stuff happening. The Teahouse was an obvious place people would meet and you gonna have conflicts and all the different dramatic elements that you needed. So the Teahouse fight was introduced as a background for Kung Fu movie battles. And here we’re leading into one of the most memorable examples of that convention, as we’re setting up the initial encounter between the drunken beggar and Lam Sai-wing
. And it’s a terrific set piece,
because it shows off the different Animal Styles of Hun Gar, and even
though neither Yuen Woo-Ping nor Sammo Hung who had quite a lot of say
in the choreography are actually Hun Gar students or master per se,
what they have is this incredible ability to simulate the movements of
any martial arts style, whether it’s Wing Chun or Tai Chi or Hun Gar or
Taekwondo and drunken boxing, whatever it is, and take the elements
from that that’ll work cinematically, they’d take the elements of the
style, so you wouldn’t get a literal representation on screen of the
style which you sometimes did get ont he very very old black and white
Wong Fei-Hung films, but you’d get the movements that you recognize, if
you were and exponent to the style you’d see those movements but put
into a rhytmic choreograph sequence, so that it works
cinematographically while remaining true to the roots of the system
itself, and it’s an extraordinary ability and something that is lacking
in many of the martial art choreography int he West, who’re very
defined in terms of a specific style they’ve studied and this specific
background they themselves have in their martial arts training, and in
this instance I would say that the people like Yuen Woo-Ping and Sammo
Hung were expert in all styles, while themselves being masters of none.''Kwan Tak-Hing was born in 1905 in Canton, which of course made him perfect to play Wong Fei-Hung, because they were both Cantonese, they were both martial arts masters and in fact the last of the wives of Wong Fei-Hung was a lady called Mok Kwei Lan, and she was very young when she married the then aged Wong Fei-Hung so she outlived him by many years, and worked ont he old black and white Wong Fei-Hung films as action choreographer. And she was ont he first day of shooting of the first movie, she looked at Kwan Tak-Hing and said „you know you’re just like my ex-husband”. So that was kind of the family mark of approval upon his performance. But he was already in his 50s when he was first cast to be Wong Fei-Hung. I think the reason for this is that traditionally a Sifu or a Kung Fu Master would have to be at least middle aged to be respected… Kwan Tak-Hing was a hero on screen and off. He was a great patriot, he run a performance troupe during the years of the Japanese invasion of China after 1937 and he travelled through the US to raise money to equip the Chinese military to fight back against the Japanese army and also travelled throughout China and had a price on his head, he was such an effective rebel rousel, such an effective patriotic leader that the Japanese army put a price on his had, if he was caught he would have been executed immediately, so he was somebody who really exercises nobility on screen and off.'
'When they were looking for a vehicle for like a Drunken Master style movie that would be appropriate for Sammo to play, they came to Magnificent Butcher and decided that Lam Sai-wing would be perfect for him, because Lam Sai-wing, though he wasn’t quite as heavy set as Sammo Hung, was famous for being burly and a comedic character, he was a definite play for laughs in the old black and whites. It was perfect casting for Sammo. It’s a shame he never returned to the role in later years, but I think he felt he’d done definitive job with this movie and anything subsequently would be a disappointment, so he just played the role the one time.'
'Master
Ko is coming in and leading into this incredible action
sequence, which again doesn’t really advance the plot but it just gives
a chance for the protegees of Sammo Hung to show off their skills, and
particularly amazing is the fight that occurs between Yuen Biao and Lam
Ching-ying. Yuen Biao and Lam Ching-ying both exponents of Peking
Opera, they studied under different schools. Yuen Biao was one of the
Seven Little Fortunes and a kung fu brother of Jackie Chan and Sammo
Hung.
