The Company You Keep
This article is about Wong Jing’s tenure as a screenwriter for old school Kung Fu movies. Barring The Fighting Fool, his most memorable writing credit in 1980 was for a Yuen Woo-Ping movie titled The Buddhist Fist. Wong Jing was one of three writers, but his comedic writing contributions are not difficult to recognise…even with the star being one of the writers as well as one of the directors. In 1980, Jing wrote the story for a better Yuen Woo-Ping movie. Known in English as Dreadnaught (1981), it was Jing’s attempt to capitalize on the slasher genre. Brave Person, No Fear (the Chinese title) would later be the Chinese title of Steven Spielberg’s Amistad (1997) when it was released in Hong Kong circa 1998.
The most surprising inspiration that Dreadnaught had was on a Chuck Norris movie, of all places. The idea of making a martial arts slasher movie clearly had a profound impact on Silent Rage (1982), which began filming four months after Dreadnaught was released. It’s not uncommon for U.S. film-makers to borrow from Chinese movies. For example, catching flies with chopsticks was already done in Yuen Woo-Ping’s Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow (1978) before The Karate Kid (1984). Dreadnaught had a bigger influence on The Karate Kid by having the protagonist become a successful martial artist by doing domestic chores. This gimmick, much later, would also have an influence on a similar scene featuring Robin in Batman Forever (1995). The difference between The Karate Kid and Batman Forever is that the latter directly borrowed from the laundry scene in Dreadnaught.
Another 1981 Kung Fu movie worth mentioning is Sammo Hung’s The Prodigal Son. Like Dreadnaught, it starred Yuen Biao and was produced by the Golden Harvest film company. The screenplay was co-written by Wong Jing. Thematically, it shares a similarity with his screenplay for The Magnificent Butcher (1979). In the latter, the antagonist doesn’t realize that his son is the true villain, but the protagonist (played by Sammo) does. In The Prodigal Son, the antagonist finds out that his father is the true villain but the protagonist doesn’t. Both movies share the concept of combining Kung Fu with calligraphy, something that Jing would later repeat in 1990 for Money Maker (released in 1991). This combination of two mediums would be exploited in productions not involving Wong Jing. The director of The Magnificent Butcher, Yuen Woo-Ping, would remodify the idea for an abstract arm-wrestling contest in Drunken Tai Chi (1984). Two years after that movie, it was turned into a team sport in Martial Arts of Shaolin (starring Jet Li and directed by Liu Chia-Liang).
There is a actor who appeared in four Kung Fu movies whose scripts had Wong Jing’s involvement. Fan Mei-Sheng co-starred in The Magnificent Butcher, The Buddhist Fist, The Eagle’s Killer (made in 1980 but released in 1981) and Dreadnaught. Fan Mei-Sheng’s affiliation with Jing is peculiar given that these movies were produced by separate companies, with the exception of the first and final movies being Golden Harvest productions. Strangely, Fan never worked with Jing ever again; although Fan’s son did. Fan Siu-Wong acted in On His Majesty’s Secret Service (2009), Future X-Cops (2010), Beauty on Duty! and New Kung Fu Cult Master 1 (2022). As to why both Fans worked with Wong Jing when they did, you need to understand the following. Fan Mei-Sheng knew that Wong Jing is a major fan of Bruce Lee. Despite his outgoing nature, Jing isn’t prone to gossip. As such, Father Fan knew that he could be trusted to keep a secret.
According to Fan, the truth behind Bruce’s death was that he was tricked into going to a children’s playground at night under the pretext of meeting Betty Ting Pei. Once he arrived, he was ambushed by gangsters armed with metal rods. This creepily foreshadows a scene in Jackie Chan’s Police Story Part II (1988). It also shares a striking similarity to a scene in Skinny Tiger, Fatty Dragon - a 1990 movie where Sammo Hung plays a policeman who sounds like Bruce when he fights like him. Back to Bruce’s final altercation, he received a fatal blow to the back of his head. The truth was covered up by the Golden Harvest studio runners because it would hurt their ability to market him as the world’s greatest martial artist. What lends credence to Fan Mei-Sheng’s story is that he was a gangster who had multiple connections to the police. In fact, he claimed to have got his information from two high-ranking inspectors who had told him when he sought verification of Bruce’s death.
