Drunken Master [DVD]

Really nice release from Eureka. Do not listen to Amazon’s warning of this disc being Region B locked. This is in fact a region free disc.

its just like i remember it. its great, grand, wonderful

Loved this! In great condition

Like most of the great kung fu flicks its a hero's journey trope. A good hearted but arrogant student is ousted from the family and as a punishment is forced to learn from an infamous master. Obviously, the masters style is Drunken Kung fu. The student uses it in the end to defeat the villain who previously shamed him. There are decent training scenes and acrobatics. The melodramatic acting of such film is in full force as it should be. Theres a number of familiar faces to fans of the genre. This one has a little less pageantry than some of the earlier kung fu flicks. Its mostly filmed outdoors. Itself is a classic and should be in any kung fu flick fans collection.

There's any number of reason to like international film star Jackie Chan...his superior athletic ability, infectious sense of humor, personable charm, but I think the one element that endears him to me is his willingness to put himself in the position of serious physical harm in order to entertain the audience. Sure there are attempts to minimize the risks to some degree (meticulous planning and repetitive practicing), and given Chan's incredible physical prowess he's less likely to suffer harm than say I would trying to do half the things he does, but despite these factors, there is still the notion that with many of his stunts, particularly in his later films, he's always about a hair away from killing himself. Anyway, directed by Woo-ping Yuen, who would later choreograph action scenes for the Matix and Kill Bill films, Drunken Master (1978) aka Jui kuen stars Jackie Chan (listed in the credits as Jacky) and Siu Tien Yuen (the director's father).The film begins as an assassin named Thunderleg, Master of the Devil's Kick, searching out his most recent target in that of The Champion of the Four Door Fist (not all, but a lot of the characters have titles like this). He finds him, a battle ensues, and one is left standing. We then cut to a scene featuring students practicing martial arts in a school. It's here we meet one of the pupils named Wong Fei-Hung (Chan), whose father actually runs the school. Wong appears fairly adept (after showing up one of the teachers), but lacks the discipline and humility to achieve beyond his current skills, which becomes obvious to his father after a series of incidents involving a local bully, among others. This leads Wong's father to request another to assume training of Wong in that of an older man who's rumored to be incredibly difficult and completely sadistic. Wong decides to run away, but ends up meeting his new teacher (Siu Tien Yuen), a master of the 8 Drunken Gods fighting styles, after an altercation at a restaurant. Wong begins his training with his new master, but soon runs off, as it's too difficult. This sets up a chance meeting between Thunderleg and Wong were Wong gets the thrashing of a lifetime and ends up returning to the Drunken Master, realizing his own skills are pitiful. This leads into a lengthy set of training sequences eventually leading to the Master teaching Wong the secret fighting tactics of the 8 Drunken Gods. As Wong's training is completed, we find out a contract has been taken out on his father, one to be fulfilled by Thunderleg, so now Wong must put his training to the test in the fight of his life (or death).I think I should mention, as a number of reviewers have brought it up, something about the partial English dubbing within the film. The copy I received a little while ago has a little sticker on the back of the DVD case stating something in the way of `English substituted in some areas where original dialog track lost'. The effect is that when you're watching the film with the original Cantonese audio track, using English subtitles, there are scenes where the characters switch from Cantonese to really goofy sounding voices speaking English. This happens about three or four times, and it is a little annoying as it tended to draw me out of the film. I would have preferred that, if some of the original audio were lost, a re-recording in the same language as the original dialog...but whatever...now on to the film. The movie is crammed with excellent wall-to-wall fight scenes. There are momentary lapses devoted to working on the plot, but these quickly pass resulting in more fight sequences. I think my favorite sequence, besides the lengthy one at the end, featured Siu Tien Yuen in the restaurant, smacking assailants with a dishrag. Not only was it really funny, but almost hypnotic as he twirled that towel around before rat tailing someone in the face (in case you're not familiar, `rat tailing' means taking a wet towel, twisting it up, and snapping it at poor individual). Can anyone tell me what was up with that teacher Chan's character beats up on near the beginning? The guy had this mole on his face, one that had this set of really long hairs emanating from it, and the guy could often be seen playing with the hair, twirling it with his fingers...it was pretty disgusting. And what was the deal with that waiter from the restaurant? Was that the biggest set of buckteeth you've ever seen? I suppose these were some of what made up the comedic element of this film, but they weren't all that funny. What was funny was the scene where Chan's character is trying to learn the drunken fighting style of the lone woman god, doing so in a mocking fashion as he thought it was too effeminate. Another concept I found really funny was the whole notion of fighting styles based of being intoxicated, and the fact Wong's teacher was drunk throughout most of the film. The choreography in the fighting scenes is really spectacular as Chan not only displays that psuedo comic fighting style he's famous for, but also a lot of serious chop socky. Don't expect to see Chan doing any large scale, over the top stunts like leaping off building, as seen in his later films, but do expect lots of close up, smacky smacky action (he also takes the beating like no one I've ever seen).The picture on this DVD is very good (some cropping), presented in 2.35:1 widescreen, enhanced for 16 X 9 TVs. The monaural audio is decent, but certainly nothing to brag about. Special features include a commentary track including Hong Kong film expert Ric Meyers and Jeff Yang, a co-author of Chan's autobiography. Also included are trailers for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and Time and Tide (2000).Cookieman108

