Sarah's Top Ten Stephen Chiau Sing Chi Movies!
Stephen Chiau Sing Chi has been the number one box-office
draw in Hong Kong throughout the nineties. Cuter than Andy Lau, cooler than Chow Yun Fat,
funnier than Jackie Chan; to be any one of these things is highly
remarkable, to be all
verges on the improbable. Born with fairy bones indeed!
Here are only ten of my favourite Chiau movies, all available on VCD or on
video from your local Chinatown (you can find the Chinese titles from Ryans' HKMDB).
"Whosover knows his maleness
and guards his femaleness:
he is the gorge of the world
eternal Life does not leave him
and he becomes again as a child"
Tao Te Ching
CHINESE ODYSSEY 1&2 (1995)
My favourite Chiau Sing Chi movie comes in two parts, Pandora's Box and
Cinderella, and is based on Wu Cheng-en's 16th century novel Journey to the West
(Monkey).
Sing Jai (as he is known) was born to play the Monkey King, and he transforms himself with
perfect monkey movements and expressions as well as a stunning makeup job. Of course he is
not satisfied to spend the whole movie in one outfit (especially one that hides his
glorious mug so effectively) so the plot has him reincarnated as a human who does not
realise his divine destiny. He plays the leader of an Ax gang, who live in the desert and
make a good living robbing travellers until two gorgeous and deadly female demons turn up
in search of the Longevity monk and take over after beating everyone up including Ng Man
Tat (Sing Jai's eternal sidekick) who is the perfect Pigsy. Tat So (uncle Tat) and Sing Jai
are an inseparable pair, locked together in a slightly masochistic folie a deux. The actor
who plays the Longevity monk (Law Kar Ying) is very funny. There is a long running joke about how he is so
boringly pious that he drives even Kuan Yin to violence.
The costumes are truly spectacular, even for Sing Jai, who distinguishes himself by the
obvious joy he takes in dressing up. Waaah! He is expressing such contagious amazement of
the wondrousness of the world, which is a rare talent indeed.
ALL FOR THE WINNER (1990)
The original and the best of Sing Jai's gambling movies.
Sing Jai is a naïve mainlander with special powers (x-ray vision and the ability to
psychically transform cards), which are depicted with special effects that give him
sparkles in his eyes and flames coming from his shoulders. His shifty, crazy HK uncle (Tat
So, outdoing himself) tries to capitalise on these talents with hilarious results. Of all
Sing Jai's movies this features the most kungfu and he proves himself to be very capable
in this area. Apparently he is Wing Chun trained, by Bruce Lees' sifu, but he considered
HK far too hot for doing action, and preferred to use his wits to make money. Cheung Man
plays the love interest without whose presence his powers will not work and she also
displays a talent for kicking. Her performance in this film is so magnetic that it is easy
to believe she is the source of Sing Jai's energy. In Wong Jings' recent film Tricky
Master
2000 Sing Jai proved he could still cut it on the action front but
unfortunately Wong
Jing could not afford much of his time.
FIGHT BACK TO SCHOOL (1991)
It's hard to define the charm of this strange and somewhat trashy movie, but most
of it clearly belongs to Sing Jai, who plays his role to the hilt. He is a tough commando
policeman forced to go undercover at the local high school to retrieve his bosses stolen
pistol because he looks young and pretty enough to pass as a schoolboy. This is Sing Jai's
characters' worst nightmare and it gives him an opportunity to impress us with a huge
range of pissed off expressions. He uses his catboy attitude and his combat training to
take care of the school bully and the local Triad ( played by a young and dangerous Roy
Cheung). Features a demented Casio soundtrack by a guy called Wong Bong (!!) This movie
has two sequels, which I have to warn you are pretty awful, an attempt by Wong Jing to
capitalize on its phenomenal success (it broke all HK box office records).
TRICKY BRAINS (1991)
This is my favourite kind of Sing Jai Movie, where he is being too smart for his own good,
rather than too naïve. It's more convincing and more amusing as you don't have to spend
the whole movie feeling sorry for him. After all, we all know he's really the biggest
wiseass on the planet. He will do anything in front of the camera, having transcended
self-consciousness and embraced foolishness as an art form.
