BACK ABOARD THE SHANGHAI EXPRESS.
I’ve just been in the studio to record the commentary for our upcoming Shanghai Express DVD. Director and star Sammo Hung is one of my idols, and it was great to revisit this raucous eastern Western martial arts action comedy. I remember when I first saw the film at a midnight show at London’s Leicester Square Odeon. The scene that got the biggest reaction from the crowd wasn’t even a martial arts sequence, but rather the shot where the fat lady jumps from a burning building. (I won’t spoil the gag by describing it further!) That probably says more about British audiences than it does about Shanghai Express… The finale shows how Sammo and his team could film virtually any kind of martial arts action. Yukari Oshima’s swordfight has a Japanese chanbara style, Yuen Biao and Dick Wei’s duel is acrobatic, hyped up kickboxing…I remember my friend Andy Staton (long-time Bruce Lee and Jeet Kune Do aficionado) recommending a film called Hawk’s Vengeance, in which a very good martial artist named Cass Magda played the bad guy. I trained under Cass when he was on a seminar tour with the great Dan Inosanto, and know that he’s a real expert. The stick fighting techniques he used in Hawk’s Vengeance were technically accurate, but I told my friend that, cinematically, they didn’t work. To prove my point, I showed him the scene from Shanghai Express where Sammo takes on a group of bandits using a pair of wooden truncheons. Every move of the sequence is shot, timed and edited to heighten the impact. That’s what the stick looks like on film. The big problem with American martial arts films has always been that the exponents don’t know how to express their movements using cinematic, rather than martial arts, language. However, Shanghai Express features Cynthia Rothrock and Richard Norton, two western martial artists who adapted very well to the demands of Hong Kong film-making. I’ve known Cynthia since the 80s, when she made a name for herself on the UK video scene with the two China O’Brien films. I brought her over to England to do a kung fu seminar tour and we drove to the various locations in my Suzuki Vitara. I remember pulling up to a filling station, and the attendant looking through the window to see Cynthia crashed out on the back seat. “Is that China O’Brien ye’ve got in there?” I was worried he’d think I was kidnapping her. Richard Norton hails from Australia, and began his martial arts career as a student of my step-father, Tino Ceberano. (Tino is my mother’s first husband, but not my father, even though I’m her oldest son. It’s a long story!) Tino studied Goju Kai under the great Gogen Yamaguchi, and this was Richard’s basic style. Since then, he’s trained and excelled at virtually every range of combat, including kickboxing (at Benny Urquidez’ Jet Centre), in Okinawan weapons, Brazilian jujitsu (under the Machados) and recently these lightning fast hand techniques, ‘complexes’, that he learned from Sensei Tadashi Yamashita. He’s also one of the nicest guys in the business, someone you literally never hear a bad word about. Shanghai Express has so much action, so many cameos, it made for an exhausting commentary. The film itself is so much fun, I kind of envy people seeing it for the first time! I hope you guys enjoy the DVD and my comments, and I look forward to getting your feedback on both.
Comments
- Randy Savage, California | 2007-03-15 19:07:29
- Fan of Kung Fu movies, North America | 2007-03-17 11:11:34
- Bey Logan, Hong Kong | 2007-03-24 14:13:15
- Andrew Gorham, Kalamazoo, MI | 2007-03-27 09:14:11
- Blas Villalonga, Mexico | 2007-03-12 19:58:52