VHS Review: Drunken Master (1978)

By Brian
5/5

I don't watch many Kung-Fu movies, but I think that's about to change.  Drunken Master is the movie that made Jackie Chan famous, its so old that he is actually credited as Jacky Chan (wonder why he changed it.)  From the first scene, where Chan takes a dudes hat off and plays keep away while beating him up, you can clearly see Chan's amazing ability to mix humor into his Kung-Fu.  The first scene had me giggling even though I was sitting at home alone.  The story of the movie was a little hard to understand because I have a crappy old vhs with heavily Italian-accented dubs, but it didn't matter because the movie is almost all action. What I did understand is that Drunken Master is Jacky Chan trying to save his rich daddy against an assassin named "Thunderbird" whose best line is "I'm going to kick your ass off!"  In order to defeat Thunderbird, Chan has to train with an old drunk to learn his drunken techniques.  The old master kicks ass, the dude must be pushing 80, but he fights like a pro.  Chan and the old master are stellar at kicking peoples asses with chairs, sticks, bottles, and everything else they can get their hands on.  Contrary to popular belief, Chan can also pull off Kung-Fu comedy without props, especially while using his "Lady Style Technique."  This movie was a perfect mesh of comedy and action, and at only 80 minutes, kept me at the edge of my Paxton the entire time. This was a flawless movie, so I'm giving it a flawless score of 5 out of 5.