This is arguably the BEST film of jackie Chan's career. while Jackies' death defying stunts came abit later to try to top the spectacular original kung fu of the early films like this one, the kung fu scenes are immaculately choreographed and photographed. the camera shots are of the typical energetic kung fu cinema style, with the high speed zoom-out-to action and so on. the characters are all wonderfully portrayed, each with its own colourful personality and background.Even the english dubbing in this film is excellently done-how many times have you seen a kung fu film with poor dubbing by voice actors who sound like theyre reading the script for the first time as the movie plays? This film offers the best in english dubbing, with true-to-character voices and translation, which makes the film all the more exciting to watch. the story is simple but amusing. chinese folk hero Wong Fei hung is a rebellious teenager causing mischeif about town. in the english version, his nicknamed "freddy"(lol). freddy's father has tried several times to discipline him, but to no avail. eventually he calls upon great uncle So Hai for help. So Hei is an aged little drunkard but he is notortious across the land for his formidable kung fu-"the secrets of the eight drunken gods." initially freddy finds So Hei's gruelling methods and drills too much and runs away. he meets Thunderleg, a local assassin who is renowned for his incredible kicking style of kung fu. bullied and utterly humiliated by him, freddy runs back to So Hei, angered and invigorated to learn his "secret style", drunken kung fu. after a bad deal over local real estate, Thunderleg is employed to kill freddy's father. freddy finds them just in time and promises to make amends with his father and protect him from the evil Thunderleg as So Hei watches from a distance, confident freddy will not need his help. But has freddy mastered the Secrets of the 8 Drunken Gods? hilarious humor and splendidly witty kung fu sequences bring you to a thrillingly spectacular show down ending in what is often reffered to as Jackie Chans' finest film ever!!

This is a certified Jackie Chan classic and I can confirm it works in US blu-ray players. I tried it in my Philips 4k player that bulks at region free discs & it played this film perfectly. I own a region free Blu-Ray player but always try it in the player that usually can't play them 1st just to see if it will work. And to any other Kung Fu fans out there noticing that a lot of the best release always seem to be for region B remember the playstation, xbox, & your PC Blu-Ray drive will play any region Blu-Ray. As a side note this is the best release of Druken Master ever but if your a Jackie Chan fan your probably aware of that. It comes with a nice booklet & special feature. The audio & video are perfect. Again another 4k transfer without a 4k release. Hopefully one day companies will realize that collectors are the ones still buying physical media & we want it in the best quality possible but until than this is a great disc.

Great classic

Una de las mejores películas de artes marciales de todos los tiempos

RAS

Bellissimo, il bluray si vede benissimo!! hanno fatto un ottimo remaster!

Soy malísimo recomendado películas de Jackie Chan, porque me gustan todas, incluso las que son malísimas (la mayoría de estas las hace en Hollywood). La película me encanta y si te gusta el cine de artes marciales, es muy probable de que la disfrutes tanto como yo. Sobre el servicio, todo perfecto. Llegó antes de lo esperado.

Drunken Master is a Hong Kong action film from 1978. The film was directed by Yuen Woo-Ping (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and stars the legendary stunt master Jackie Chan. The film is a Kung Fu classic and is a film that I have never actually seen up, until now that is.With the Corona Virus lock down in full effect, I found myself with the desire to watch some old school Jackie Chan films. I was on the lookout for the classics Police Story, Project A and Wheels On Meals. I noticed that Eureka have cleaned up and released a lot of these films. Unfortunately for my bank account, I picked up a large amount of movies in one swoop. This included Drunken Master, a film I have always been curious about but for whatever reason, a film that I had never really went out my way to see.Drunken Master is a fairly simple story and one that no doubt has been told many times. Jackie Chan plays (presumably the legendary) Wong Fei-Hung. He's an overly cocky but talented individual. His over the top attitude lands him in trouble and as a punishment, his father sends him off to learn under the dreaded Beggar So. The plot is fairly bare bones and is nothing particularly ground breaking. It's all held together by the great charisma from the actors on screen. They all do their parts with great conviction.In typical Jackie Chan fashion, the film is quite tongue in cheek and has a lot of high speed action. The use of slapstick humour etc is generally well done. I got a good number of laughs out of the film and I think they did a great job scattering the jokes around without making it overly silly. This of course is all balanced out with the action sequences, which there are no lack of. Some scenes are very fast and hard hitting, whilst others come across as very well choreographed routines. These routines I quite enjoyed. You could see the actors were clearly keeping a specific rhythm and was very different (to my eyes at least).The print presented by Eureka looks very nice. It has lots of colour and plenty of crisp detail. I have seen clips of this film over the years and not a single one came remotely close to looking this good. For a film that is over forty years old now, it has aged beautifully and that is not just from the beautiful cinematography etc but the effort to preserve the quality of the film.I almost feel embarrassed that it took me this long to see this film but I am glad I finally did. It's a great up beat movie with lots of laughs. It's a very easy watch with plenty of extras to keep any fan going. If martial arts movies is your thing, do yourself a favour and pick this one up.