When it comes to Chinese-language movies with football themes, it is impossible to avoid Chow Sing Chi's "Shaolin Football".
Filmed 20 years ago, this film is recognized as another creative peak of Star Ye's nonsense comedy.
Although the film was not introduced to the mainland that year, it achieved unprecedented success in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Southeast Asia, winning 7 awards at the Academy Awards that year, and hong Kong alone achieved a box office of 60.74 million Hong Kong dollars, breaking the box office record of Hong Kong films at that time, until the release of Stephen Chow's "Kung Fu" three years later, which re-established this box office record.
The most creative part of the film is the combination of Eastern Kung Fu and Western football, when Zhou Xingchi used special effects technology to transform football players into martial arts masters, when the hercules, Iron Head Gong, and even Tai Chi, these well-known martial arts appeared on the green field, bringing a great sense of freshness to the audience at that time.
However, the concept of "kung fu + football" is actually not the first creation of Stephen Chow.
Fans familiar with mainland film history may recall that the mainland filmed the movie "Kyoto Ball Man" in 1987, starring Zhang Fengyi, Chen Peisi and Jiang Kun, which was adapted from real historical events and boldly combined kung fu martial arts elements with football competition.
Earlier, the famous Hong Kong martial arts instructor Yuan Heping had filmed a kung fu comedy "Bo Niu", starring Yuan Biao, known as the "King of Skills" in "Seven Little Blessings", and it was also the first time that the Chinese people integrated martial arts elements into football competitions, and was recognized as the predecessor of Stephen Chow's "Shaolin Football".
In this issue of "Forgotten Hong Kong Films", let's review this movie -
"Wave Cow"
The Champions
The film was released in 1983 by the Peace Film Company founded by Yuan Heping.
The film was collectively created by Yuan Jiaban, director and screenwriter Yuan Zhenyang is Yuan Heping's cousin, but also a martial arts instructor from the Dragon and Tiger Martial Arts, there are not many directing works, representative works include "Dragons And Treasures", "Royal Master Sister 3", "Dharma Ancestor" and this "Bo Niu".
As the driving force behind the scenes, Yuan Heping served as the film planner, and the martial arts director was yuan jiaban's collective efforts.
The lead actor of the film is Yuan Biao, one of the Seven Little Blessings, compared to the two brothers Jackie Chan and Hong Jinbao, Yuan Biao is not the most capable star on the screen, but is recognized as the "King of Skills" in the Seven Little Blessings, known for his clean and neat martial arts movements and good at completing difficult stunts.
"Bo Niu" is a football movie with kung fu comedy elements, so Yuan Jiaban designed a lot of difficult fancy actions in the film, and only Yuan Biao, who was 26 years old at the time and was at his peak, could complete it.
Another starring actor in the film is Zhang Guoqiang, before he became an actor, he was a professional football player himself, and then accidentally entered TVB to transform into a professional actor, the classic role is Murong Fu in the 97 version of "Tianlong Babu", in "Bo Niu" he played a low-level youth who loves football, this role can be said to be tailor-made for him.
The heroine in the movie was Li Saifeng, who was only 17 years old at the time, when Li Saifeng was still a newcomer in the film industry, had not yet been promoted by his mentor Xu Xiaoming, and had not yet transformed into a screen girl, so his performance in "Bo Niu" was relatively young.
The main villain of the film is the "villain professional" De wei among the Hong Kong martial arts actors, he is a military background, and is a karate master, who has served as the head of the military national art, has participated in three US West Coast fighting competitions and won the overall championship, is a famous villain star on the Hong Kong screen in the 1980s, often playing some cruel roles.
Speaking of the movie itself, the title of "Bo Niu", Bo is the Cantonese harmonic of "ball" (ball) in English, which was later directly derived into the Cantonese meaning of ball, the so-called "Bo Niu", which means a football enthusiast or a kicker.
Although the film is a kung fu comedy, it is adapted from a real story, based on the Chinese first ball king Li Huitang.
In the history of modern football, Li Huitang is a legendary ball king, in the 1930s, he was already a well-known star, at that time in Shanghai there was a famous saying: to watch the drama to see Mei Lanfang, to watch the ball to see Li Huitang. This shows the importance of Li Huitang's reputation.
It is said that Li Huitang scored a total of 1860 goals in his lifetime, and after Li Huitang retired, he once led the Chinese team to participate in the Far East Games and won the championship, and maintained an unbeaten record against the Japanese team for 17 years.
