A few scenes from the early days

While vacationing I catch up a bit on the early career of Stephen Chow.  For those of us weaned on Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle - the only films he made that won major awards - it's important to understand that he was a huge star in Hong Kong long before western audiences laid eyes on him.  In 1991, before he had directed anything, he starred in all five of the top-grossing movies in Hong Kong. 

We did not get to fully explore his early work while we were on the continent, but the films we saw were generally...not good...but nevertheless full of funny moments.  Some examples:

Here, in his raunchy and wildly uneven 007 sendup "From Beijing with Love", a would-be assassin is baffled by his odd behavior, as well as his insane "Nicked Gun":




In "Love on Delivery" we get (2:10-5:00) THE GREATEST FIGHT SCENE IN MOVIE HISTORY:




The best overall movie we saw, by far, was "Fight Back to School", in which "21 Jump Street" gets the "Airplane" treatment in Cantonese. Here the undercover cops are called in and have a little trouble selling their cover story:




There's still work to do on this front.  "All for the Winner" looks promising, as do "Tricky Brains" and "God of Cookery".  What I have learned so far is that there will always be funny bits in these moves - whether they're any good as movies or not, that's a trick-or-treat proposition.

But my goodness what a talent.


What role is there still for me to play: Stephen Chow on why he has stopped acting - link