Winners and Sinners , My Lucky Stars , and Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars , a trio of lowbrow comedies with martial arts scenes, were big Hong Kong cinema hits in the early 1980s. Directed by Sammo Hung Kam-bo , who also starred in them, the films mixed comic actors such as John Shum Kin-fun and Eric Tsang Chi-wai with martial arts stars, and gave a lot of screen time to Jackie Chan . The stories feature Hung as the leader of a gang of ex-cons working on the right side of the law, with some help from Chan, who plays a cop. Eureka Entertainment is releasing the Lucky Stars 3-Film Collection in the UK on Blu-ray on March 22. Expert on Asian film Frank Djeng, former marketing manager of US-based film distributor Tai Seng Entertainment, and Jacob Milligan, Eureka’s production manager, answered the Post ’s questions about the movies. Djeng provides the commentary for the Blu-ray releases. Jackie Chan plays the character of the cop differently in the three films. Why do you think he changed the portrayal? Frank Djeng: It looks like Jackie was a late addition to Winners and Sinners . I think Sammo Hung decided that it needed a bit more of a push, a bit more action, so he got Jackie in. At that time, Jackie would have been preparing for Project A , so he had a limited amount of time to film Winners . How martial arts choreographers changed Hong Kong cinema In Winners , he played a bumbling Inspector Clouseau kind of character. We never even find out his name – we only know his police badge number, 7086. Now 7086, of course, is Cantonese slang for somebody who is always messing up. But in My Lucky Stars , he went by the nickname Muscles, not 7086. My Lucky Stars was made a while after Winners and Sinners , and the action choreography changed – Jackie is now deadly serious. They are trying to catch a yakuza-style gang and that is no laughing matter. Jackie was serious all through the film, he is a cop doing his job – the only time he tried something comedic was when he was dressing up as an anime character. Chan has transformed the character even more by the time of Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars . He would have been preparing for Police Story during that time, and he seems to be playing a version of [the character] Chan Ka-kui from that film. His character actually looks a test run for Chan Ka-kui! He shows a more serious side in the Police Story series and you can see that transformation happening right in front of your eyes in the Lucky Stars films. Over the three films you can see that he is moving away from comic caricatures. That is not the image he wanted to project at that time. He was maturing as a performer. How about Sammo Hung? FD: In the second film he changes his character completely. I think they thought, well, it’s been 18 months between the films, people won’t remember, why don’t we just start afresh. John Shum has gone, and Eric Tsang appears. The other characters make fun of Sammo in the first film, but that changes in My Lucky Stars . He’s definitely in charge – he’s the one that gets the Lucky Stars gang together in the film, for instance. Sammo is a cinematic big brother in the film world, and when he made the second and third films, he wanted to show the audience he was the dai go (big brother). How do the films compare to the Aces Go Places comedies, also big hits in the 1980s? FD: Winners and Sinners was a response to the success of Aces Go Places , a kind of spoof on James Bond produced by Cinema City. Golden Harvest, who produced Winners , were surprised by the success of Aces , and wanted their own version. Aces doesn’t have much action, and Winners is really more of a comedy with action, not an action comedy, although the action scenes are great. Golden Harvest head Raymond Chow was upset that Aces beat his Dragon Lord with Jackie Chan at the box office in 1982. That’s why they wanted to do something a little similar. For the second Lucky Stars film, Sammo recruited Tsang, who directed the first two Aces films. So there was certainly a friendly competition going on there. How do the action scenes change as the series progresses? FD: The action became more brutal with My Lucky Stars . For me, the action scenes in Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars are the best – although My Lucky Stars is the fan favourite. You do see that kind of gritty action in early Sammo films like The Iron Fisted Monk , which are period films. With Winners and Sinners , he seemed reluctant to locate that kind of hard-hitting action to a modern setting. But with My Lucky Stars, he is more confident, he feels that the audience can take it now. So he incorporates more of the very gritty, in-your-face kind of action scenes. It’s much more ferocious. Do viewers in the UK, where the new Blu-ray discs are being released, appreciate kung fu comedies? Jacob Milligan: Kung fu comedies are very popular in the UK. Jackie Chan has always been closely associated with the genre and when he made films like Rush Hour and Shanghai Noon in Hollywood, the success of those films led to a whole new generation of fans who were interested in the Hong Kong style of comedy action. The humour is very sexist. How do you think that modern viewers will react? FD: There is a lot of sexist humour in the dialogue and even more in the physical humour of the films. It’s not something that can be condoned at all, and no one would put it in a film today. In the commentary I point out that back in the 1980s, when these films were made, political correctness had not entered the vocabulary in Hong Kong, and no one was thinking about it. A lot of the damsel-in-distress scenes were inspired by [the lowbrow Hollywood comedy] Porky’s , which was a huge hit in Hong Kong, and of course, the British TV comedy show Benny Hill , which was also popular in Hong Kong. The production values seem to improve with each film in the series. FD: The more films the team make, the better their technique gets. The camerawork improves a lot. One of Sammo’s skills is making the transition from one pair of fighters to the next pair look seamless. It’s like you are watching a football match, with some back and forth. That’s noticeable in the later films. In this regular feature series on the best of Hong Kong martial arts cinema, we examine the legacy of classic films, re-evaluate the careers of its greatest stars, and revisit some of the lesser-known aspects of the beloved genre. Read our comprehensive explainer here . Want more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook