The Cub Tiger from Kwangtung (1973)

Hsiao Fu's father is killed when he is young and he is raised by his uncle, who teaches him martial arts but forbids him to fight. After he gets into a fight anyway, defending his boss (then his cousin, and his friend, and...) his uncle makes him jab his hands into broken glass to teach him that fighting brings pain. This lesson doesn't help much when the man that killed his father finds them.

Jackie had pretty bad luck at the start of his career, with the company that produced this debut shutting its doors before it was released, leaving it sitting on a shelf somewhere until he hit the big time with Drunken Master, after which it was dusted off and chopped up with new footage spliced in to turn it into a kung fu comedy, MASTER WITH CRACKED FINGERS. I still haven't seen that, but from the bits I've sampled it seems like the new footage makes up a substantial part of it.

The original cut was thus unseen for another 25 years or so, until a very battered old print turned up on DVD. I bought it when it came out, but I was never sure which was the original version of the film and never got around to watching any of them until now. It's lucky I waited as the DVD is borderline unwatchable, and I've only recently acquired the tools and skills to do something about that.

It's a shame the film was buried as it's pretty good. It's a cheap indie production but it's competently executed, and the fight choreography by Jackie and Corey Yuen is kind of great.

The "martial arts is for self-improvement" theme in these films is always somewhat undermined when they inevitably end up in a big fight, which usually turns out to be for the best after all. Jackie's debut was clearly influenced by The Big Boss, but director Ngai Hoi-Fung is smarter than Lo Wei and realised that it's not actually a good idea to keep his talented star from fighting until the end of the film.

Jackie may not have had Bruce Lee's charisma, at least at this point in his career, but his martial arts and acrobatic skills were comparable, and he's always been a committed performer. The fights escalate as the film progresses, leading to a gruelling and extended show down in the finale that in some ways prefigures the classic finale of The Young Master.

Shu Pei-Pei also carries herself surprisingly well in the fights, being more convincing than I remember her being in her Shaw Brothers films. Chen Hung-Lieh also acquits himself well - he might be doubled at times, but maybe he'd just been training and the choreographers knew how to use him. There's a brief glimpse of a very young Yuen Biao, one of Chen's thugs who gets punched in the face.

I'm glad I finally got around to watching this - it would probably just be a minor curiosity if Jackie hadn't gone on to be a megastar, but he did so that at least turns it into at least a major curiosity, if not quite a classic.