The subject of more than 60 films from 1949 to 1961, martial artist and apothecary Wong Fei-hung returned to the screen in the late 1960s. With Cantonese cinema in decline, producers turned to Master Wong to stem ticket-buyers' exodus to the groundbreaking Mandarin kung fu pictures exemplified by Shaw Brothers directors King Hu and Chang Cheh.
Wong Fei-hung: The Eight Bandits (1968), typical of the 11 Wong adventures released between 1967 and 1970, is testament to an industry trying to recapture its glory days while attempting to adapt to a rapidly changing celluloid terrain.
The Eight Bandits - screening today as part of a Wong Fei-hung programme at the Film Archive - was certainly not cutting edge in terms of the cast: Wong, buffoonish sidekick Nga Tsat-so, and villain Iron-fisted Buddha were played by performers (Kwan Tak-hing, Sai Kwa-pau and Sek Kin) long associated with these types of roles. Nor was director Wong Fung a stranger to the genre, having scripted 30-plus instalments during the previous decade.
A concession was made to the young adult market in the casting of Kenneth Tsang Kong as a disciple whose youth doesn't keep him from lecturing the old master. His tone is respectful but reflective of a fresh generation of movie fans emboldened by riots and Red Guards to be not so subservient to tradition.
In terms of technique, though, the low-budget, black-and-white production made little break with tradition when compared to the exciting innovations then going on in Mandarin pictures. The action scenes are relatively static although they give viewers the chance to see the 63-year-old Kwan go through his paces unimpeded by flashy editing or special effects.
This franchise petered out in the early 1970s, but the master would return in such incarnations as Jackie Chan in The Drunken Master (1978) and Jet Li in Tsui Hark's epic re-imagination of the saga in Once Upon a Time in China (1991) and its many sequels. The Eight Bandits is worth another look for an insight into how Wong, and by extension Hong Kong cinema, made the transition from a local hero into a late 20th-century global sensation.