Fan’s account doesn’t say anything about his body being taken to Betty’s apartment, which suggests that the official story of Bruce’s body being discovered there was a cover. Fan’s version of events resumed to when Bruce was taken to the hospital. Fan’s revelation influenced Wong Jing to drop subtle hints in his screenplays for two 1981 movies - The Crazy Chase (made in 1980) and Mahjong Heroes. The Crazy Chase was produced by Lo Wei and directed by Eric Tsang. In 1973, Lo Wei was threatened by Bruce Lee on July 5 - three weeks before Bruce died. It’s common knowledge that Lo was a gangster, and it remains to be seen if Bruce had threatened him with this knowledge firmly in the forefront of his mind. Lo Wei Motion Picture Co. Ltd. was the production company behind The Crazy Chase and one of the production companies behind a Jackie Chan movie called Dragon Lord which went into production around the same time that The Crazy Chase did.
As such, The Crazy Chase wastes no time in advertising the connection. The main character’s office has posters of both Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee. Elsewhere, there is a scene in a film company office which has posters of the movies which Jackie had acted in for Lo. Despite being a light-hearted satire about the movie industry, there is an ambush scene in a woman’s bedroom which is an indirect nod to Bruce’s death. Instead of the main character succumbing to a headache and taking an aspirin that kills him, he finds himself being ambushed before he can have sex. As he fights for his life, there is a funky version of the theme tune for Bruce’s The Way of the Dragon (1972) playing in the background. This is the same funky rendition which can be heard in two 1978 parodies - Enter the Fat Dragon and Half a Loaf of Kung Fu. The latter starred Jackie whereas the former starred Sammo Hung as a Bruce Lee fan who abides by the philosophy that imitation is a form of flattery.
The Way of the Dragon also pops up in spirit during a fight that takes place in the heist scene. Instead of a country bumpkin grabbing the chest hair of an assassin, it’s a stuntman grabbing the pubic hair of a thief. Speaking of theft, the premise of The Crazy Chase was initially conceived by Lo Wei since he could personally relate to the idea of a man’s wife teaming up with a film studio boss to rob her husband. In Lo’s case, the studio boss was Golden Harvest’s Raymond Chow. The latter was already running afoul of the Bruce Lee fans who suspected that he was behind Bruce’s death. Months before Bruce died, there were already reports in the local press that he was complaining to Raymond about being fleeced of his box office share for The Way of the Dragon. It was produced by Bruce’s company, Concord, of which Raymond was an equal partner of. While some suspect that Raymond was greedy, it was more likely that the Triads wanted financial renumeration.
When Game of Death came out in 1978, the revised storyline of a movie star encountering criminals only helped to confirm the suspicions of many fans. Like many of the movies which purport to tell the story of Bruce’s life, it treads a fine line between biopic and parody. This explains why the theme tune of The Crazy Chase has a similar vocal phrasing to the theme tune that can only be heard in the Hong Kong version of Game of Death. Both songs owe a debt to Born Free (1966). This was co-written by the 007 composer who worked on Game of Death - John Barry. Since Lo Wei was okay with The Crazy Chase lampooning his failed marriage, Wong Jing presumed that it would be okay to revisit the homicidal wife plot for Mahjong Heroes (1981) in a less obvious way. The leading lady was Betty Ting Pei, who was Bruce Lee’s mistress. She had divorced from gangster actor Charles Heung in 1980.
Mahjong Heroes, while advertised as a comedy, is really more of a drama. Betty’s character is the villain, and the original climax involved the protagonist’s godfather being poisoned by her. Following this was a scene at a graveyard where the protagonist, Johnson, visits the graves of three people who died in the original version of the movie. Besides the godfather, the first instructor and best friend of Johnson died in a car crash. As he grieves, Johnson is approached by Betty’s character - Aunt May. Wong Jing was inspired by the ending of a 1980 Sammo Hung movie titled The Victim. One of the surviving characters in that movie is sitting by a row of three graves in a state of mourning, but that tranquility is interrupted when someone comes along to strike up a conversation.
