Fans of Kung Fu Hustle are going to enjoy this fun early effort from Stephen Chow and his ‘sleeping kung fu’…
Considering the amount of old Stephen Chow movies due a wider release in the West, King Of Beggars might seem like a peculiar choice. Why not King Of Comedy or God Of Cookery? Then again, considering the plot, perhaps it’s not so surprising.
Chow stars as So Chan, the spoilt, lazy, arrogant son of the local province General (hilarious played by Chow’s favourite co-star Ng Man-tat, King Of Comedy, Shaolin Soccer, A Moment Of Romance). When So falls for Yu-chang (Sharla Cheung, Swordsman, God Of Gamblers, The Evil Cult) he vows to win the competition to become the next ‘Kung Fu Scholar’. Only there is one small problem. Though So may be a powerful martial artist, he never learned to read and right, having been too rich to need to bother. His victorious lap of honour is cut short when his cheating of the entrance exam is exposed, as can’t even write his own name.
The Emperor punishes both So and his father to live as beggars for the rest of their lives. Even as a beggar, So Chan’s father looks for a way to improve his social standing, a sly comment on Chinese culture. It that wasn’t bad enough, the pair a caught performing kung fu to raise money by a local official, Chiu (Norman Chu, What Price Survival, Tiger On Beat, Wing Chun), who breaks So’s hands and legs.
After recovering from his injuries, a chance meeting with Yu-chang leads them to be invited to join the Beggars Association, a secret, noble society who have discovered Chiu’s plans to assassinate the Emperor. But the beggars have no leader – who could possibly become the next ‘King Of Beggars’? And will he be powerful enough to beat the evil Chiu? Well, what do you think?
Essentially a dry run for Kung Fu Hustle, only less inventive, you can see why a distributor might have chosen King Of Beggars as the first of Chow’s back catalogue to release. It’s not the madcap, so-called ‘nonsense humour’ of Chow’s other movies, which would make it more acceptable to a Western audience. No doubt the subject matter of a real life hero, So Hat Yi or ‘Beggar So’, caused Chow and director Gordon Chan to approach it with some reverence – though not too much! The result is much like many of the ‘wire-fu’ films that dominated Hong Kong cinema in the early 90s, only it takes itself rather less seriously. It’s also pretty unusual for it’s location shooting in China, particularly around the Forbidden City and the Great Wall – remember this was 1992!
Tsui Hark’s treatment of folk hero Wong Fei Hung the previous year, in Once Upon A Time In China, is definite influence on Chan’s approach, and just one many references King Of Beggars makes. As well as Chow’s obligatory Bruce Lee reference – already a mainstay of his movies, other parodies include a superb take on The Prodigal Son‘s calligraphy sequence (which here ends up a dreadful mess), TV Wrestling and Jackie Chan’s early martial art comedies Drunken Master and Snake In The Eagle’s Shadow. Their director, Yuen Woo-ping, even has a cameo, but then his brother Yuen Cheung-yan was responsible for the fight choreography. Here he take’s ‘drunken kung fu’ one step further to ‘sleeping kung fu’, complete with snoring.
And the fight sequences are much better than you might expect in a comedy (though not for a Chow film) with only an abrupt, disappointing showdown to let them down – no doubt due to a rushed and hectic filming schedule.
It’s interesting to see how King Of Beggars, in turn, influenced many of the subsequent portrayals of folk heroes, particularly Jet Li vehicle Fong Sai Yuk. For Gordon Chan and Stephen Chow it would be the end of several years of collaboration while Chow evolved his comedy. Chan would later become better known for more hi-tech, cop thrillers like The Final Option, Beast Cops and 2000 AD.
This is both an enjoyable introduction to Chow’s earlier work, and to the ‘wire-fu’ films that were so popular back in the day, but lets hope retailers take more of a risk on their next Stephen Chow release…
DVD details
Distributor: Hong Kong Legends (UK)
This fine transfer from HKL features a variety of sound options, once again doing wonders with the supplied material.
The extras might be pretty minimal, but the interview with director Gordon Chan is a real insight into the tight filming schedules of Hong Kong movies, and a lesson in how to make a tiny budget (by Western standards) go a long way!
