Of Cooks and Kung Fu (1979) Tao Tie Gong

A mysterious stranger with a Raiden style hat, is killing off the chefs in the area, and it's not because of the cooking.

Master Glutton (Chai Kai) was once the Emperor's cook, The King of Chefs. But after a bizarre scallop incident, he was chucked out in disgrace. Over 20 years, he's developed a series of kung fu styles based on Chinese dishes. That's the odd premise, and also what he's teaching his wayward grandson Tan Tan (Chan Siu Lung AKA Jackie Chen). Yes, its basically Drunken Master, with an even more obscure fighting style. The two plot lines of chefs and killers carry on till they inevitable meet.

As part of my remit to review obscure films, I could make the whole blog on Hong Kong movies from the 70's. Having said that, if you've seen a few kung-fu movies, you can pretty much guess how this one will pan out.

So why am i writing about it? Well 3 reasons.

1. Its not actually that bad. There is plenty of action, the training sections tie into the plot as you see our young hero learn from his previous mistakes. Jackie Chen has great acrobatic ability.

2. This film has spadefuls of  gratuitous camera zooms. It may be a cliché of Hong Kong movies, but for me, this is a real plus.

3. The version I've seen has a weird effect which I'm going to call Wobble-Cam. Sometimes the action seems to bob up and down like a boat. Sometimes it feels like the camera is trying to avoid being punched. At first I thought it was some in-camera effect, but it looks like someone has blown up the print and has manually moved the film around, in a similar way they used to do pan-and-scan, only more violently. Its a really weird effect, that's hard to explain, but I quite liked.  On YouTube there is a clip of the film from a German release which doesn't have it, so I think this effect was added when it was released in America in the mid 80's. If any one can shed some light on this, please drop us a comment!

To be honest the film could of done with a few more locations. 90% of the fights seem to occur on the same dirt path.

Things to look out for:

Like Magnificent Bodyguards, There's another blast of a John Williams score on the soundtrack. This time Jaws!

If your daughter's life is being threatened by a hoodlum to make you reveal a secret, this film has a ingenious way out of it.

"As it's well known, Chinese cooking is the best in the world!"

This movie also goes under the name Duel of the Dragon, and is presently on YouTube and DVD rental at LoveFilm UK.