He and Andy Lau and Tat So make a charming family, with Andy Lau demonstrating an
unexpected flair for comedy. The sheer exuberance of the food-fight scene is quite
infectious, as is the lounge-room Chinese Opera performed with vacuum cleaners etc. The
whole concept of a Tricky Brains Expert is tailor made for Sing Jai as is the I Am Naked
suit.
LEGEND OF THE DRAGON (1991)
Sing Jai is a naïve country boy with a talent for snooker . His father is a
kung-fu master played by Yuen Wah and he sends the young Dragon off to Hong Kong with his
dodgy uncle to make his fortune, where he becomes a snooker champion. This character
succeeds, because although he's a bit of a peasant, he's not unbelievably simple, as in Love
on Delivery. The supporting cast are delightful, especially Yuen Wah and Theresa Mo
as Dragons' girlfriend and sparring partner. The scenes of Dragon and his
'colleague' (as
he calls her) going on a sneaker shopping frenzy are very funny, as is their repressed
relationship. We learn that peasants have bad hair and wear daggy tracksuits, fall dead
asleep on the stroke of midnight, eat like pigs at any opportunity' and are somewhat
ignorant of the facts of life. They are however, righteous and full of energy and in the
end they win out over the evil property developers, although not before the
nail-biting
climax in which Dragon plays British snooker ace Jimmy White.
ROYAL TRAMP 1&2 (1992)
This slick bit of Wong Jing fluff, based on the Louis Cha novel Duke of Deer
Mountain, features fantastic costumes and a lot of fierce fighting females. The Tiger
suit would have to take an award as one of Sing Jai's classic costumes . There was
actually a real costume very like this worn by Qing dynasty soldiers , the 'ten mai' or
Tiger Men, who were shield-bearing shock troops sent in to break up an enemy cavalry charge
with sabres and grappling hooks. Part one is dominated by Cheung Man and
Chingamy Yau, as
is Chow Sing Chi, who stars as Wilson Bond, a storyteller and a member of the heaven and
earth society who becomes a eunuch at the Qing emperors' court without ever getting the
chop. Chingamy Yau is the Emperors' sister, and when she finds out Wilson Bond is still
entire, she has him delivered to her rolled up in a carpet. She makes a magnificent Yang
Yin to Sing Jai's Yin Yang and this scene alone should be enough to make him a feminist
icon. He has subverted gender stereotypes by portraying a truly emotional male, balancing
a well developed feminine side with a powerful and charismatic masculinity.
Part two stars Brigit Lin as the leader of the Dragon sect (Cheung Mans ' role in part
one), which she plays very androgynously, and does most of the 'fighting' (horizontal
cartwheels etc) until she passes 80% of her internal power on to Wilson Bond in a night of
passion in a hairy pod. Sing Jai and Brigit Lin have matching cheekbones and the outfits
get even wilder with Brigit Lin's hairdo reaching for the sky and in the finale Sing Jai
gets to do some kungfu sewing and they all fling a lot of chi around and spit rivers of
blood.
Wong Jing may be completely commercial, prone to making terrible sequels and responsible
for a lot of mind numbingly boring cat3 movies, but he has also directed quite a few of my
favourite movies probably because he doesn't indulge in pretentious art movie bullshit
(lets face it, you wouldn't want to be stuck on a desert island with the complete works of
Wong Kar Wai) and sticks to making what the people want to see. Apparently he is rarely on
set, having several projects running simultaneously, and it is his Assistant Directors who
do most of the work. This gives the actors a lot of freedom which is a good thing in Sing
Jai's case and maybe one reason why he has made so many Wong Jing films.
FLIRTING SCHOLAR (1993)
An adaptation of a Chinese musical, which I had to love purely on the grounds
that its hero, Tong Pak Fu, is an artist and a poet. The scene where he paints a picture
with a naked ink-covered man is highly amusing as are all the painting scenes. He has
eight wives who gamble all the time and pay him and his creations no attention , so he
falls for Gong Li , who loves his poetry. The most beautiful smile is the one with love,
he decides, so he sells himself as a servant in the house where she is a maid which turns
out to be the household of his family's mortal enemies. It all culminates in a war of
words and Sing Jai makes his opponent spit blood. Such delightful diction and righteous
rapping! It has to be said his defining feature is his voice, which is powerful and rich
in nuance, highly textured and melodic. He has acquired what Stanislavski calls 'the feel
of words', a process all the more amusing in Cantonese, which, with its nine tones is
already a very musical language.
