THE SAMMO CONNECTION : Hanging with Hung at the ‘Fatal Move’ premiere.

It’s great to see the face and name of Sammo Hung back on billboards across Hong Kong, as Fatal Move, the new gangster thriller from director Dennis Law, reigns at the top of the local box office. Law’s new feature is waaay darker than his Fatal Contact, currently a bestseller on Dragon Dynasty, but its final reel features a match up that fight fans have been waiting for since Killzone: Sammo VS Wu Jing. These two titans appeared together in the film formerly known as SPL and also in Twins Mission, but have never before traded fists and feet of fury. I was delighted to attend the premiere of Fatal Move with my good buddy, American actor/director Marcus Aurelius, and to introduce him to Sammo, who is both his idol and mine.

I first met Sammo on the set of his martial arts masterpiece Prodigal Son. I was 19 year old, Bruce Lee obsessed kid from Peterborough, England, and all I knew about Sammo was that he was the opponent in the opening duel of Enter The Dragon. When I first saw him on the Golden Harvest soundstage, he was in costume and make-up for Prodigal Son, and I actually thought he was a much older man. (Hung actually aged slowly and quite differently, and, 27 years later, still doesn’t look as old as his character in Prodigal Son.) With the late, great screenwriter Barry Wong translating, I badgered Sammo with questions about Lee, which he answered with good natured patience. It was only after I returned to London, and caught Prodigal Son at a midnight show, that I became an instant convert to the clan of Hung fans.

In terms of taking Hong Kong film fight choreography to a new level, Hung, along with Shaw Bros legend Lau Kar-leung, was one of the true successors of Bruce Lee. Their triumph came from their not emulating Lee’s style, but instead his energy and creativity. As choreographer, director, producer and star, Sammo’s contribution to martial arts cinema can’t be underestimated.

In more recent years, I’ve had the pleasure of working with Sammo on the films The Medallion and Dragon Heat. When I meet the big man’s fans (I call them The Hung Jury), they usually ask me one of three questions:

1)How did he get that scar between his nose and his mouth?

I can exclusively reveal that Sammo’s trademark facial characteristic was caused when he was engaged in a street fight outside a nightclub in Kowloon’s Tsim Sha Tsui East. He was battling a band of thugs alongside Shaw Bros regular Tong Yim-chaan (aka Bruce Tong), and figured Tong had his back. However, one of their foes smashed off the neck of a Coke bottle, and managed to swing it into Sammo’s face from behind him. If you look at the scar closely, it’s a perfect circle, the exact dimensions of a truncated Coca-Cola bottle. The Real Thing must have caused a real sting…

2)Why have so few of the films from Sammo’s later career been
released on DVD?

We would love to release movies like Pantyhose Hero, Slickers VS Killers, Blade Of Fury and, especially, Pedicab Driver on Dragon Dynasty, but… right at the end of the Golden Harvest era, the studio sold around 100 of its latter day productions and acquisitions to Warner Bros. The films concerned descended into the WB vaults, and the doors closed behind them with a mighty clank. DD would be delighted to sub-license some of these classics, if time and fate allow.

3)Why haven’t we seen Sammo in more of the kind of films he
made in his heyday?

It’s like the line in Sunset Boulevard, when William Holden says of Gloria Swanson ‘You used to be in…pictures. You used to be big’, and she replies ‘I am big. It’s the pictures that got small’. I think Killzone signaled something of a return for Hong Kong action cinema, and certainly a return to form for Sammo. Hung has since done sterling work on such projects as Dragon Heat (out now on DD), the Wing Chun TV series, Fatal Move and the forthcoming Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon. As I write, he’s on location in Shanghai action directing Yip Man, which stars Donnie Yen as the legendary Wing Chun master, who was also Bruce Lee’s teacher. Hung choreographing Yen. That’s a team up that fans have had to wait for since 1989, when Yen was offered (but declined) the co-lead in the Sammo produced Into The Fire. (Ironically, the role went to Yen’s Flashpoint nemesis Collin Chou.)

The day before the Fatal Move premiere, Sammo was interviewed by the local press, and, in his usual humble manner, said that, even if he was no longer ‘dai gor dai’ (meaning ‘biggest of big brothers’) for the local industry, he was just happy to still be making movies. To me, he’ll always be the icon I met when I was 19, and we at Dragon Dynasty are determined to bring his past and future projects to their widest possible audience.

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