Archive: Old Wine in a New Bottle

One way I judge my level of fitness when I'm in Hong Kong is by how out of breath I am when I climb the steep hillside that forms the base for the path leading up to Golden Harvest's Hammerhill Road studio. This former textile factory was located relatively close to my apartment in San Po Kong, so on a couple of nights in January I walked over to this centre of Far Eastern action film-making to see Jackie Chan put the finishing touches to Drunken Master 2.

On the first evening, the entire time seemed to be devoted to Jackie gargling with washing up liquid. During the finale, the heroic Wong Fei Hung (Jackie) invades a factory owned by the bad guys, and single-handedly demolishes their henchmen using the Drunken Fist technique. To do this, he drinks the industrial strength alcohol that he finds on the premises. This has the effect of turning him into a kung fu version of one of the Mario Brothers, and the sequence ends with him blowing bubbles before collapsing onto the ground. Hence the washing up liquid...

By the time I arrived, Jackie's lips and tongue were already swollen and sore from the mouthful of suds, but, perfectionist that he is, Chan The Man was going for take after take. Looking around the interior of Harvest's main soundstage, it was evident that no expense had been spared in making Jackie's return to the kung fu movie genre a hit. The factory set, which had already seen a lot of action before I arrived, will undoubtedly provide a spectacular background for the usual intricate final reel antics of Chan and company

"You saw the first Drunken Master?" asks Chan, during a break in filming. "In this film, when I drink, I’m crazy! My father always tells me 'Don't drink !'. When I drink', l've no control!" In this film, the father of Wong Fei Hung, Wong Kay Ying, is played by veteran Shaw Brothers star Ti Lung, and his mother by Chann's Miracles girlfriend anita Mui. I guess it's only in the magical world of the movies that a man who's fifty at most and a woman in her late thirties could give birth to a 'boy'' who's now almost forty! Chinese actor/director Frankie Prodigal Son Clan makes a flying visit to the set...

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