| Matt Clark |
The Mystery of Chess Boxing plays in glorious 35mm at the Trylon Cinema in partnership with the Cult Film Collective from Friday, November 21st, through Sunday, November 23rd. For tickets, showtimes, and other series information, visit trylon.org.
During the 1970s peak of kung fu film popularity, films from the Shaw Brothers’ legendary studio were known for lavish sets, period detail, and often outrageous kung fu styles. Rival studio, Golden Harvest, was primarily known for promoting international sensation Bruce Lee, but generally allowed for more individual, less studio-dictated expression in their filmmaking. Taiwanese-born director Joseph Kuo had neither the budgets or the star power to leverage in his films and yet was able to make his mark on the genre by focusing almost singularly on ferocious, unrelenting, intensely physical training and fighting sequences. While his leanest movie is possibly 1978’s Born Invincible, The Mystery of Chess Boxing is an excellent example of Kuo’s all (Ghost Face) killer, no filler approach to the martial arts film.
Chess Boxing opens with a terrific credit sequence of kung fu action on a giant xiangqi (referred to as chess throughout the English translation) board and never takes its foot off the gas for more than a few moments. Kuo eschews even the briefest of prologues, plunging the audience headfirst into a series of lethal duels featuring Kuan-Wu (Mark) Lung as the brilliantly named and utterly ruthless Ghost Face Killer. Nothing is really said of who the Killer is besides naming his nearly invincible Five Elements fighting style and the trademark ghost face plate he tosses at his victims. The film allows the audience to catch their breath for a moment to introduce Yi-Min Li as Ah Pao and Jack Long as chess master Chi Si Tien. The two will eventually reprise the student/master relationship they possessed in Kuo’s The 7 Grandmasters, but not without Ah Pao first failing to ingratiate himself (often hilariously) at the local kung fu school.
The essential pattern of the film is straightforward—Ghost Face Killer shows up (frequently in a nondescript field) to wreak havoc, Ah Pao flails his way through training and human relationships, and Chi Si Tien doles out wisdom and chess lessons which secretly have everything to do with kung fu. In the hands of lesser performers or a lesser director, these elements wouldn’t be so compelling, but Kuo has such an eye for velocity and creativity in his fighting and training sequences that it’s impossible to become hung up on narrative details. In addition to some of Kuo’s usual troop, Chess Boxing features the tremendous addition of Siu-Tin Yuen as both a cook for the kung fu school and an early mentor for Ah Pao. Yuen will be immediately recognizable to kung fu fans as he played the unforgettable Beggar So/Sam Seed in Drunken Master. The comedy in Chess Boxing is extremely broad—there’s a lot of mileage to be had out of a teapot and chamber pot getting switched—but it lands so much more convincingly with charismatic performers like Yuen and Li.
Inconceivably, the breakneck mayhem in Chess Boxing accelerates in the final fifteen minutes with even more intense training sequences finally culminating in an epic (and at times brutal) finale in which the true mysteries of chess boxing are unlocked in an attempt to thwart Ghost Face Killer’s own hidden style. It’s absolutely wild, it’s incredibly entertaining, and being able to see it on one of the only 35mm prints known to exist is an opportunity not to be missed.
Edited by Olga Tchepikova-Treon