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Snake In The Eagle's Shadow (1978)

Snake In The Eagle's Shadow has been copied by so many subsequent kung fu comedies, it may be difficult for fans of the genre to appreciate the film's original impact. Consider this. Snake first struck the screen on the 1st March, 1978. The year's earlier action releases had included such stolid period piece fare as Flying Guillotine, Part Two and the latest Little Dragon rip-off, Bruce Lee: The Invincible. The film was one of those rare moments in movie history when the perfect producer, director, script and star were in the same place at the same time. Producer Ng See-Yuen began his long-time working relationship with Yuen Woo-Ping when he hired the latter to work as fight choreographer on the 1971 film Mad Killer. After Ng set up his Seasonal Films company, he invited Yuen to make his directional debut with a comedy kung fu film entitled Snake In The Eagle's Shadow.

Though it now seems absurd, Jackie Chan was no means the first choice for the lead role. Producer Ng See-Yuen originally sought to cast Shaw Brothers' actor Alexander Fu Sheng. He had 'loaned out' performers from the company before, and Fu Sheng's mischievous screen persona seemed to fit the role. (Coincidentally, he had acted opposite Yuen Siu-Tin previously, in the 1974 film Shaolin Martial Arts.) However, Shaws' asking price for Fu Sheng, then one of their biggest draws, was too high. Ng and director Yuen Woo-Ping then looked at a number of Hong Kong Chinese and Taiwanese martial arts performers, including Yip Fei-Yang (with whom Yuen would later make The Instant Kung Fu Man) and Cliff Lok, best-known for his performance in Duel Of The 7 Tigers. The name of Jackie Chan, who had been shooting an unsuccessful series of starring vehicels in Taiwan, also came up. Chan was contracted to Fist Of Fury director Lo Wei, but, given their string of flops, Lo was more than happy to loan Jackie out. Ng See-Yuen admits that the powerful Asian distributors begged him to use anyone except Chan, as none of his films had ever been a hit. Ng and Yuen stuck to their guns, confident that they had found their man.

Ng faced resistance from a different quarter when he set about casting the villain of the piece. During the shooting of a low-budget Little-Dragon-alike flick shot on location in Taiwan, Ng had been introduced to Koren superkicker Hwang Jang Lee. Hwang, a Vietnamese veteran and dan Tae-Kwon-Do master, stunned Ng with both his fighting skills and his cool on-screen demeanour. The producer realised that he would never find someone with comparable skill in Hong Kong, and told that to the local immigration authorities, who begrudgingly granted Hwang Jang Lee a work permit. (Ng's claims on the Korean's behalf later back-fired when Hwang was challenged to fight a duel to the death with a Chinese kung fu expert. The show-down was stopped by the police before blood could be shed.)

Arguably the toughest role to cast was that of the wily old Snake style master. The part called for either an actor who could fight or a fighter who could act. In the end, Ng See-Yuen suggested Yuen Woo-Ping's own father, Yuen Siu Tin (Simon Yuen). This was by no means a classic case of nepotism. Yuen Snr was justifiable regarded as one of the grand old men of Hong Kong action film industry. Among his many credits, he worked on the black-and-white Wong Fei-Hung movies series as both choreographer and supporting actor. He had also, coincidentally, moon-lighted as an instructor at the China Drama School, where one of his students had been none other than... Jackie Chan.

The credits play against footage of Jackie (here still spelled 'Cheng Lung') performing the Snake Fist style against a red back-drop (is that the word?). This convention was a staple of '70s and '80s Hong Kong cinema. Chan had previously displayed Snake style in the Lo Wei production Shaolin Wooden Men, and just expands on the theme here. In the documentary Jackie Chan: My Story, Chan recalls how he would stay up late at night, using a mirror to help him create new Snake style movements.

The opening duel is between Lord Shing Kwan (Hwang Jang-Lee) and an ill-fated Snake style master (Fung Hark-On). It's located on a scenic piece of land that will be very familiar to long-time fans of the genre. Literally dozens of kung fu movie duels have been fought on this New Territories bluff. When we meet Pai (Yuen Siu-Tin), he is hiding out, disguised as a beggar. He's living Chen Kaige's 'life on a string' literally, sleeping on a rope stretched across his rented room. He can't even afford this humble abode, and is forced to use his kung fu skills to fend off the land-lord and his men.

The action shifts to the Hung Pai kung fu school, where we meet Cheng Fu (Jackie Chan), an orphaned youngster who works as a cleaner and general handyman. Cheng is the butt of the elder stundents' abuse, serving as a human punching bag when they show off their medicore kung fu skills.

