Director: Kan Ping Yu
Writer: Kan Ping Yu
From: Cult Cinema (only 2 remain!)
Two homeless boys use cleverness and kung fu to outwit the criminal boss that runs their town and eventually defeat him.
A pretty simple plot. San Mao is an orphan looking for his mother. He had been training at a monastery, but his master was assassinated by traveling soldiers. He’s headed to the city in hopes of finding his mother. Once there, he starts using his (admittedly impressive) acrobatic kung fu skills to make money. He’s seen by Kou Pu, another homeless kid who’s constantly working a scam from pretending to be blind to collect donations to straight-up theft. After a few contentious encounters, the two team up and Kou Pu takes San Mao to his “secret hideout” where he stays with the slightly older Zsa Zsa. These are, then, your titular “Kung Fu Kids” (although they’re never called that in the movie. It’s just convenient to refer to them as such).
The town is run by the evil Mr. Chu whose thugs intimidate and shake down the residents for money constantly. They keep running into the Kung Fu Kids, but Mr. Chu’s son keeps intervening to save them since he’s falling for Zsa Zsa.
About halfway through the movie, Kou Pu gets the idea, basically, of busking while doing kung fu. In other words, it takes half the movie for the characters to figure out they could be making money doing the very thing San Mao was doing for money when Kou Pu met him. Performance goes well, but Mr. Chu’s men break it up because they haven’t paid him a bribe.
Then a representative from the General (no, I don’t know either) arrives and is murdered by Eagle, a Korean kung fu master who is then captured by Mr. Chu’s men. The Kung Fu Kids help him escape and he reveals that the General was going to give control of the entire region to Mr. Chu and that he’s there to stop that from happening. They all set up various traps around their hideout, Mr. Chu’s men come for a final showdown, and it comes down to a fight between Mr. Chu and Eagle. Just as Mr. Chu’s about to deliver the killing blow, his son jumps in and takes the hit himself. Eagle is then able to defeat and kill Mr. Chu. As Zsa Zsa is weeping over the body of Chu’s son, Eagle and the boys walk off laughing. THE END
What?
No, wait, seriously, what?
This is one of those flicks that’s confusing before it even gets confusing. The basic plot should be simple: scrappy down-on-their-luck kids using their wits and skills to get by. Grifter kid sees talented kid and they team up so grifter can take advantage of talented kid’s talent. That would be the kung fu street show. Only it takes them forever to figure that out as an option even though, as I said, they’d already seen it work. Then the plot about overthrowing the town’s leader because he’s evil and part of a larger political plot doesn’t come up until the very end. Yes, Eagle has appeared previously in the film, but it’s not clear until the assassination that he’s going to be part of the plot and there’s no indication that this will be the plot. So you have odd story choices going on even before you get to the cheery ending of the boys laughing while their friend cries over the body of a man who stood up for and saved them multiple times.
What?
I wouldn’t encourage or discourage anyone from watching this. The kung fu is really impressive. Normally I’d find movies like this insufferable. They tend to play out, in the US, as smirking, self-righteous kids pulling pranks on the idiot adults who won’t respect their Kid Power! This could easily have fallen into that, but sidesteps it by having the kids be good at kung fu. You don’t need to suspend your disbelief to think this child who’s clearly very skilled at what they do was able to defeat these adults. And the action sequences are worth seeing. Like I said, wouldn’t say avoid it, I’m just not sold enough to recommend it.
I think the movie is in the public domain, but I haven’t uploaded a copy to the Internet Archive because there is a fleeting shot of child nudity. The boys are bathing in a river and one stands up. The shot isn’t pornographic, is about as short as it can be, but it’s still kiddie bits on screen and I’m going to assume that’s a line that you don’t cross.
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