Review of Young Hero of Shaolin, The

Introduction

Fong Sai-yuk is a Chinese folk hero who was trained in the martial arts by his mother Miu Tsui-fa, daughter of Miu Hin, one of the Five Elders who escaped the destruction of the Shaolin Monastery by the Qing Dynasty, according to many Chinese legends; none of which makes that much sense to me other than telling me he was a big deal in China and probably revered along the lines of the likes of Robin Hood and King Arthur. In 1976, Yang Fan and Ye Hoi Fung directed this film about his early life with a $20 million budget. Filmed around the Yang Tze river in China, only China`s top martial arts artists were used in this film.

The story starts on Fong`s first birthday when a priest with an evil looking beard/moustache combo and his sidekick Ray demand money from Fong`s parents to celebrate his birthday. So much for giving presents to the child. Fong`s mum is a bit of a martial arts wizard and is up for a fight but is stopped by her teacher, an old nun who proceeds to kick both evil priest and Ray`s butts. The evil priest leaves but vows that he will kill Fong.

Old nun teaches Fong`s mother some useful tricks to build his strength such as wrapping his arms and feet in bandages before bathing him daily in a pot of herbs. This clearly works because Fong becomes as hard as nails, just lacking training and discipline. Evil priest returns and knocks Fong through a wall and thinking he`s dead, leaves gloating. Happily all that bathing in herbs has done Fong`s constitution the world of good and he`s soon up and laughing, although wincing a little at the same time.

Fong`s mother (who doesn`t seem to ever age, must be a Chinese thing...) now decides that she must follow old nun`s other advice and send Fong to the Shaolin temple to learn Shaolin kung fu. Despite having the maturity of a five year old, Fong eventually graduates after three years by fighting just about every student at the temple in the famous (according to the cover notes) Swatstika formation.

Now he`s left, he eventually finds out that Ray has been promoted to Captain and is bullying a local village in the guise of a fighting contest. What can he do? Hmmm…

Video

Picture is widescreen and letterboxed, looking quite good considering it was filmed in 1976. The remastering hasn`t removing all the artefacts or print damage though, one part quite bad but only for a split second. The picture is definitely a bit wobbly at times, especially when zooming in for a close up. The editing sometimes jars a bit as well.

Audio

Soundtrack is Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0 with options to listen in either dubbed English or original Cantonese with English subtitles. As usual I opted for the original language and noticed more than a couple of mistakes in the subtitling.

Features

Original theatrical trailers - Cantonese and English versions

English Credit Sequences - for both beginning and end of the film. The introductory text (which is missing from the Cantonese version of the film) contains some very poor English translation.

Shaolin Dahong Quan Demo - quite a long extra that shows some instruction of Shaolin Kung Fu moves. Not really sure of the benefit of this unless the producers were intending people to practice the moves in front of the TV. Goes on a bit…

Still Gallery

Conclusion

Reviewer Towers have sent out a few kung fu films over the last few months, and they were pretty dire. Not necessarily the plots (which are ever nonsensical) but the quality of the picture was dire on just about every one of them. Not so here, the picture is in good condition which means that your attention is not too distracted and you can try to follow what is going on up on the screen. So what is going on? Well there`s a lot of stroking of beards, lots of inexplicable posing and even more grunting.

Fong is a bit of a spoiled brat who despite messing around for the majority of his screen time as a student at the Shaolin Temple seems to both pick up all the tricks of kung fu through osmosis and graduates without really doing all that much. Of course it`s hard to convey three years of training within the space of an hour but the mistake here is focussing on his mischievous side rather than the serious training aspect. Still, we also find out that Fong has a heart of gold when he smuggles out food for a 70 year old bloke whose sole source of income is through cutting grass (i.e he`s very poor), who lives nearby with his daughter.

Plot wise, the whole thing is weak. It may well be (I hope) that something fundamental has been lost in translation but I really just couldn`t follow the story line as it jumped all over the place and didn`t really make that much sense. Some of the sequences are extremely well choreographed, but like the plot, there seems little reason for actually placing them in the film; the Swatstika formation fight being a prime but not sole example.

I have to say that this genre of film is not my cup of tea at all. I need a decent plot to keep me interested and to care about the characters and I just couldn`t find one here. Still, I`m sure someone somewhere (in summertime) will like this as some effort has been made in restoring it…