Mystery of Chess Boxing (90 min; 1979)
Vintage 35mm film screening with English subtitles!
Written, Directed, and Produced by: Joseph Kuo
Starring: Jack Long, Li Yi-min, Mark Long, Jeanie Chang, Simon Yuen

Sunday, December 12 @ 4:15pm
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Hong Kong cinema changed for good in 1978 when Jackie Chan and Yuen Wo-ping delivered their two box office-shattering kung fu comedies, Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow and Drunken Master — with Simon Yuen (father of Yuen Wo-ping) delivering an iconic performance as the alcoholic bum, and secret martial arts master, Beggar So. Both the Shaw Brothers star, Lau Kar-leung, and the King of Poverty Row, Joseph Kuo, responded in 1979 with their own movies, Mad Monkey Kung Fu and Mystery of Chess Boxing, respectively. Both movies became staples of the Times Square grindhouse, but both of them deliver in very different ways. For sheer bare-knuckled brilliance, the advantage goes to Kuo.

While Lau Kar-leung’s Mad Monkey uses Monkey Style kung fu to deliver a restrained Shaw Brothers response to Drunken Master, Kuo took the exact same cast from 7 Grandmasters and put them in Chess Boxing which takes its cues directly from Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow. In Snake, Jackie played a guy so dumb the local kung fu school used him as a walking punching bag until he made friends with Beggar So and learned Snake Fist kung fu. Unfortunately, Beggar So, the last master of the Snake Fist, is being hunted down by Hwang Jang-Lee and the movie ends with the seemingly-invincible Hwang beating Beggar So to a pulp before Jackie shows up and bangs on his skull like a drum with his brand new Cat’s Claw style.

Chess Boxing tells the almost identical tale of Ah Pao (Lee Yi-min) a young dork who wants to learn kung fu at the Chang Sing School where he’s made a walking punching bag before befriending the cook (played by Simon Yuen) who shows him that kitchen work is the foundation of kung fu. Meanwhile, Ghost Faced Killer (Mark Long, portraying one of the all-timer kung fu villains), strolls around the Taiwanese countryside murdering every single head of every single kung fu clan who conspired to have him murdered, which actually seems pretty fair. When Ah Pao gets thrown out of the Chang Sing School for possessing one of Ghost Faced Killer’s trademark murder medallions he winds up learning true kung fu from Ghost Faced Killer’s next victim, Chi Siu-tien (Jack Long), a chess fanatic.

Shot outdoors, like most classic Kuo productions, the action’s on overdrive right out of the gate, and the fights hurt. Kuo knows how to keep a story cooking, he’s got a knack for framing, and he’s excellent at delivering fun effects with nothing more than some nimble editing and clever camera tricks. When Ah Pao complains that all they’ve done is play chess for a month and he didn’t come here to learn how to play chess he came to learn how to kick ass, Master Chi tells him, “You’ve already been learning,” and then calls out chess moves and stances, turning Ah Pao into a living, fighting chess piece, complete with groovy animations. This kind of “You’re not painting my fence, you’re learning martial arts” schtick was the core of the Shaolin kung fu flick, and later of Chan’s kung fu comedies, and it would eventually find its fullest expression in the West via The Karate Kid (a movie that Corey Yuen, one of Kuo’s collaborators, described as Drunken Master with worse action and no drinking).

Ending with a lightning fast, whiplash-inducing final fight that displays some intense ground level acrobatics, it’s easy to see why Mystery of Chess Boxing cleaned up in America. Marvin Friedlander’s Marvin Films released it as a sneak peek double feature alongside 7 Grandmasters on December 23, 1981, before it got its big premiere on Christmas Day. It would go on to play all over the Deuce and for the next five years it was tough to find a 12 month period when Mystery of Chess Boxing and 7 Grandmasters didn’t play Times Square, brought back again and again by popular demand. Its final screening was in October, 1989, paired on a double feature with Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing, and that sounds like a perfect combo move to us.