The authentic martial arts of Sammo Hung’s kung fu comedies The Prodigal Son and The Magnificent Butcher is some of the best ever filmed, if you look beyond the fun

Sammo Hung loved to mix kung fu and comedy; The Prodigal Son’s fight scenes feature authentic wing chun and Lam Ching-ying and Yuen Biao shine as the leads

The Magnificent Butcher showcased ‘old-school kung fu at its very best’, and saw the big-screen return of legendary martial arts actor Kwan Tak-hing

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Yuen Biao (centre) in a scene from The Prodigal Son. The film along with The Magnificent Butcher highlight Sammo Hung’s skill at combining comedy and kung fu.

Published: 6:15am, 6 Feb 2022Updated: 9:47am, 6 Feb 2022

Mixing comedy and kung fu – humour and violence – could be considered a strange idea, and some kung fu comedies work better than others.

The two films which popularised the genre, Snake in The Eagle’s Shadow (1978) and Drunken Master (1978), poked gentle fun at the kung fu itself and were amusing as a result.

Others, like The Prodigal Son (1979) and The Magnificent Butcher (1981) – the former directed by Sammo Hung Kam-bo, the latter featuring Hung as an actor – simply intersperse full-on combat scenes with corny humour, and the jokes often detract from the action.

Still, Hong Kong cinema is all about exploiting trends, and the kung fu comedy genre’s box-office appeal in the late 1970s and early 1980s was so strong that the inclusion of some jokey scenes almost became de rigueur, especially for Hung.

“The juxtaposition of comedy and action is a trademark of Sammo Hung’s period films,” says Frank Djeng, who contributed the narration to Eureka Entertainment’s Blu-ray release of The Prodigal Son.