“The Tattooed Dragon” Theatrical Poster
Director: Lo Wei
Cast: Jimmy Wang Yu, Sylvia Chang Ai Chi, Sam Hui Koon Kit, James Tien Chun, Dorian Tan Tao Liang, Lee Kwan, Tong Tin Hei, Pipop Pupinyo, Nai Jia
Running Time: 94 min.
By Ian Whittle
After two less than stellar features lensed in Japan, A Man Called Tiger and Seaman No.7, the Lo Wei/Jimmy Wang Yu/Golden Harvest team finally achieve some success with their third collaboration.
In Thailand, a mysterious fighter known only as The Dragon discovers some crooks with stolen charity money. Beating the living daylights out of them, he flees injured with the loot and is taken in by a farmer (Sam Hui) and his fiancée (Sylvia Chang). Meanwhile, the crook’s boss (James Tien) hatches a scheme to get hold of mineral-rich land by opening a casino, and getting the land cheap by obtaining the local’s houses to settle their gambling debts.
And there’s an adorable dog named Lassie…I mean Lanni, stealing scenes left right and centre!
There is a sense of the guard changing when you have Jimmy Wang Yu and Sam Hui sharing the screen. The former was on his way down from the days when he was a superstar in Shaw Brothers’ wu xia films, and as far as kung fu films went he was being eclipsed by Bruce Lee. One year on from this film, Sam Hui and his brothers would star in Golden Harvest’s box office smash Games Gamblers Play which would show the way forward for the studio.
That said, in The Tattooed Dragon, Wang Yu is very much on top. Although he is never going to be considered much of a martial artist, he was a real life brawler with fighting chops, and seen here ploughing his way through assorted goons, there is a thuggish appeal to him that resonates. This attribute would come to the fore in his international feature The Man from Hong Kong, but would be less well utilised when he slummed miscast in period wu xia (The Killer Meteors) or old school kung fu styles (Tiger and Crane Fists).
Hui by contrast seems rather lost. Dubbed in Mandarin and with no singing or comedy opportunities (unless you count the strange scene where he tries to impress his father-in-law with his farming business plan), he might as well be anybody. And if you thought David Chiang taking on all of Thailand in Duel of Fists was far fetched, wait until you see Hui, who must tip the scales at a buck fifty soaking wet, winning some Thai boxing matches. Not since Burt Ward faced up to Bruce Lee in Batman have you seen such a mismatched battle!
Unusually for a Lo Wei film of this era, Lo himself doesn’t appear in the movie. He had a reputation behind-the-scenes for being too busy listening to horse races on the radio to direct. Which makes one wonder if he was going through a bit of intervention, when he made The Tattooed Dragon, as the film is really preachy about the evils of gambling! I’m not even sure the villains even cheat; they seem to get all the deeds to people’s houses fair and square. And when one desperate boob (Lee Quin) marches off to the casino, deed in hand, his wife takes her children to the river, ties herself and them up, then they all drown! And after all that, Lee decides not to go through with risking his house! It’s a horribly depressing scene, and I’m constantly torn between finding it effective (how could it not be, with Ennio Morricone scoring it?) and thinking: damn Lo Wei, this is horrid!
So what’s the moral of the story? Maybe, as Krusty the Clown’s accountant once put it: “Gambling is the finest thing a man can do…if he’s good at it!”
Ian Whittle’s Rating: 6/10
