Coward Bastard (1980)

The mighty Shaw Brothers sink to uncharacteristic lows by creating this poorly conceived and executed knock off of classic kung fu comedies starring Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan. Little known stunt actor Meng Yuan-man makes a poor Jackie Chan clone while skilled screen fighters Yuen Wah, Johnny Wang and Kuan Feng squeeze a couple decent fight sequences from a movie dominated by excruciatingly bad Canto-style humor, unappealing characters and a virtually non-existent plot. Better known for modern-day exploitation films like THE KILLER SNAKES and THE BOXER’S OMEN that rely on shock value and creative visuals, director Kwei Chih-hung is completely out of his element with this derivative kung fu comedy and it shows.

Everyone in the film, apart from Johnny Wang, Kuan Feng and Yuen Wah are playing Cantonese comedy stereotypes that would have been very familiar to audiences at the time, perhaps a little too familiar as in they were generally played out. Looking and acting a lot like Jackie Chan, Meng Yuan-man is a mischievous waiter at a rural, early-20th century Chinese eatery who finds himself at odds with a petty rich guy (Lam Fai-wong).

Wang Sha, a comedy actor known previously for his roles in oddball flicks like THE CRAZY BUMPKINS and MR. FUNNY BONE is Meng’s weasely boss, who with regular plump sidekick Yeh Feng, tries unsuccessfully to please their demanding customer and his henchmen. Unskilled in kung fu, Meng enlists the aid of the restaurant’s cook to help him fight back.

Yuen Wah, future Landlord in KUNG FU HUSTLE and acrobatic double for Bruce Lee is a fighter posing as the cook to hide from “The Pair of the Pole,” two oddly named baddies eventually hired by Lam to beat up Meng and continue to make the restaurant owner’s life miserable. The pole fighters are comprised of the “South Fist Iron Dragon” (Wang) and Flying Dragon the North Fist (Kuan).

Meng spends a lot of time trying to get Yuen to train him but he ultimately gets his training from – surprise, surprise – a drunken old man (Yiu Ping). Meng and Yuen eventually team up to take on the hired fighters.

Let me break it down. There is approximately 10 to 12 minutes of modestly decent kung fu action and the rest of the movie is junk and I wouldn’t waste my time with it, at least a second time around. Pacing of the movie is surprisingly sluggish, which is usually not a problem that exists in Shaw Brothers action movies. The training sequences are lackluster and the fighting is stretched way too thin between long and tiresome comedy and exposition scenes involving gags related to flatulence, massaging smelly feet and other unsavory topics. If this had been the first movie to show this nonsense, it might have been acceptable but all of this had been done before.

A sure sign that the movie is not going to deliver is that it takes approximately 15 minutes for the first short fight sequence to appear in the movie. It takes another 15 minutes for the first quality fight sequence to appear when Yuen Wah takes on angry peasants in a hay field, although I will say it’s a wonderful display of the stunt actor’s abilities. For once I can confidently state that no doubling was performed here.

The only real value is in seeing Yuen Wah go up against Johnny Wang. These are two of Hong Kong’s best screen fighters. This film does not represent their finest hour but does provide a rare match up and early showcase role for Yuen who more often was seen in bit parts or not at all while doubling for stars.

The fight choreography relies on a lot of team fighting with duos. This was previously made popular with several films but mostly notably Lau Kar-wing’s ODD COUPLE where Lau teamed up with Sammo Hung to perform a variety of tandem fighting moves.

It doesn’t look like the skilled stunt team on this film had much time to put together their fight scenes. They’re decent but somewhat sloppy and no where near the quality of the Yuen Clan or Sammo Hung’s work at the time, not to mention the Lau family.

Meng Yuan-man was Chinese opera trained and it shows in his acrobatic abilities, timing and ability to emote. Under other circumstances he probably could have been a big genre star but mimicking Jackie Chan definitely was not the way to stand out. This was clearly a poor attempt by Shaw Brothers to exploit the success of DRUNKEN MASTER. In addition, the industry already had a variety of established comedic action stars including Fu Sheng, Wong Yue and Meng Fei. Yuan-man might have been able to break out on his own, at least in the independent arena had not a heart attack in 1981 effectively put an end to his stunt acting career.

What is perhaps most notable about COWARD BASTARD is that it’s an attempt by a big studio to mimic a low-budget independent kung fu movie. It indicates the gradual shift in status where smaller companies like Seasonal were gaining ground on Shaw Brothers and its once rock-solid hold on the local box office. Likewise, SB’s failure to nurture innovation and creative freedom was finally beginning to hurt them. Apart from the films of Lau Kar-leung and Chang Cheh, the best action was being created outside of the studio. About the only thing the studio still had going for them, at least in this case was their polished production standards whereas the independents and even Golden Harvest were often shooting in generic outdoor settings in Hong Kong’s New Territories.

COWARD BASTARD is a very minor work from Shaw Brothers that most genre fans can safely ignore as it does nothing but rehash material from better kung fu movies while submerging it in excruciatingly over-the-top Canto-comedy. Johnny Wang’s performances in Lau Kar-leung’s films are superior. All that’s left are a few minutes of average kung fu action, a modest acrobatic showcase for Yuen Wah and one of the few starring roles for someone who never had the chance to escape from being a mere Jackie Chan clone. Even for diehard genre fans, that’s not much to work with.