At a rival martial arts school, the local magistrate and his spoiled son, Ah Gwai (chubby actor/stuntman Chiang Kam) are given a demonstration by one of the senior students, Leung (real-life Hung Gar kung fu master Chiu Chi-Ling). When Leung breaks his hand smashing bricks, the youngster persuades to take him elsewhere. The school's master blames this bit of bad luck on Pai, who just happens to be sleeping by the doorway. (In Chinese tradition, a 'hak yee', or beggar, can bring ill fortune.) Cheng attends to come to his rescue, but instead Pai, not wanting to show off his own skills, uses him as a human weapon against his atackers. It's a scenario that's been used many times since by Yuen Woo-Ping and others. The fight is stopped by the arrival of a foreign preacher (Roy Horan). Cheng Fu takes Pai back to the Hung school. The magistrate and is son have turned up there, and Cheng is roped in as a dummy to show the fighting 'skill' of one of the students. (The latter is played by 'Sifu Jai', best-known for his role as one of the swaggering Japanese fighters Bruce Lee forces to eat paper rather than glass, in Fist Of Fury.) Pai is horrified when he learns that his young friend has to endure this kind of mistreatment, and tries to cheer him up with a display of rice-bowl juggling.

The following day, Cheng wakes to find that the old man has disappeared, leaving behind written instructions on how to develop his kung fu skills. As the youngster begins his training, Pai is off searching for his fellow Snake style exponent, Chow Chi-Chi. Unbeknownst to him, Chow is already dead, and the killer, an Eagle claw practitioner, is lying in wait. Pai proves more than a match for him, but suffers a knife wound at the hands of the manic street preacher, who is actually a Russian in the employ of the Manchus.

Back at the Hung Pai school, Cheng finally decides to stand his ground and, when instructed to take a beating from Ah Gwai, uses his new-found skills to good effect. As a result, he's banished from the school by the two senior students (Dean Shek and Peter Chan Lung). Running into the wilderness, he encounters the wounded Pai. Cheng takes the old man to an abandoned temple, where he treats his wounds and nurses him back to health. In return, Pai teaches him the real deal Snake style. The ardous training sequences that follow still impress, despite the fact that they have been copied in so many subsequent kung fu flicks (including Seasonal's own follow-up, Drunken Master). In the original print, several scenes in which the Snake fist was displayed are scored to Jean Michel Jarre's Oxygene, and never has purloined music been put to better use. (On some subsequent prints the music was replaced to avoid litigation.)

After an alleged slight, the provincial kung fu champion (Tino Chan) turns up at the Hung Pai school to teach it's instructors some manners. Cheng's seniors take a serious drubbing, and his mentor, Hung ('Chula' from the 007 flick The Man With The Golden Gun) returns to find the place empty. With Cheng in tow, Hung goes to make a challenge of his own. The Hung Wai champion proves too tough, and, in a truly audience-rousing change of fortune, it's down to Cheng Fu to defend his former master. However, his use of the Snake fist inadvertently puts Pai in danger. Shing Kwan, who is watching the duel, recognises the style, and subsequently tricks the naive Cheng Fu into promising to reveal the old man's whereabouts.

Cheng Fu returns home. He finds that the book on Snake style that Pai has left for him has been torn up by his pet cat. However, Cheng Fu gets an even better lesson when he watches the animal defend itself against a cobra. (Hard to imagine an American movie staging such a real life duel between mammal and reptile!) This inspires him to create his own style, incorporating both Snake and Cat's claw techniques.

Meanwhile, Sun Chen has caught up with Pai. The fight that follows gives the Snake fist master a chance to avenge Sun's murder of his clan members. Pai returns to the Hung Wai school, where Shing Kwan comes looking for him. Pai makes his escape, with Shing Kwan in hot pursuit. There's a Chaplin-esque sight gag, with two kung fu masters climbing a wall unaided, and Cheng trying the same trick, then running back into frame with a ladder. Cheng Fu is intercepted by the preacher, and a fierce fight follows. It was one that Horan had to perform with a dislocated shoulder, having injured himself while leaping off a mini-trampoline, and hence is able to cut Jackie's arm by accident. It's real blood and pain we are watching.

When they finally meet, Pai is no match for Shing Kwan. It's down to Cheng Fu to save the day using his newly invented style, combining cat and snake techniques against Shing Kwan's eagle claw kung fu. It's been asserted that one of Hwang Jang Lee's kicks knocked one of Chan's teeth out. In fact it was 'just' a cap. (Chan had had his teeth fixed after he was signed by producer Lo Wei.) The star finished the film looking rough and toothless, and had the damage dealt with afterwards.

