Stephen Chow started working in TV back in 1981 and he made his first film appearance in 1986 in the John Woo film A Better Tomorrow. It's a darn good movie and one worth seeing but mostly for the Chow Yun Fat and Ti Lung parts. Stephen has a small part. He'd continue working in both tv and movies for a while but by 1990 he'd pretty much left the small screen behind. In 1989 he was in the Jet Lee movie Dragon Fight which was filmed in San Francisco and Utah. That same year he was in another John Woo film Just Heroes. It's an ok crime drama but not as interesting as A Better Tomorrow.
Love Is Love is the first of the ten movies he appeared in in 1990. It's a romantic comedy. His second film that year is The Unmatchable Match where he plays an undercover cop. Stephen starred with Jackie Cheung in Curry And Pepper an action crime film with a bit of romance provided by Ann Bridgewater. Sleazy Dizzy was another crime drama and it was followed by Shaolin Idiot.
All For The Winner was a pretty big hit and well worth a gander at. It's got Ng Man-Tat and Corey Yeun co-starring. Both of those guys are generally worth seeing, even if the movies that they are in aren't the greatest. It's a parody of the Chow Yun-Fat film God Of Gamblers. Ng finds out his nephew, Stephen, has a supernatural power that makes him great at gambling. The movie is directed by Wong Jing. He's an acquired taste but I like many of his movies. Since 1981 he's written 166 films and directed 104. Damn, huh. He's pretty much lambasted by the critics in Hong Kong but his movies are popular with the audiences. Fuck those critics!
Triad Story is another crime drama. The only version on YouTube with subtitles is kind of fuzzy but you can watch it. Part 1 & 2. When I first started to go to the Asian video stores back in the early 1990's the movies were on tape and usually rented for a buck a day. At some point they started putting the movies on two tapes in order to increase the rental fees. My Hero has Stephen as a bus boy who gets involved with the Triads. Not a great movie but ok. When Fortune Smiles in another one I haven't seen yet. Anothe crime film with some comedy from the looks of it. The last movie of 1990 is Lung Fung Restaurant which I haven't seen yet. YouTube will give me an idea if I might want to pick up a dvd of someof these movies I don't already have. I'm guessing I won't need all of them.
I guess Stephen was tired, he only made 9 films in 1991. The first was Legend Of The Dragon, another one I haven't seen yet. I didn't find all his early films on tape and only picked up the dvd's of the ones I was really fond of. Fist Of Fury has Stephen acting all Bruce Lee. It's ok but not as good as some of his other movies of the period. The only thing stephen had to do with Crazy Safari is narrate the Cantonese version. Ng Man-Tat narrated the Mandarin version. It stars Lam Ching Ying as Master HiSing. He's a Taoist priest who's transporting a Chinese hopping vampire and their plane crashes in Africa. Right in the village of N!xau, the guy from the hit movie The Gods Must Be Crazy. Instead of a glass bottle to deal with we have a Chinese hopping vampire. That's another whole genre to look at someday. Lam Ching Ying is another Hong Kong actor that is worth following. Sadly he passed away 1997. I'll post some of his movies in the future.
Li Gong co-stars with Stephen in God of Gamblers III: Back to Shanghai. Stephen travels back in time to 1937 Shanghai. Tricky Brains is another goofy comedy by Wong Jing. Stephen runs a company that plays tricks on people. Not nice tricks either. The Magnificent Scoundrels has Stephen get involved with some con artists.
God Of Gambler's II is another Wong Jing film that pairs Stephen with Andy Lau. They play gamblers. It's pretty good, goofy but entertaining. Don't confuse it with the Wong Jing film God Of Gamblers 2 or God Of Gamblers Return that stars Chow Yun Fat. It's a much better film and a favorite of mine. Fight Back to School is the first of that series. Stephen is cop who screws up and his boss gives him one last chance to get his shit together. Infiltrate a high school and find the gun dealers. Hong Kong schools are tough, huh. Top Bet has just a brief cameo from Stephen. Anita Mui stars as Stephen's sister. She's a gambler too. I always liked her in the few movies I've seen. It's a comedy gambling movie that's just about average.
That's a shit load of films, some if which are much better than the others. If anything can be learned from seeing a lot of Hong Kong films, it's that they are uneven in their quality. The comedy might not be to everyone's taste and the action isn't always the greatest but often the mix turns out to be entertaining. You really have to be prepared for anything to come up. If you just want to watch the better ones, stick with All For The Winner, Tricky Brains, God Of Gambler's II and Fight Back To School. Some of the up coming films will be better, at least I like them more. I'll post more in the future. Hope you enjoy some of these.
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