Dance of the Drunk Mantis (1979)

Dance of the Drunk Mantis (1979)

Directed by: Woo-ping Yuen

Starring: Siu Tien Yuen, Jang Lee Hwang, Shun-Yee Yuen

I watched this one because I’m a sucker for Kung Fu movies, and especialy ones involving drunken fist or any of those overly silly martial arts styles. Little did I know that Dance of the Drunk Mantis would be very nearly a sequel to the Jackie Chan movie Drunken Master. And that’s the best present of all.

A drunk old kung fu master returns home after many years on the road and finds himself challenged by another drunken kung fu master who’s designed his own style combining drunken fist and mantis style. The old master must fend off this crazy guy and teach his estranged son his style… or I guess he actually doesn’t do either of those, instead telling his son to go to hell, and the kid instead gets training from his brother, who’s style mimics being a hypochondriac.

There are actually some pretty cool fight scenes in this one, including the first one between the good guy drunk and the bad guy drunk where they fight over a jug of wine. Seriously, it’s pretty awesome stuff. Another neat thing about this movie is the ‘sickness’ fighting style, or whatever they called it. It’s not every day I see a kung fu movie with a completely new style I haven’t seen before. Yep, I’m that much of a geek.

Anyway, beside the three or so good fight scenes, this movie was horrible, but that’s not really a surprise. I think it mostly had to do with the main character (the son of the drunk master) being really uninteresting. Anyway, if you like drunken kung fu, put this one on your list.