KING OF BEGGARS (1993)
Sing Jai plays Chan, the son of a rich man (Tat So) living in Qing dynasty
Guanzhou. They loll about all day smoking pipes and visiting brothels until one day Chan
meets Cheung Man and falls in love with her. She is a member of the Beggars Association
and is posing as a prostitute so she can kill the man who killed her father. She tells him
he has to be the best at kungfu before she'll marry him and he takes this to mean he has
to become the Kungfu Scholar, a problem as he is actually illiterate. One thing
leads to another and Chan ends up a beggar himself, with he and his father almost freezing
to death on the streets of Beijing. Chan gets very depressed and gothic at this point and
won't get out of bed, but luckily his ghostly beggar sifu visits his dreams to teach him
sleeping style (actually a real shaolin lohan position). This movie is based on Chinese
folk hero Beggar So.
FORBIDDEN CITY COP (1996)
This is a very stylish period piece and a charming display of the marital arts,
directed by Vincent Kok. Ling Ling Fat is one of the Emperors Bodyguards, but instead of
being a fighter like the others, his speciality is inventing things. His talents
aren't
much appreciated in a court full of he-men, and Fat goh spends most of his time at his
day-job, which is a gynaecologist.
Carina Lau is excellent as his wife and watching the two bicker and spar is very
entertaining. It is rare in any cinema to find marriage so touchingly and cleverly
portrayed. When Ling Ling Fat saves the Emperors' life with his gadgets, he becomes his
most trusted servant. The Emperor sends him to check out his new concubine, and for some
obscure reason, he goes in drag. She is there dressed as a man and of course she suggests
all kinds of risqué activities. This is a lovely scene, but will it lead to the breakdown
of the ideal marriage?
KING OF COMEDY (1999)
This new character of Sing Jai's is quite bewitching. Wong Tin Sau is a jaded and weary,
struggling actor. A gentle, perplexed and lonely individual with a certain thespian
acerbity but none of the spitefulness of God of Cookery. This is
definitely one
of the best movies he has ever made. It is a whole new style of storytelling that suits
him very well. He seems very calm and age has given him extra dignity. Like Jackie in Gorgeous
he is having a cradle snatching affair, but the girl (Cecilia Cheung Pak Chi) is very
wise and quite impressive, so it doesn't seem so strange. Karen Mok plays a gun-toting
action star a la Anita Mui in A Better Tomorrow 3 and she tries to give Sing
Jai's character a break even though everything he touches turns to disaster. In the end it
is Tat So's wonderfully grumpy undercover cop who finds a use for his talents. Sing Jai
gives a performance that is exquisitely sad and subtle. Half child, half little old man,
half here, half not. If only the production values of this rushed New Year effort had
matched the quality of the performances!
Also highly recommended: Mad Monk, Curry and Pepper, God of Cookery,
Trickymaster2000, God of Gamblers 2, Look Out Officer, Justice My Foot, Lawyer Lawyer,
Hail The Judge, From Beijing With Love, Alls Well Ends Well, Final Justice.
Here are two Sing Jai sites to check out:
My Idol Chow Sing Chi
and The Movie Madness of Chow Sing Chi.
30 Jan 2000 © Sarah Wheatley
SARAH WHEATLEY is an
artist and a writer with a fascination for all aspects of Chinese culture. She is
currently working on several projects, including a book on Hong Kong cinema and an
esoteric martial arts film script. This is her second appearance on Heroic Cinema - she
contributed to the Brisbane report
on the 1999 Hong Kong Film Festival. Her lucky third appearance here is her terrific
article on Shaw Brothers movies.
For more of her reviews, see her great site Chiaumania,
or head to the HKMDB
Contributor's Page and look under "sarah".