Snake In The Eagle's Shadow was a huge hit, establishing a new star, in Jackie, and a new genre, kung fu comedy. It was the first Hong Kong martial arts movie to outgross the most successful of the Bruce Lee pictures, Way Of The Dragon. Obviously, much of the appeal of the film stems from Chan's central performance. His roles in Lo Wei's films had miscast him all-too-often as a stiff-eye-browed, straitlaced kung fu master. Here, Chan creates a memorable screen persona as an amiable underdog. His fighting style fits this character to perfection. In Snake, Chan makes the jump to lightspeed in terms of film fight choreography. Moves like the drop sweep/butterfly kick in his duel with Tino Chan, or his spinning Snake dive more during his first fight with Hwang Jang Lee made the efforts the existing kung fu stars seem suddenly archaic. His energetic martial arts antics are often more reminiscent of Warner Bros Looney Tunes than Shaw Brothers period pieces.

In terms of story influences, the plot owes more than a little to, of all films, the first Star Wars. The parallels are particularly obvious in the narration Serafim Karalexis put at the start of the film to make it more accessible for western viewers. Shing Kwan, representing an evil empire (the Manchu), is hunting down the last of a band of heroic rebels (the Snake style warriors). One of them (Pai) is disguised as a 'srange old hermit', who takes on a naive youngster to learn the ways of his 'force' (the Snake style). (It wouldn't be the last time Ng See-Yuen borrowed from Lucas. Tsui Hark's 1979 debut The Butterfly Murders, which Ng produced, features much Star Wars influenced imagery.)

Though doubled for the more acrobatic moves, Yuen Siu-Tien was still remarkably agile (he was already 66 when the film was made). Tragically, he fell victim to his own latter-day success. Yuen was in such demand to reprise his kung fu beggar role that he found himself forced to appear in film after film. This overwork took a serious toll on his health, and he died of a heart attack only two years after Snake In The Eagle's Shadow was released. Hwang Jang Lee, being a good deal young and fitter, could put his new-found notoriety to good use, enjoying a long and successful career as one of the most prolific bad guys in Asian action cinema.

Though Hong Kong 'chop socky' had enjoyed worldwide success in the early '70s, the genre had fallen from favour by the end of the decade. Overseas distributors had been turned off Chinese films by the apparently endless barrage of Bruce Lee lookalike films. There was a sense that, whatever the merits of the movies, none of them was 'as good as Bruce Lee.' With Snake In The Eagle's Shadow, Ng See-Yuen had proved that he had a product which was, on the local market, a match for the pulling power of the Bruce Lee films. In the early '70s, Ng had been stung by international film sales agents, who bought his productions at bargain basement prices then sold them around the world at a huge profit. He resolved to distribute his own films, and, to this end, engaged the services of Roy Horan to help sale Snake In The Eagle's Shadow to the West. The first territory Horan got a crack at was Trinidad.

By his own admission, the full-time martial artist and part-time actor had no prior experience in the film distribution business. He met his client at Tsim Sha Tsui's Hyatt hotel, discussed the film in general, then excused himself to hurry across the street the Swindon book store. There, he found a reference book containing the statistics of Trinidad, it's population, currency, exchange rate and so on. Horan did some fast math, and, based on his calculations, returned and told the buyer what he wanted for the rights. To Horan's surprise, the man agreed. Horan returned to the Seasonal offices, where Ng See-Yuen refused, initially, to believe that such a deal had been done. The figure seemed incredible to him. From then on, the film was off and running. Snake In The Eagle's Shadow was snapped up by distributors in Europe, South America and beyond.

Though Horan's efforts opened the door to the West, some credit for this must go to the enterprising distributer Serafilm Karalexis. It was his company, Cinematic Releasing Corp, that bought up the U.S and U.K rights to the film. Karalexis' previous foraysinto the genre had seen him pioneer the U.S theatrical distribution of Hong Kong movies, then go into production himself with such classics as The Black Dragon Avenges The Death of Bruce Lee. His faith in Snake was such that he took the trouble to re-dub the film, re-write the credits and in the U.S, anyway, re-title the picture (as simply Eagle's Shadow) to make it even more appealing to Western audiences. The distributer even went so far as to secure the services of legendary comic book artist Neal Adams to provide the poster art for Snake and its sequel, Drunken Master. It was the cinematic version that was originally released in the U.K by Rank Home Video. Years later, the film also received a video re-release courtesy of Made In Hong Kong. In Germany the movie hit through cinemas on April 13th 1979 and was shown uncut containing the 'borrowed' soundtrack Oxygene by Jean Michel Gare.

On 28th of February 2000, Hong Kong Legends (Medusa) released the movie as a re-mastered DVD version and they couldn't have picked a more genuinely ground-breaking martial arts masterwork. Look out for HKLs 'Platinum Edition' release of that move and its sequel Drunken Master which contains a two discs set.

What seperates Snake In The Eagle's Shadow from myriad copycat films that followed is the fact that, beyond the memorable characters and stunning physical feats, it had heart. Twenty one years later, it still does.

Written on April 10th 2002

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