You can still see Walter Tso Tak-wah on TV in his trademark trenchcoat and fedora. But do you know how many movies this 88-year-old Hong Kong screen icon has made? More than 700.
'I just had to,' says 'Inspector Wah', his nickname in one of his most famous roles.
'A movie could be sold to an overseas market only if it was shown in Hong Kong. In those days, there were four new releases per week. My record is 288 films in one year.'
Tso recently appeared at the Cinema Hong Kong documentary premiere and discussion forum at Hong Kong Baptist University. He was mobbed by students eager to have their photo taken with him. He says that although movies these days are technically better, they lack one very important thing.
'Films in the past always taught people to be a good person,' he says. 'There was always a good guy fighting a bad guy, and the evil one was punished in the end. Even though every movie was more or less the same, people still loved it because it was meaningful.
'It's true that the special effects and action are exciting to watch, but movies nowadays are purely for entertainment. You cannot learn anything from these flicks.'
Tso has always been the good guy on the big screen. Born in 1915 in Guangdong province, Tso went to Shanghai as a teenager to learn about movie making and to try his hand at acting.