In 1976, the German football magazine held the ball king selection, Li Huitang and Pele from Brazil, Matthews from the United Kingdom, Argentina's Di Stefano, Hungary's Puskas, together with the "world's five big ball kings", the name of the first chinese ball king spread.
In 1979, Lee Wai-tong died of illness. Four years later, the film "Bo Niu", based on the life of Lee Hye-tong, was released.
The story begins in a village on the coast of Guangdong Province, where there is a talented but poor young man Li Tang (Yuan Biao).
Li Tang grew up with his lame uncle Tie Quan Li (Kaohsiung), and in order to supplement his family, Li Tang had to go to the nearby river every day to catch ducks and collect duck eggs.
But Li Tang chased ducks differently from others, he often used his toes to pick up the eggs that fell on the ground, barefoot in the rocky beach to drive ducks, sometimes ducks ran wildly, as long as he kicked the water with his feet, he could make the water splash several meters away, plus often did some rough work, and over time, Li Tang had a foot power beyond ordinary people.
In the local countryside, the birthday of the barefoot immortal is held every year, and there is a competition to grab beads.
Contestants must tie their hands, climb the high platform with their feet, defeat all opponents, and finally take the beads with their feet to win.
Li Tang's foot strength was amazing, and he came out on top in the bead snatching competition, which provoked a local unscrupulous youngster. Evil Shao lost to Li Tang, and he was upset, so he took his family to Uncle Li Tang's house to find trouble.
In order to protect his nephew, the uncle arranged for Li Tang to flee his hometown and go to his former friend Sun Cannon in Hong Kong.
Li Tang went to Hong Kong, unfamiliar with life, walking on the street was stolen by the to steal the wallet, Li Tang in order to chase the thief, in the chase, accidentally smashed a watermelon from the roadside vendor on the body of the famous football player Qiu Wang Jin (Di Wei), and the two sides thus formed a bond.
After several twists and turns, Li Tang finally found the home of his uncle's old friend, but found that his uncle's old friend had long died, and the life of his two children was also very miserable, his daughter Sun Afeng (Li Saifeng) made a living selling horse tickets on the street, and his brother Xiaosun (Zhang Guoqiang) dreamed of becoming a football player, but he suffered from no chance.
It just so happened that Xiao Sun's grassroots team organized a football game in the local area, and lacked a helper, so he pulled Li Tang to join him.
Li Tang did not understand football at all, so he played very passively at the beginning, but Li Tang himself had amazing foot strength, and even after familiarizing himself with the rules of the game in the second half, he staged a counterattack, and the team with Xiaosun was defeated and won.
Xiao Sun thought that Li Tang had the talent to become a professional player, so he pulled him to sign up together and participated in the player selection of the famous Hong Kong team Long Hua Team, looking forward to becoming a professional player and soaring from then on.
Unexpectedly, the captain of the Longhua team was the Qiujia Ball King Jin, who in order to retaliate against Li Tang, let him enter the Longhua Football Team without a test, and wanted to take the opportunity to teach Li Tang in the team training.
The enemy was extremely red in the face, and Li Tang joined the Longhua team and suffered a lot.
In daily training, Li Tang did not have the opportunity to play football at all, but could only pick up the ball and play miscellaneous. Not only that, Li Tang was often beaten by The Ball King Jin in the name of training, and all kinds of targets were beaten, making Li Tang miserable.
Therefore, during the training period of entering the Longhua team, Li Tang not only did not learn anything, but also was kicked by the ball king Jin and injured all over his body.
However, geniuses are geniuses everywhere, although Li Tang did not have the opportunity to play football, he heard about it in the process of picking up the ball, and took advantage of the opportunity to stay alone at the training ground to clean up after the training, and hone his skills alone.
In addition, he has a good teammate XiaoSun, and when he learned that Li Tang did not have a chance to practice, he took the initiative to accompany him to practice his skills in his spare time.
A few months later, in the football league, the king of the ball, Jin, was suddenly injured on the field, and Li Tang came on as a substitute.
And this is actually the conspiracy of the ball king Kim.
It turned out that the ball king Jin secretly colluded with the casino owner to plan to play a fake ball and deliberately lose, so as to divide the casino's income equally, so he deliberately pretended to be injured and left the game, taking the opportunity to arrange for Li Tang, who had not learned to play football, to play.
