🎥 Movies of 2021, 63: The Magnificent Butcher. Long story short, it’s great. You should watch it. End of review.
In this watch I found myself thinking a lot about the production of this movie. I’m always really interested in how movies get made. And I think this one is super interesting. Explaining why will require some backstory.
In the late 70s there were 3 emerging groups in Hong Kong kung fu movies.
The first was the Yuen Clan, led by director/choreographer Yuen Woo Ping. He releases his first movie, Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow in 1978. That film stars Jackie Chan, but nearly everyone else in it was part of the extended Yuen group. They are folks that Yuen Woo Ping would work with again and again.
The second group is the Seven Little Fortunes, of which Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao are the best known. These folks had worked in movies for years, but mostly as extras. You can see Sammo showing up in background roles of Shaw Brothers films all through the 60s. But with, again, Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow, Jackie started his climb to stardom. And, around the same time, Sammo was becoming both a recognizable star and lauded director with films like Warriors Two.
The third group was led by director Lau Kar-leung and actor Gordon Liu. By the late 70s these folks were more established than the other two groups. They worked within the Shaw Brothers studio where they made classics of kung fu such as The 36th Chamber of Shaolin and Dirty Ho. Like the other two groups, they mixed comedy in to their films, but they were also very focused on accurate fighting, thanks to their family history, which I’ll get to in a second.
In addition, the late 70s is a time of upheaval in the Hong Kong film industry. The Shaw Brothers studio, which dominated filmmaking in the region since the early 60s was showing its age. And stars like Bruce Lee deliberately chose to work outside of the Shaw studios. The Golden Harvest studio started in 1970, and by the late 70s it had “supplanted Shaw Brothers as Hong Kong’s dominant studio.”
Ok, those are the players and the businesses involved. Let’s talk about Magnificent Butcher.
First, it brings together the Yuen Clan with the broader Seven Little Fortunes group of Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao and others (note, Yuen Biao has no relation to the Yuen Clan). This makes sense, as previous collaboration between the two groups led to hits like Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow and Drunken Master.
Second, it’s a Golden Harvest movie. This is a big jump in quality and budget for Yuen Woo Ping, who’d previously worked for Seasonal Pictures, a smaller fish in the HK film market. Sammo had already directed The Iron Fisted Monk and Warriors Two for Golden Harvest and was a growing star; my guess is that he was the one who made this project happen and he brought in Yuen Woo Ping.
I think the trajectory of these two folks after this high-profile film is interesting. Sammo’s star continues to grow. This is partly due to his own work in films like Spooky Encounters and his association with Jackie Chan in various Seven Little Fortunes movies. But Yuen Woo Ping’s path is weirder. He works with a wide variety of studios on films that are kind of all over the map. And it’s not really until the late 80s where he firmly establishes himself.
But, what about Lau Kar-leung and Gordon Liu? Let’s talk about their family history. The Lau family, led by their patriarch Lau Cham, trained in a martial arts style called the Hung Fist. Lau Cham learned the style from his teacher Lau Kar-wing and Lau Kar-wing’s teacher Wong Fei-hung.
Which brings us back to Magnificent Butcher where Sammo Hung plays….Lau Kar-wing! And he’s kind of a dip. He ignores his teacher, blunders in to conflict, and accidentally gets a bunch of people killed. Yes, he’s the hero of the movie and defeats the villains. But the skills he uses to win aren’t taught by Wong Fei-hung. Instead he learns them from a drunken beggar. Had Yuen Woo Ping’s dad Simon Yuen Siu-Tin been alive, he would have played the beggar.
And, a fun little detail, Magnificent Butcher features Kwan Tak-hing playing Wong Fei-hung. He played this role at least 77 times over four decades. In terms of cinema Kwan was Wong Fei-hung. Having him play the role here is staking a claim to the legacy of Wong Fei-hung.
So, with this background, Magnificent Butcher starts to look like a high-budget diss track. The upstart movie studio brings together two newer groups of kung fu stars, along with a legend of HK film, to make a film that makes fun of the teacher of the Lau family and, by proxy, the stars of Shaw Brothers biggest films. Not only was Lau Kar-wing a bumbler, he had to learn ‘real’ kung fu from a drunken beggar (aka Yuen Woo Ping’s dad). Damn, that’s cold.
This all my theory, of course. I haven’t found any sources that back up my reading of this film. So take this all with a grain of salt.
