SPIRITUAL KUNG FU

As with most of Chan's early pre-stunt efforts, he plays a bumbling, lazy disrespectful young man who eventually proves himself. the difference here is that he is taught kung fu not by his cranky old drunk uncle or a 500 year old hermit, but by five ghost from outerspace!

In the opening scene, a ninja sneaks into the temple and steals a manual for the deadly seven fists style of kung fu. Of course this means that later on in the movie Jackie will have to fight whoever stole the book, so enough on that.

The next night, there is an earth quake, and a meteor (okay, a guy holding a sparkler in a dark room) crashes near the temple. From the meteor come five ghosties who for some reason are played by men with red raggedy Ann wigs and white grass skirts. One of the monks puts some Chinese scripture over his eyes and ears so he can see the ghosts. The ghost steal some kind of paper, and the monk fights to get it back. The ghost are invisible to the rest of the school, and they all think he's gone mad. One scene that had me rolling on the floor was when a ghost stuck the paper in his butt crack and when the monk went to grab it, the ghost farted in his face!

Jackie wakes up hearing all the racket, and decides to catch the ghosts himself. After a long struggle, Jackie corners the ghost and when they wont surrender, he pees on 'em! The ghosties take refuge in a book hidden in a crack in the wall, which turns out to be a manual for the lost and even more deadly five style fists. I would think that seven fist would be more dangerous than five, but i guess not. Jackie forces the ghosts to teach him the style, and he soon becomes an expert, defeating all of the students in the temple at once.

The guy who stole the 7 fists manual eventually shows up, demanding to be made warlord or general or something like that, because he has killed all the other masters. Jackie challenges him, and with a little help from the ghosts, he wins. There's all sorts of plot twists in the climax, but it's all too silly to talk about.

The fight scenes were unexpectedly well done, and although not as off the wall as the stuff Chan has done more recently, he does prove to be an exellent martial artist. The story moves along at a fair pace, and when it does start to slow there's usually a good 5 or 10 minute fight.

Whats fucked up, is that the prercord i just bought for $5 is in terrible shape. The tape itself is from 1983, which makes it the oldest one i own next to my Monterey big box of Mean Machine. I've never seen this type of problem with a tape ever: every so often, the screen goes purple, but the sound is still audible, then when the picture comes back, the audio track sounds like a train passing by! It's very annoying, especially when it happens during a fight scene. There's one stretch where the picture drops out for a full 10 minutes!

Besides the flaws with the print, i enjoyed Spirtual Kung Fu alot. Slightly less than Fantasy Mission Force, but a good, crazy kung fu flick for a saturday morning.