King Jin mistakenly thought that Li Tang would drag down the team when he played, but he did not expect that Li Tang's skills that he had been practicing for many days finally had a place to play. He single-handedly scored multiple goals in a row, eventually turning the team into a winner.
Li Tang became famous because of this battle, but it also caused the plan of the ball king Jin to fail, and finally he was beaten by the ball king Jin, so that Li Tang could completely see the face of the ball king Jin, so he left the Longhua team in disgrace.
However, Li Tang soon got a new opportunity, the rich businessman Huo boss threw an olive branch to Li Tang, wanted to invite him to form a professional team, and promised that he would never let him play match-fixing, Li Tang agreed to come down and formed a new football team with Xiaosun.
Li Tang received formal professional training, his skills improved by leaps and bounds, coupled with his outstanding performance on the green field, he has not lost, so he quickly mixed in football and his reputation was close to that of King Jin.
King Jin is narrow-minded and sees that his position is becoming increasingly unsafe, so he proposes to meet With Li Tang for a private game, hoping to solve the new hatred and old hatred together.
On the day of the game, King Jin and Li Tang agreed to bet on the loser's broken leg, almost making a bet on their careers, and the owners of the two teams were also old rivals in the mall, so they also bet huge bets on each other.
Originally an internal game, it turned out to be a life-and-death struggle between the two forces.
During the game, Li Tang's team has always had the upper hand, and in order to win, the ball king Jin has unscrupulously used various tricks, resulting in Li Tang's team constantly injuring players, and even Xiaosun is injured.
When the situation was critical, suddenly heavy rain fell, the stadium became muddy, and the players could not stand, resulting in a sharp increase in the difficulty of the game, but this just created an advantage for Li Tang.
Li Tang grew up in the countryside, often barefoot in the rocky beach river, so the muddy and slippery course will not affect him at all, taking this opportunity, Li Tang began to fight back, and finally got a smooth.
After this game, Li Tang became a new generation of Hong Kong ball kings, and the evil ball king Jin, because the boss behind the scenes lost the game, and finally broke his legs by the boss and became a beggar on the street.
Although "Bo Niu" is a football-themed film, in fact, the film should be regarded as a popular Kung Fu boy comedy in the Hong Kong film industry in the early 1980s.
The film has a very obvious kung fu comedy character and plot routine, a country boy came to the metropolis to be humiliated, but under the suppression of the enemy family, he counterattacked step by step, and finally after hard training, he completed self-growth and defeated his opponents, similar plots can be seen in many Hong Kong and Taiwan kung fu films of the same period.
"Bo Niu" under the guise of the kung fu comedy genre, adding elements of football competition. Such a plot design may be a reference to the Jackie Chan movie "Dragon Young Master" released the previous year, the scene of Yuan Biao and other people kicking football in the film is basically a copy of the kicking shuttlecock game in "Dragon Young Master", and all kinds of fancy actions are breathtaking.
In the movie, Yuan Biao uses his own martial arts training to train a flexible and neat skill, showing a scene of extremely difficult "fancy kicking", but compared with the incredible special effects in "Shaolin Football" later, the difficult action in "Bo Niu" is not so exaggerated, but the exaggerated upside-down golden hook shooting like Yuan Biao in the film actually requires the actor's very high body control ability.
In addition, many of the details in the film can make people see the elements that coincide with Zhou Xingchi's "Shaolin Football" later.
For example, in the opening scene, Li Tang uses his toes to clip the duck egg, and the plot of "Shaolin Football" also uses the plot of the duck egg to show the leg skills. After Xiao Sun saw Li Tang's big foot, he tried to invite him to join the team, and in "Shaolin Football", it was also Wu Mengda who invited the other party to play football after seeing the protagonist's powerful King Kong legs.
There is also a supporting role in the movie, Li Tang's uncle Tie Quan Li, who was actually the famous iron leg Li on the court when he was young, and was a star with unlimited scenery, but later broke his leg in retaliation for playing a fake ball, and the character of this role is almost a copy of the golden right foot in "Shaolin Football".
Of course, "Wave Cow" was only a popular commercial entertainment popcorn movie at the time.
The film's literary drama is relatively simple, the characters are extremely facial, both the decent and the villain, and when the film is released, it is catching up with the decline in the popularity of this kind of folk kung fu comedy, which leads to the mediocre response of the film in Hong Kong, only receiving 3.2 million box office, which is not a star and a half worse than the film that Yuan Biao participated in at the same time.