Magnificent Bodyguards

 

An early Jackie Chan chop-socky flick made at the tail-end of the seventies. While the movie is, for pretty much all intents and purposes, just a footnote in its lead actor’s career, I really like it. It’s fun, it’s goofy (though perhaps unintentionally so) and the action, while as traditional as can be, is entertaining.

Jackie Chan plays Ting, a famous fighter known to have the fastest punches in the land. He’s hired by the wealthy Lady Nan as a bodyguard to help transport her ill brother across the dreaded Stormy Mountain, a place filled with roving bands of violent bandits, led by the notorious Lord Chu. To aid him in his quest, Ting enlists the help of two others, a deaf tailor with powerful kicks named Chang and Master Tsang, a notorious gangster who rips people’s faces off. Together they trek across the Stormy Mountain, wary of Lord Chu’s forces, which include angry bandits and evil shaolin monks.

Jackie Chan, asides from his acrobatic kung-fu skills, is pretty unrecognisable to the action superstar he’ll become (though that might be because of his ridiculous hairstyle). This is early, pre-explosive-popularity Chan, so instead of the usual somewhat-goofy-but-can-kick-your-ass Chan we get confident asshole Chan. Ting has no qualms in outright insulting people he thinks are weaker than he is. It’s fun seeing him in an early role like this, but – interestingly enough – Chan doesn’t steal the movie. While he’s the main character, he doesn’t overshadow anyone else and isn’t constantly the centre of attention. Many of Chan’s movies, especially his duds, traded solely on his presence, but this pre-fame Chan film succeeds independent of him, though he does help thanks to his energy.

                                                                Note Jackie Chan's glorious hair

Master Tsang might as well be a villain. He’s a dude who goes around ripping people’s faces off for fuck’s sake. He harasses thieves by demanding that they pay tribute otherwise he’ll skin them and only joins Ting after he promises him a bunch of money. Within a minute of screen time he cuts a guy’s arms off and then rips off his face, and then for the rest of the movies all he does is talk about skinning people. 

This movie is, at times, surprisingly violent. A lot of the early chop-socky flicks were, often with characters spitting up blood, but Magnificent Bodyguards takes you off guard suddenly. Basically any action scene involving Tsang will end with somebody’s face getting torn off. Doesn’t matter if it’s a woman either, the dude just likes tearing faces off. The action scenes are all that old sort of choreography, with punches, kicks, flips and a rather large variety of weaponry being used. It’s all pretty fun, especially when the weapons start coming out (towards the end deaf Chang pulls out some knives and kicks serious ass, making one question why he never did it earlier). There's also some hilarious nonsense thrown in, like a scene where Jackie Chan is karate chopping snakes that are flying at him.

                                                 This is apparently the correct stance for battling snakes

The movie is also really weird. There’s a dramatic song partway through with lyrics that just describe who the characters are and what they happen to be doing at that moment (walking through a forest). In a few scenes they actuallt use music stolen from Star Wars. At the end they bizarrely do a Scooby Doo styled mask-pulling reveal of the villain that’s completely ridiculous in every way, which is preceded by a twist that’s equally stupid. There’s also a streak of that odd sort of sometimes out-of-place Chinese humour that pops up every now and then, usually in direct contrast to something violent or serious happening. The aforementioned scene of Master Tsang severing both a guy’s arms and ripping his face off (I keep bringing it up because it’s so suddenly brutal) is immediately followed with light-hearted quips at the expense of the dead guy. It’s weird, but not as brutally out-of-place as other similar films from the same time (Iron-Fisted Monk goes from a surprisingly horrific rape scene to some goofy hijinks in a brothel without batting an eyelid).

It was an early 3D movie (the first Hong Kong movie filmed in 3-D apparently), which means that there are a lot of scenes of people punching, kicking or thrusting weapons at the camera (and snakes, lots of snake lunging at the camera). It’s often quite funny, such as watching Jackie Chan suddenly turn to the camera mid-fight to unleash a flurry of punches at you.

A lot of the old chop-socky flicks ended the same way, with a freeze-frame and the words ‘The End’ appearing the second the main villain is defeated. There’d be no epilogue and whatever story threads there were left went completely unanswered. Magnificent Bodyguards does this too, but also jumps the gun, ending with a freeze frame before the heroes deliver the finishing blow. It’s a bit disappointing, but a sign of the time I guess, not that there would have been much of an epilogue (by the end anybody who was even remotely evil dies horribly).

                                 Master Tsang seems a bit obsessed with skinning people

Magnificent Bodyguards is a highly entertaining, though pretty standard old-school kung-fu flick that’s elevated by its weirdness. I can’t say that it’s the best of its kind, but it’s a massive amount of fun.