some comments (sammo, ching siu tung, more)

[Brian Thibodeau]

Further to your comments regarding Tony Ching Siu-tung, I'll add my praise of his DUEL TO THE DEATH. His films after that, including SWORDSMAN, are a mixed bag, but all can proudly claim his unique style of choreography, even when he's paired up with other action designers. A WITCH FROM NEPAL proved his ability to craft entertaining junk from a threadbare script, something that seems to have helped him in his transformation into a comfortable purveyor of fine grade schlock, in the form of his last three pictures, CONMEN IN TOKYO, NAKED WEAPON and the underrated Steven Seagal actioner BELLY OF THE BEAST.

To wit, I'd offer this brief defense of Tony Ching's recent output that I made in response to a poster's rather harsh criticism of NAKED WEAPON over at Home Theatre Forum. The allusions to Ed Wood are hardly appropriate, but since the poster mentioned him first, I thought it a great opportunity to compare Tony Ching to the admittedly more talented exploiteers who followed in Wood's footsteps.

The poster's criticism went like this:
Naked Weapon a good movie? You guys must be feeling so bad about watching it, that you want other people subjected to watch this piece of crap... The movie sucks... the story stinks... the acting is the worst I have ever seen... The male lead, whatever his name is, has to be The Worst actor I have ever seen. This movie makes Planet 9 From Outer Space look like 2001.

My argument was thus:
Even Ed Wood knew how to light a scene, place the camera, cut together dialogue scenes, use a dolly shot at the appropriate time, etc. He was just saddled with extremely low budgets, a distinct lack of unifying skill, bargain basement actors (although a few could pass muster), and a tendency toward florid dialogue and ludicrous concepts that couldn't be made even remotely believable without a bigger influx of cash.

Wood's reputation is only partially deserved, and largely became attached to his work posthumously by college types who, at that time, accepted only the most visibly bad films they were aware of as the worst films of all time. His films are bad, but extremly enjoyable when taken in the right, derisive context, perhaps watched with a friend or two who are "in" to riffing on the whole experience, or in a film festival setting, where the whole audience gets a good chuckle. That the man actually believed he was creating great art is arguable (which has always been my bone of contention with his portrayal as a deluded-but-ambitious Hollywod fringe dreamer in Tim Burton's generally wonderful ED WOOD). That he WAS an exploiteer should never be in doubt. You want truly wretched filmmaking, look for the films of Coleman Francis, in which you almost never see a character speak on screen since the dialogue was created and looped in later, forcing the use of cutaways and reaction shots from other characters every time someone speaks, or Hal Warren's equally structured MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE, regional garbage that would have stayed that way were it not for Mystery Science Theatre.

Flash forward to Tony Ching Siu-tung, a director whose style often overwhelms the substance of his films, the stories of which are usually quite fantastical, physics-defying (not always in a good way) and generally ludicrous: check out the over-the-top espionage antics of WONDER SEVEN or EXECUTIONERS (the so-so sequel to Johnnie To's HEROIC TRIO), the everything-but-the-kitchen sink WWII antics of THE RAID and the flashy but strangely under-populated supernatural shenanigans of A WITCH FROM NEPAL with Chow Yun-fat.

Ching had the most success with the SWORDSMAN and CHINESE GHOST STORY trilogies, both under the hand of producer Tsui Hark, whose visual flare Ching often apes without providing anywhere near the amount of subtext. Even these films, though, feel sometimes like the director should have been forced to reign in his visual flare a bit or at least sit for a lesson in subtlety. I like to think of him as the product of some twisted experiment that combined the creative tissue of crazed revisionist maverick Tsui Hark and crass exploiteer Wong Jing (perhaps with a little TAKING OF BEVERLY HILLS-era Sidney J. Furie tossed in for the international market).

Even his four most recent efforts, DR. WAI & THE SCRIPTURE WITH NO WORDS (with Jet Li) CONMAN IN TOKYO (with Louis Koo and Nick Cheung), NAKED WEAPON (with supermodels) and the Steven Seagal-goes-to-Thailand-and-gets-laid epic BELLY OF THE BEAST (with, er, Steven Seagal), continue the legacy of exploitation-style filmmaking: plenty of martial arts (which is Tony Ching's TRUE claim to fame), gun battles, chases, sexy babes, exotic locations, slick cinematography

In fact, the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink description describes nearly all of Tony Ching's films, much as it could be applied to the work of Ed Wood. The big difference is, even by Hong Kong standards, Tony Ching's working with a lot more money and skill, so his films at least have a visual sheen that such ridiculous screenplays do not deserve.

Personally, I rolled my eyes all through NAKED WEAPON, which is exactly the reason I liked it. Exactly the reason I love ALL exploitation cinema (even the crap). I never felt like either director or stars believed they were creating a great work of cinema: they were cranking out a primo piece of exploitation. I mean, c'mon: a dragon lady who turns abducted little girls into sex-kitten assassins on a secluded tropical island? This isn't exactly a million miles from drive-in treasure like Richard Cunha's SHE-DEVILS (1958) or Arthur Hilton's gloriously, ignorantly sexist CAT WOMEN OF THE MOON (1953), Peter Bogdanovich's VOYAGE TO THE PLANET OF PREHISTORIC WOMEN (1968), Don Schain's GINGER trilogy (1971+), the collected cinematic ouevre of Andy Sidaris (HARD TICKET TO HAWAII, FIT TO KILL, etc.) or Kenneth Hartford's sublimely ridiculous HELL SQUAD from 1985 (from imdb.com: "In order to rescue the son of a diplomat who has been kidnapped by terrorists, a group of Las Vegas showgirls undergo commando training and organize a rescue operation").

Exploitation sells, baby, and it's safe to say Tony Ching Siu-tung knows that. Just because he packages it better than many such mid-level practitioners, and often pumps it out under the guidance of revered A-listers, doesn't mean he's not well aware of what he's peddling. THAT, in my mind, makes it well worth watching, as long as you appreciate in in context.

So again, check it out!