DREADNAUGHT (1981)
Directed by: Yuen Wo-ping
Starring: Yuen Biao, Kwan Tak-hing, Leung Kar-yan, Phillip Kao Fei, Yuen Cheung-yan, Lily Li Li-li

You probably know Yuen Wo-ping from his work choreographing The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and you may be familiar with China's most popular folk hero, Wong Fei-hung, played by Jet Li in Tsui Hark's Once Upon a Time in China series. But before Jet there was Kwan Tak-hing who played Wong Fei-hung in over 77 feature films from 1949-1980, and behind Yuen Wo-ping there's a whole family of Yuens who are the Addams Family of Hong Kong film. Their movies are singular oddities featuring skull-busting wirework, bizarre plotlines, and a nightmare assortment of characters cast from the monsters who live under your bed.

Dreadnaught combines the traditional (75 year old Kwan Tak-hing playing Wong Fei-hung) and the mad (the Yuen Family in double-barreled dark fantasy mode) for an old school masterpiece. Yuen Wo-ping's brother, Sunny Yuen (Iron Monkey), plays White Tiger, a disturbingly angry bandit who doesn't just fight people with kung fu, he rips them into tiny shreds with his bare hands. Hiding from the law in an Opera company he develops a pathological aversion to the ringing of the little bells Mousey (Yuen Biao) is constantly noodling with around his neck. Painting himself up like a Chinese opera character, White Tiger's humanity evaporates like a puddle on a sunny day, replaced by white hot hatred as he goes for Mousey's throat.

Mousey, a pathological coward who can't even make his sister's laundry customers pay their bills, is taken up by Wong Fei-hung's student, Ah Foon (Leung Kar-yan, who didn't know a lick of kung fu, but was a perfect physical mimic), as a Sunday project. White Tiger's benefactor is out to kill Wong Fei-hung using the Demon Tailor, but if that doesn't work he's got a saw-bladed hat with Master Wong's name on it. Plot lines multiply like horny rabbits, but at the heart of the film is Yuen Biao's comic cowardice, Kwan Tak-hing's stately (final) performance, and Sunny Yuen's psychopathic scariness.

A slice of film history (Kwan Tak-hing WAS Wong Fei-hung to a generation of film goers, and Bucktoothed So is played by the original, Sai Gwa-pao) and extreme hysteria (the White Tiger is actually VERY scary as he reduces humans to bloody rags; and you'll meet Hak Mo Seung & Bak Mo Seung: the Black & White Guardians of Hell, twin brothers, eternally giggling, who fight with a feather duster and a razor sharp tongue) Dreadnaught gives it up to all comers. All you gotta do is buy a ticket. Whereas The Prodigal Son was the highest achievement of Sammo Hung's Stunt Team, Dreadnaught stands as the mad masterpiece of the Yuen Clan. Their most evolved creation, their excessive excess is slightly restrained by the need to turn out a big hit, but the grim gothic madness that infects their brains stays the same. Fulfilling your need to see those bare teahouse sets full of EZ-break tables, while delivering a collection of human oddities right out of your id, Dreadnaught simply cannot be improved upon.