Flash Future Kung Fu (1983)

FLASH FUTURE KUNG FU is a genuine oddity from Hong Kong. Its part kung fu movie, part cyberpunk thriller and all trippy no matter how you look at it. Produced by the now-defunct Bang Bang Film Productions, the pic is director Kirk Wong’s second effort. Wong is best known for helming Jackie Chan’s CRIME STORY and the Hollywood actioner THE BIG HIT. This early feature is crude by comparison yet reveals that the filmmaker has maintained a signature style throughout his career that is dominated by artistic visuals and sex appeal.

Like Tsui Hark, Wong was heavily influenced by Hollywood filmmaking and in his early work broke away from Hong Kong movie conventions by attempting to combine Western artistic sensibilities with familiar local genre staples. FLASH FUTURE KUNG FU takes the common kung fu school motif, several familiar faces from the kung fu movie genre and tosses them into an alien world where drugged out Chinese neo-Nazis, muscle-bound androids and ether-powered super cars run amok.

The film currently comes with some written explanation onscreen but only in Chinese and without English translation so the back story is somewhat murky. What is clear is that a gang of neo-Nazis in a future where society has completely broken down are attempting to create an army of brainwashed followers.

Killer, played by kung fu movie veteran Johnny Wang Lung-wei, is an underground boxer and kung fu student who ends up at odds with the neo-Nazis after his friend (Ray Lui) is lured into their arcade hang out, beaten and later murdered by a seductress. After being injected by deadly chemicals while seeking revenge, Killer is brought back to health by his kung fu master (Eddie Ko Hung) with the aid of an eccentric doctor (San Kuei). Killer and his master return to their kung fu school to find that it has been destroyed by the neo-Nazis. In response, they infiltrate the lair of the neo-Nazis to get revenge. Along the way, they come to the aid of a young woman Killer had met earlier to rescue her daughter from being brainwashed.

It is pretty obvious that Kirk Wong’s chief inspiration was Ridley Scott’s BLADE RUNNER, now considered one of the greatest sci-fi movies of all time. The story is different and the budget is much smaller but the dark and slightly quirky tone and dystopian setting are similar.

A smoke-filled video game arcade provides the setting for neo-Nazi groupies to cavort in outrageous fashion by Hong Kong movie standards. Women, partially or fully nude, lounge among the blinking machines as New Wave music-era denizens dance and sing in a choreographed routine. Nearby, a transvestite exposes himself while going into a drug-induced frenzy.

In another scene, two attractive women dressed as if they came right off the set of BUCKAROO BANZAI, introduce Wang Lung-wei and Ray Lui to their high-tech drug mobile. Later, the same women dressed in pink leotards with tutus perform a macabre fetish stage show by beating and drowning to death a brainwashed victim for the viewing pleasure of night club patrons.

If that isn’t enough, Category III king Elvis Tsui appears in possibly the one role that set him up to star in notorious films like THE ETERNAL EVIL OF ASIA and CHINESE EROTIC GHOST STORY. Looking almost exactly like the greased up Sting in DUNE, Tsui battles Wang with some highly unconventional forms. More likely, this was a nod to Rutger Hauer’s bare-chested performance in BLADE RUNNER.

Almost impossibly, this scene is upstaged when Wang’s next opponents appear as loincloth-wearing he-men with gimp suit headgear on that lights up. Just as odd is San Kuei, the hunchback from Yuen Woo-ping’s BUDDHIST FIST playing a witch doctor of sorts who smears a dead chicken all over Wang’s back wound and passes the time during Wang’s recovery by playing Atari games.

As strange as many of these scenes are, it’s downright disappointing to see how bland the action choreography is. At least Tsui Hark had sense enough to shoot some quality action in his genre-bending actioner THE BUTTERFLY MURDERS. At least one source credits the action direction for FLASH FUTURE KUNG FU to Kirk Wong but I highly doubt that. Chances are that Wang Lung-wei and his co-stars probably came up with their own choreography on the spot. Most disappointing is the finale where Wang gets into the ring with the nameless neo-Nazi leader. Not only does it make little sense story-wise, but after all we’ve witnessed, ending with a simple boxing match just doesn’t cut it.

According to IMDb.com, FLASH FUTURE KUNG FU was nominated for several Hong Kong Film Awards including Best Director, Cinematography, Art Direction, and Screenplay. If true, 1983 must have been a weak year for Hong Kong movies because today it is difficult to see how this movie could be deserving of any of these accolades. To be fair, I have only seen this movie as a poor-quality Ocean Shores print, English dubbed and heavily cropped. Through the bad contrast, low resolution and clipped visuals it is possible to see that Kirk Wong got a lot of mileage out of his limited budget. A supposedly high-tech control room was simply filled with television sets with their casings removed and lights filtered through smoke and fans. The synthesizer soundtrack was also nominated for an award. If it is the same one heard on the Ocean Shores print then it probably did deserve some recognition. It fits the film perfectly and evokes the atmospheric tone of Vangelis’ score for BLADE RUNNER.

Wong does deserve credit for bringing this cyberpunk-flavored cinematic vision to a Hong Kong action movie long before the likes of THE HEROIC TRIO and BLACK MASK came along. It’s also a gutsy film that pushes the boundaries of Hong Kong’s usually conservative and quaint depiction of sexuality. I have no idea who the two attractive leading female co-stars are but Wong undeniably plays up their sex appeal in somewhat twisted ways. It doesn’t look all that racy following the many outrageous sex-filled Category III films Hong Kong released since but Wong’s treatment is probably the most sophisticated.

For fu fans, FLASH FUTURE KUNG FU offers a rare chance to see Johnny Wang Lung-wei play a hero in very strange surroundings. As much as I enjoy seeing him as the lead villain in classic kung fu hits like MY YOUNG AUNTIE and THE KID WITH THE GOLDEN ARM, Wang here shows tremendous potential as a gritty screen hero in the tradition of Charles Bronson. Likewise, Eddie Ko is an underappreciated actor and kung fu movie veteran who gives his character added dimension with a mere look or subtle facial expression.

FLASH FUTURE KUNG FU is a movie I’d like to reserve final judgment on pending the release of a higher quality version on home video. It has inherent flaws no restoration could fix but a portion of what Kirk Wong intended to convey appears lost to dubbed translation and low-grade repackaging. The rights to the movie are likely tied to efforts by the Hong Kong Film Archive to re-release the library of Bam Bam Film Productions, currently held by Pearl City Video. Hopefully this will one day lead to the release of a better version of the film on home video.