The other day I was talking about the fact that there are some areas of
the filmmaking that had progressed incredibly, like CG and special
effects, and some that had regressed. And one that’d regressed is the
ability of acting in martial arts movies, to perform movements like
this. And this particular duel between Yuen Biao and Lam Ching-ying
with all the millions and
millions dollars that we have now to spend on
filmmaking, if you said to me tomorrow, OK we want to shoot this scene
again, you just couldn’t do it, because you couldn’t find the people
who had the requisite skills to shoot these great long takes with these
extravagant sequences in motions. You’d have to break it down, if you
could do something akin to it, you couldn’t do the same scene again for
any money, because today people really don’t have the same skill leveli
n terms of sheer physicality to perform these amazing long sequences in
motion. And the other reason of course you couldn’t do the fight ’cause
sadly Lam Ching-ying is no longer with us. He passed away from cancer a
few years ago (1997). He was somebody who had a really interesting and
prolific and versatile career, starting off as a stuntman, working on
the Bruce Lee movies and then became the key member of the Sammo Hung
Troupe and then after that really made his name in the Sammo
Hung-produces film Mr Vampire and that really stereotyped him as this
ghostbuster figure and it was a character he used to play in a whole
string of follow-up films and spin-off movies, including a
contemproraly one called Magic Cop and he also played the character
in a couple of TV series. He died unexpectedly, nobody knew he was
sick, he kept it quiet and passed away unexpectedly a few years ago.''Yuen Mo, another member of the Seven Little Fortunes. The reason that these guys are called Yuen is because they took the surname of their Peking Opera instructor. So when they went out to perform as the troupe, they all had a „Yuen name”, like Sammo was Yuen Lung and in fact in some of the earlier movies he uses the name Yuen Lung on the credits, giving respect to his now deceased Peking Opera Master. Yuen Mo was one of the band. And there were of course many more than seven students at the school… All of these vetarans of the Seven Little Fortunes went on to become this amazing generation of the finest generation, the best generation we’ve ever had of Hong Kong martial arts movie making.'
'It’s interesting to see Yuen Biao adapt, he is more suitable to the Northern Style because of his light physique and his incredible flexibility, but they’re trying to make his movements more fitting to the Hun Gar which is a Southern Chinese Style. Chinese Martial Arts are devided basically into Lam Kuen and Bap Toi. Lam Kuen is the Southern Fist and Bap Toi is the Northern Leg. Because in the South of China the land is marshier, they ofthen fight near waterways, so a lower stance is more suitable for fighting, whereas in the North of China the ground is rockier and there’s more hills so they jump more, the ground is harder so yo have to jump off the ground to execute multiple kicks. All the guys from Seven Little Fortunes are really Northern stylists, including Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao. Their basic training was in the Northern Styles and they only developed Southern Techniques later, after they’d left the school and got into movie making and realized you needed to have a broad palette of martial arts styles available to you.'
'Here we
establish the incredible ability of Lee Hoi-san, and this is
important because in the introductory scene of the film we see him
soundly defeated by Wong Fei-Hung so there’s a danger the audience
might not take him seriously as a bad guy, so in this scene we
demonstrate that the characters played by Yuen Biao and Wei Pai are
capable of defeating the students of Master Ko but they’re no match for
Master Ko himself, which sets him up as a viable opponent for Lam
Sai-wing for the final showdown. The structure of a kung fu movie
always depends ont that the hero is really as great as the villain. And
here we have a villain here that not only has examplery martial arts
abilities but also one of the famous devices of this era which is this
Iron Palm technique, which is a blow when struck causes internal injury
so that even though in the exterior of the body there might not be
seeable damage, ont he inside there’s actually internal bleeding and
the victim would die of that. So in this sequence we see that Lam
Sai-wing has absorbed this kind of blow and has now got severe internal
injury.''I always feel Sammo’s underrated because of his physical size and because he tends to play… characters, his abilities as a dramatic actor have been underrated. But if you see him in movies like Eight Tales of Gold or Painted Faces where he’s not really doing any action so there’s nothing to distract from his performance, I think he’s one of the finest screen actors that Hong Kong has ever had and his physicality has meant that he’s never really had the respect that is his due so he’s never really had the critics acknowledge his talent nor has he won acting awards, but I genuily believe him to be a fine character actor by any standards.'
'Look at the power of Sammo, of the history of action film makers he’s
one of the most powerful looking fighters, when he hits somebody they
really look like they were hit… I asked several people, like Benny
Urquidez, to define the abilities of Sammo, Jackie and Yuen Biao. They
say Yuen Biao is the best acrobat, Jackie the best actor and film
performer of martial arts, but for real fighting it would be Sammo.'