Secret Rivals
Reviewed by Yves Gendron
SECRET RIVALS is the film that back in 1976
truly launched three bright stars of independent kung fu cinema,
(two of them the genre’s greatest kickers) Don Wong, John Liu and bootmaster
supreme Hwang Jang Lee. It also established the highly successful gimmick
of having two heroes with different fighting styles unite to fight an invincible
adversary. The movie however does not have a very auspicious beginning
as it has very much the look and feel of one of those dreadful seventies
lame kung-fu schlock films with very rough filmmaking, cheap production
values and absolutely horrid dubbing. As one of film’s first scenes is
of a bad guy bullying a whiny little kid, a prospective viewer may get
a very poor first impression of the film. The advice however is to stick
around.
Somewhere in Korea, a local lord, of Chinese
origin, has organised a martial competition in order to select a new chief
bodyguard. Among the dozens of candidates there’s Sheng Ying-fei (Don Wong
Tao) who’s a Southern style exponent and Shao Yi-fei (John Liu) a master
kicker, who find themselves to be in each others way and develop an enmity
for one another. The local lord’s actual aim in getting a new bodyguard
is to have him carry out an assassination and then get rid of him easily.
What he doesn’t know though is that both Sheng and Shao have secret agendas
of their own but the tense rivalry between the two could now jeopardise
each of their respective plans, whatever they might be. Then there’s also
the Silver Fox (Hwang Jang Lee) to deal with, the local lord’s partner
in crime, who’s a lethal martial master.
Besides the recurrent whiny kid, SECRET RIVALS
also soon introduces the unexpected appearance of an oafish Western brute,
the “Russian World champion” who has come it would seem all the way to
Korea to participate in the contest and makes an absolute boorish ass of
himself in the process. Sigh. Thankfully he’s gone after ten minutes. Thus
despite some bothersome sightings overall, the film holds together pretty
well thanks to it’s two lead stars genial charisma, the clouded intrigues
surrounding their real intentions and the dramatic tension that develops
over their “secret rivalry” which keeps the viewers on their toes. Then
of course there are the fights that are terrific, with Wong being a superbly
fast and crisp fighter and Liu quite spectacular with his kicks and flexibility.
The film's best scene is the pair of them doing warm-up exercises before
a friendly bout together, (a scene obviously borrowed from Bruce Lee’s
WAY OF THE DRAGON) which allows them to display their superb and sharp
physicality. Hwang Jang Lee only shows-up in the second half, he looks
a bit silly with his fake wig and beard but he too is great to watch.
SECRET RIVALS is the work of Ng See-Yuen, who
was in the seventies H-K cinema’s first and foremost maverick independent
martial art maker, deemed by local film scholars as one of the most resourceful
and innovative directors of the period. He also had a knack at finding
promising talent and picking up on popular trends; sort of the Chinese
Roger Corman of his time. Of course much of his innovations are now lost
on contemporary viewers because of the age of the films but at the time
they really rocked. Thus Ng pioneered the use of real martial artists instead
of trained actors or stuntmen and while his film direction itself was rather
rough he nonetheless developed some cinematic techniques including slow
motion and zoom lenses to make his fight scenes more crisp and forceful
than any one else’s. In the early seventies, after directing a string of
gritty k-f pot-boilers as the initial trend toward k-f movies abated following
Bruce Lee’s death, Ng turned towards crime-action thrillers meeting great
popular and critical success. Then in 1976, as the martial art genre was
starting to emerge out of it’s creative and popular slump, he went back
to it with a couple of catchy gimmicks as well as a trio of performers
of great talent but who all had a disappointing false start in their film
careers. These were Don Wong whose mop-head hairdo and feline screen presence
was more than evocative of Bruce Lee, John Liu a pupil of already established
martial art-star Tang Tao Liang and Hwang Jang Lee a Korean Taekwondo exponent
of powerful and spectacular kicking skills.
Ng See Yuen’s big gimmick for SECRET RIVALS was
of course to pair two fighters together with each of them using a vastly
different martial style. One is a Southern stylist (Don Wong) using mostly
hand techniques and low kicks while the other was a spectacular Northern
kicker (John Liu) thus leading to an eclectic kung-fu spectacle and hence
to the film’s original Chinese title: SOUTHERN FIST NORTHERN KICK. Still
while it did not diminish Don Wong’s involvement in the action in any way,
with his two other co-stars being leg fighters, the film was made into
a real kick fest. That must have been a most invigorating showcase at the
time. Big kicks had seen great days in the early seventies to mid-seventies
(in particular with Bruce Lee who introduced showy Taekwondo kicks into
kung-fu cinema and the Angela Mao movies choreographed by Sammo Hung),
but with the coming of Shaolin k-f in 1974 that favoured mostly hands techniques
and low-kicks, high spectacular kicks had thus been in retreat for a time.
