While waiting for new genre movies (I have a fairly loose definition of “genre,” by the way), I often revisit favourite movies of the past. I seldom give a movie a bad review—it has to be horrible for me to want to warn people away from it. But I have a lot of faves that maybe didn’t get enough good notice when they came out—or they’re so old that even I didn’t see them on first run. This week’s movie, Big Trouble in Little China (a John Carpenter film) falls into the first category. I saw a preview in Edmonton (Alberta) in 1986—I used to get lots of preview tickets—in company with a friend, Randy Reichardt; a friend of his who used to review movies for the Edmonton press was also there, and he was very angry when we met him after the film ended. “I didn’t want to spend nearly two hours to watch a cartoon,” he said. I was flabbergasted; I thoroughly enjoyed the film. It seems a lot of people didn’t “get it” when it was first released, but it has since become somewhat of a cult movie. (What they didn’t get was that it was a spoof; meant to be a reversal of the usual “heroic leading man” trope, where the so-called “sidekick” was actually more heroic than the bumbling leading man—kind of like Inspector Clouseau.)
The cast (Figure 2) included Carpenter regular Kurt Russell (Escape from New York, The Thing, etc.) as Jack Burton, Kim Cattrall (Gracie Law), Dennis Dun (Wang Chi), and Suzee Pai as Miao Yin. Cattrall was building a good resume in television, appearing briefly in series like Starsky and Hutch, The Incredible Hulk, Tales of the Gold Monkey; etc.; Dun had been in two TV episodes and the film Year of the Dragon; and Pai had bit parts in two films (First Blood and Sharkey’s Machine) and one TV episode. Other cast members included James Hong as David Lo Pan (having been in just about every TV series since 1958 plus movies like Airplane and Blade Runner), Victor Wong as Egg Shen (who had been in 3 TV episodes and the film Year of the Dragon—and who would soon be known for Tremors), and versatile bit player and stunt man Al Leong, who played a bad guy in every movie and TV series calling for an athletic minor bad guy, like Knight Rider, and Twilight Zone: the Movie. And a cast of dozens, mostly Asian actors.
Oddly enough (I learned this on YouTube), the original script by David Goldman and Gary Z. Weinstein was to be a Western, but the studio execs didn’t like the “magical” elements and script doctor W.D. Richter was called in, and he changed it to modern-day San Francisco’s Chinatown. A large set, comprising several streets, was built, which was appropriated later for several films, but then torn down. Sets and costumes don’t always last long in Hollywood—here in “Hollywood North” (British Columbia), we see costumes and props sold often in public sales for series and movies that have finished filming.
The plot opens with a scene the producers wanted added to the script—because they thought that if we jumped right into Jack Burton (Russell) and the magical happenings in Chinatown—we, the stupid audience, might be confused (source again YouTube). Egg Shen (Victor Wong) is being interrogated by a police spokesman who doesn’t believe in Chinese black magic until Shen demonstrates it (Figure 3) Then we’re introduced to Jack Burton (Kurt Russell doing an hilarious near John Wayne voice, another obvious clue to the spoof), talking on his CB radio “This is Jack Burton in the old Pork Chop Express…”); obviously something he does a lot, as he drives into San Francisco’s Chinatown. Burton is spouting some bushwa like some radio talk show hosts we’ve all heard or heard of. After offloading his cargo, he meets his friend Wang Chi (Dennis Dun, who—according to YouTube—was chosen to be the real hero of the movie because of his looks and acrobatic skills) and plays fan tan with Wang and several other locals, winning over a thousand bucks. Wang talks him into “nothing or double” if Wang can cut a beer bottle in half with one stroke of a large machete-like knife (Figure 4).
Wang fails to cut the bottle, which almost hits Burton in the eye; Burton catches it—almost faster than the eye can see, and says “It’s all in the reflexes, Wang.” Wang tells them he can’t pay now, but will pay Burton after he picks up his fiancée, Miao Yi (Suzee Pai), at the airport and takes her home. Jack drives Wang to the airport, but a Chinatown street gang called “Lords of Death” kidnaps Miao Yi and escapes with her. Wang tells Jack that they’re taking her to David Lo Pan (James Hong, Figure 5) to be his bride, and the two head in Jack’s truck to Chinatown. In a narrow back alley, the two are caught between opposing sides in a battle between two factions that turns supernatural when the Three Storms (Figure 6) appear and start throwing lightning around. They are forced to abandon the truck and run. They end up at Wang’s Uncle Chi’s place to regroup. (These things I’ve mentioned will figure in the movie; they’re not one-offs.)
From here it gets weird. If you’re a fan of such movies as Buckaroo Banzai, Eraserhead or John Carpenter’s The Thing, you will probably enjoy the heck out of this spoof. It’s so well written and acted—every actor, knowing that it’s a spoof, plays it absolutely straight, which is why it works so well. It’s not a broad spoof like Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs, but a lot more subtle. I’ve left a lot out of this description so that you can be pleasantly surprised even by what you’ve already read about; and the humour never descends to parody. (And I give props to the effects group; the lightning is the best animated (no CGI) lightning I’ve ever seen.) I’ve often thought it was a crying shame that they never did a follow-up movie with Jack Burton. I’m sure Kurt Russell jumped into this role with both feet and, I think, would have enjoyed playing that character again.
One sad note: Victor Wong, who played Egg Shen in this movie (Figure 3) and later played Walter Chang in Tremors, died in September 2011, according to Wikipedia. After several strokes, he apparently watched the TV coverage of the attack on New York for over a day with no breaks for food or sleep, and was found on Sept. 25th in his apartment. Another unlucky victim of a senseless attack.
I’d appreciate hearing what you think about this column. I’m on Facebook, or you could email me (stevefah at hotmail dot com). If you liked it, let me know—if you hated it, let me know as well. My opinion is, as always, my own, and doesn’t necessarily reflect the views of Amazing Stories or its owner, editor, publisher or other columnists. See you next time!
Steve has been an active fan since the 1970s, when he founded the Palouse Empire Science Fiction Association (PESFA) and the more-or-less late MosCon in Pullman, WA and Moscow, ID, though he started reading SF/F in the early-to-mid 1950s, when he was just a sprat. He moved to Canada in 1985 and quickly became involved with chairing or helping run Canadian cons, including ConText (’89 and ’81) and VCON. As a fan, he’s published a Hugo-nominated (one nomination) fanzine, New Venture, and he’s founded two writing groups (Writers’ Bloc and Writers of the Lost, Ink). He’s emceed and auctioned art at many West Coast and Northwest conventions including one Westercon. As a writer, he’s published a couple of books and a number of short stories (including one in Compostella [Tesseracts 20], and has collaborated with his two-time Aurora-winning wife Lynne Taylor Fahnestalk on a number of art projects. As of this writing he’s the proofreader for R. Graeme Cameron’s Polar Borealis and Rhea Rose’s Polar Starlight publications. He’s been writing for Amazing Stories off and on since the early 1980s. His column can be found on Amazing Stories most Fridays.
