Kung Fu of 8 Drunkards (1980) – A Movie A Day 2021 #52
Kung Fu of 8 Drunkards (1980) – A Movie A Day 2021 #52
After being forced to stay indoors for the better part of a week because of terrible weather, I got out over the weekend and visited one of my favorite places: a used DVD store. I browsed for a while as usual, but I ended up mostly just raiding the $1 table. Apparently someone off-loaded a bunch of cheap kung fu DVDs recently, and some of them ended up on the dollar table. So, of course, I grabbed them, and the first one I chose to watch is titled Kung Fu of 8 Drunkards. The title immediately brought to mind Jackie Chan’s Drunken Master from 1978, and even though Kung Fu of 8 Drunkards isn’t as polished as Jackie Chan’s film, I quite enjoyed it.
Kung Fu of 8 Drunkards follows a young man named Chang Fung who works with his cousin and uncle at a noodle shop. Chang Fung goes away for a month to learn drunken kung fu from a master, Wu Sing, but when Chang Fung returns home, he discovers that his teacher has many dangerous enemies. When Chang Fung uses his newly-learned skills in public, his style is recognized, and he becomes a target for the many people who want to kill Wu Sing. Chang Fung’s life and family are in danger, and he has to fight his way through a series of deadly encounters before he can find peace.
The movie isn’t necessarily a comedy, but it is a fairly silly and funny movie. I think the nature of drunken kung fu makes it nearly impossible to make a movie featuring it without being at least partially a comedy. Kung Fu of 8 Drunkards may not be especially noteworthy when compared to countless other kung fu movies that came out around the same time, but it’s a lot of fun. The story meanders from scene to scene with the plot lurching in different direction just to get to the next action sequence or comedy bit, but that’s one of the reasons I love these kinds of movies. The characters and fights are fun, and that’s all I really need.
I started watching lots of cheap kung fu movies in my teens, and I definitely have a certain aesthetic I enjoy which is based on some of those movies I saw during that time. This was back in the days of VHS, and tons of kung fu movies were available on poorly produced tapes. That’s what I love. Poorly dubbed, full frame, grainy pictures and all. If I can get the movie on VHS now, that’s even better, but the handful of movies I picked up the other day are clearly just dumped onto a DVD from a bad VHS copy. You can even see a few tracking problems when the movie is starting up. I love it.
Of course I’ll watch kung fu movies in full widescreen with nice picture clarity and subtitles, and I prefer that for a lot of the better kung fu movies out there, but for late-night movie to relax to, cheesy and poorly distributed kung fu movies are a go-to choice for me. I have four more movies I picked up, so don’t be surprised if you see them pop up in some future write-ups sooner rather than later.