Until RIVALS brought back the move with a bang, thanks to the great skills
of his new performers, the cinematic techniques developed by Ng See Yuen
and the action choreography by Peking Opera trainees Ga, Ming (better known
under his English name Tommy Lee) and Chan Chuan, who designed the action
as a ferocious in your face ballet of death. Since they were at the beginning
of their film careers neither John Liu or Hwang had yet developed their
bag of tricks such as Liu holding his leg up in the air with his hand,
although he was already crushing jars in his training scene - a move
he would repeat adnauseum for nearly all of his movies.
Ng See-yuen’s other major idea for his movie
was to develop a rivalry between his two heroes thus creating a network
of dramatic tension and intrigue that would grip the viewer. A lethal feud
between a Northern and Southern master or school is actually one of the
favourite plot devices found in martial literary art or cinematic fiction
and there’s at least a dozen Shaolin movies where the heroes have to fight
a master of the Eagle Claws, the Mantis Fist or Wu-Tang, all Northern related
styles. In SECRET RIVALS however the tangible friction is between what
looks to be the films two heroes. Something that this reviewer would very
much like to know though is if in the movie’s original Mandarin dub whether
Wong and Liu’s characters had a distinct accent that would have indicated
a peculiar regional background. As this reviewer understands it, for a
variety of social/cultural reasons, in China, Northern and Southern folks
often don’t quite see each other eye to eye. It was an uneasy relationship
that for a time was especially exacerbated in the southern city of Hong
Kong which for decades served as a safe-haven for millions of Chinese,
a good deal of them Northern refugees fleeing either the Japanese invasion,
the civil war of the thirties as well as the Communists take over of the
Mainland with a result that Hong Kong became an over-crowded urban refugee
camp. Ng See-Yuen must have been keenly aware of the Northern/Southern
divide as he was born in Shanghai but from Cantonese (meaning Southern)
parents and was both raised and educated in Shanghai then Hong-Kong. Small
wonder then that he would eventually come-up with this tale whose real
inner drama rested on the fierce rivalry, uneasy relationship and
grudging respect between a Northern and Southern fighter.
SECRET RIVALS was shot in Korea which was a popular
shooting location from the early seventies on for low budget k-f
film production companies because of the country’s low cost environment,
beautiful pastoral scenery and it’s many unspoiled temples that were used
as sets. Usually though Korea merely doubled for an ancient China setting.
Here for once though the story is truly set in Korea and the film makes
great use of the local scenery, including a giant Buddha statue and a couple
of huge temple courtyards - one in bricks and the other arranged in terraces.
This creates a look so exotic and elegant that it very quickly transcends
the cheap look the film seems to have at first and even gives it a touch
of class, one that would actually be hard pressed to find in more elaborate
but more tacky looking movie sets such as found in most seventies k-f film
productions, even the ones by the Shaw Brothers studio.
SECRET RIVALS was a huge hit across Southeast
Asia and helped revitalise martial art cinema in the second half of the
seventies thanks to it’s newly established stars and of course the fighting
pair gimmick which became almost instantly a standard within the genre.
Up to three or four dozen of such similarly themed movies thus appeared
over the following years, the bulk of it independent productions starring
besides Liu and Wong the likes of Tang Tao Liang, Chi Kwan Chun and several
others. Fight arranger Tommy Lee went on to choreograph a good many of
these productions while also frequently playing outlandish super k-f villain
before becoming a k-f director in his own right. None of these players
however ever quite reached the cult popularity of Hwang Jang Lee whose
film career went higher and lasted a bit longer than anyone else playing
mostly superbly mean and cool bad-ass villains. In fact, his cult fame
was so great that when the video distribution company Xenon released their
version of RIVALS the title of the film was changed to the awkward and
absurd “SILVER FOX RIVALS” based on the name of Hwang’s character in the
movie’s English dubbed version (the character’s original Chinese
name though was “Bloody Fox”). For the most part Hwang worked for Ng See
Yuen to whom he was his ace in the hole.
SECRETS RIVALS huge success served Ng See-yuen
quite well as it firmly established his newly found film company Seasonal
on solid ground and after having two more hits starring John Liu and Hwang
Jang Lee SECRET RIVALS II and INVINCIBLE ARMOUR he started a producing
career. Over the years he discovered and promoted promising new acting
or directorial talents such as Corey Yuen, Conan Lee, Tsui Hark and of
course Yuen Woo Ping and Jackie Chan - producing for them a groundbreaking
pair of k-f comedies SNAKE IN THE EAGLE SHADOW and DRUNKEN MASTER
(both 78). But that’s another story.
So summing it up - despite it’s age, its wretched
dubbing, its horrid gweilos and whiny kid sightings all of these turned
out as only momentary distractions. Overall SECRET RIVALS remains quite
appealing on the basis of its action, its stars and its intrigue not to
mention it is historically relevant and therefore is a quite recommended
find.
My rating for the film: 7.5
(Thanks for the special input from Linn Haynes)