Super Power (1980) Review

“Super Power” Theatrical Poster

Director: Lin Chan-Wai
Cast: Billy Chong, Hau Chiu-Sing, Chiang Tao, Ho Kei-Cheong, Annie Liu On Lai, Lau Dan, Fung Ging-Man, Wong Chi-Ming, Wang Han-Chen, Lau Hok-Nin
Running Time: 95 min.

By Paul Bramhall

In the late 70’s production house The Eternal Film Co. must have felt like they struck gold by signing on Indonesian martial artist and local movie fixture Billy Chong. While Chong had shown hints of what he was capable of in the likes of Black Belt Karate (a rare chance to see him in full on Bruceploitation mode!) and Invincible Monkey Fist, it was once he arrived in Hong Kong that his physical talents were fully exploited. After launching his HK career in 1979 with the Drunken Master clone Crystal Fist and Sun Dragon, Chong kicked off the 80’s with Super Power. I’m sure at the time it must have seemed like Chong was going to be a permanent fixture in Hong Kong action cinema for the upcoming decade, however rumours of being difficult to work with and an over inflated ego saw him back in Indonesia by the end of 1983 (the less said about his attempted HK comeback in 1989’s Aces Go Places V: The Terracotta Hit, the better).

The 7 movies he headlined over the 5 years he spent in HK under The Eternal Film Co. are all bonafide classics though, and whatever high regard Chong held himself in, it was at least a quality which was also reflected onscreen. In many ways Super Power can be seen as the production which fully banked on him as a leading man, no longer relying on the influence of Drunken Master like in Crystal Fist, and losing the need for the novelty of having 2 foreigners headlining a HK movie that came with Sun Dragon (although Chong would notably be paired with Carl Scott again for 1981’s Kung Fu Executioner).

The initial plot structure of Super Power is actually quite interesting in the context of being an old-school kung-fu flick. Proceedings open on a trio of brothers whose father is on his death bed. We learn that they’re the relatives of Manchu imperial guards, and that a long time ago their father and his buddies were beaten in combat by a group of Chinese kung-fu experts. The fathers dying wish is for his sons to seek redemption by defeating the Chinese, so they set about arranging a dinner to lure the descendants of the kung-fu masters, and challenge them to a fight. The unique angle here is that the first characters we meet in the movie are actually the bad guys, which makes the unknowing audience initially invested in them as they vow to carry out their dying fathers last wish, only to do a flip and switch once we’re introduced to Chong (who plays the son of one of the Chinese kung-fu masters) later on.

The trio of brothers are played by Hau Chiu-Sing (Snake in the Monkey’s Shadow, Five Superfighters), Chiang Tao (Dynamo, Shaolin Abbot), and Ho Kei-Cheong (The Challenger, Clan of the White Lotus), and they all bring a stellar level of screen fighting talent whenever they’re called into action. Chong himself isn’t introduced until around the 15-minute mark, and as was par for the course for kung-fu comedies of the era, plays the mischievous son who will do anything to get out of studying and practice some kung-fu. Thankfully here his character isn’t overly grating, and Super Power is the kind of movie where a dose of kung-fu is never too far away, incorporating in a variety of different styles including the imaginatively named Horse Face Fist, plenty of Eagle Claw, and Chong’s own unique style of Nature Fist (based on “the universes natural forces” no less, and possibly the only tenuous link to the title Super Power).

We even get styles mentioned that never get shown. At the beginning the dying father reveals a manual to master the Gold Flower Fist, a seemingly significant plot point which thereafter is never seen or mentioned again. Kung-fu manuals aren’t the only disappearing plot point in Super Power. In the opening credits we watch Chong busting out the moves with a pair of steel rings, however the rings themselves never make an appearance in the plot, a rare case of the opening credits display having nothing to do with the movie itself. Perhaps the most glaring omission is the subplot introduced early on that Chong is betrothed to marry Anna Liu (Kung Fu Genius, The Magnificent Ruffians). We get to see Liu demonstrating her talents with a sword in one scene, however not only is the fact that she’s presented as a character with kung-fu skills never utilised, by the end the whole marriage plot thread has been completely forgotten about.

Such omissions are enough to question if the unique twist of initially introducing the bad guys as the protagonists wasn’t so much an intentional creative choice but rather a lucky accident, however thankfully most who clock into old-school kung-fu movies aren’t doing so for the plot. In that regard, when it comes to the action Super Power excels, and in many ways the story could be viewed as one of the purest examples of a kung-fu flick out there. That is to say, without the kung-fu element, there wouldn’t be a movie. This is about characters who have trained in kung-fu to beat other characters who are also trained in kung-fu, and they’ll train in even more kung-fu to ensure they beat the other characters kung-fu. That’s pretty much all there is too it, and perhaps director Lin Chan-Wai realised that early on, so simply decided to do away with all the superfluous elements regardless of if they’d already been filmed or not.

Super Power was Chan-Wai’s solo directorial debut having acted as an assistant director on many Shaw Brothers productions such as Na Cha the Great and Soul of the Sword, and he’d carry on directing through to the early 2000’s, including helming Chong’s follow-up Kung Fu Executioner. Chan-Wai would never return to the kung-fu genre after helming the 2 productions with Chong, spending the rest of the 80’s directing dramas, before dabbling in the action genre throughout the 90’s with B-movies like the Jade Leung and Yukari Oshima starring Leopard Hunting from 1998. Thankfully though for Super Power he did have the foresight to bring onboard a couple of his Shaw Brothers alumni for the fight choreography in the form of Wong Chi-Ming and Tang Tak-Cheung.

Both Chi-Ming and Tak-Cheung started out featuring in various extra or minor supporting roles in Shaw Brothers productions throughout the late 60’s and early 70’s, then from the mid-70’s onwards they began to supplement their onscreen appearances by taking on fight choreography gigs. Some of Chi-Ming’s earliest fight choreography work can be seen in the likes of 1973’s Superior Youngster and 1974’s Paris Killers (paired with Pao Jia and Yuen Shun-Yi respectively), while Tak-Cheung’s talents can be seen in Tiger Over Wall and another Chong headliner with 1981’s Kung Fu Zombie. Tak-Cheung also had a short-lived career as a director, helming the later day Shaw Brothers flicks Demon of the Lute and Long Road to Gallantry, both of which Chi-Ming also worked on, so the pair clearly had a strong partnership when it came to action choreography.

There are plentiful action highlights, but one of my favorite sequences involves Chong facing off against his kung-fu teacher, played by one half of the action choreographers – Wong Chi-Ming. Starting off as a fast paced and intricate open handed one on one, the fight eventually segues into a room full of priceless antique vases lining numerous densely packed shelves. Chi-Ming challenges Chong to carry on fighting but without breaking anything in the room, and what follows is a choreography masterclass as the pair continue to go at it, all the while catching, balancing, and navigating their surroundings in a display of physical skill the kind of which really no longer exists.

It’s a scene which serves as a microcosm for all of the fight action in Super Power, and it would have been easy to spend the whole review extolling the virtues of all the top shelf fight choreography on display, as there’s not a single weak link in the cast here. Throw in classic English dubbed lines like “Oh, the great eagle, still, it’s a bit sick!” and ”I’ll change your eagle to a duck!”, you can’t really go wrong. For those that like their kung-fu movies to be purely about the kung-fu and not much else, Super Power comes strongly recommended.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7.5/10