In the early 1990s, the Hong Kong film industry set off a boom in martial arts films.
At that time, Hong Kong and Taiwan film companies were keen to follow the trend, and the more martial arts films were filmed, the more they spent, and in only two or three years, the reputation and popularity of martial arts films were exhausted, resulting in this "martial arts fever", which came and went faster.
In the hot period of martial arts movies, there was a popular atmosphere of modern martial arts films.
At that time, Hong Kong and Taiwan filmmakers were influenced by Hollywood super-British films and American comic culture, and tried to transplant traditional martial arts kung fu elements into the modern background, so as to create a new concept of martial arts films.
For example, Andy Lau's investment in "91 Divine Eagle Heroes" and "92 Divine Eagle Heroes".
At the same time, the famous director Du Qifeng also filmed the luxurious female action film "Three Heroes of the East" series.
These two sets of movies have obvious shadows to learn from Hollywood comic superhero films, but in addition to the romantic and exaggerated style and the whimsical setting, its core is still the standard plot routine of traditional Hong Kong-made martial arts films.
In 1993, under the influence of this trend, The Hong Kong film industry tycoon Tang Guangrong could not stand the loneliness and invested in and starred in a modern martial arts film "Black Panther World".
The film is full of stars, Lin Qingxia, Liang Jiahui, Ren Dahua, Zhang Weijian, Wu Jiali and other stars participated, and the film is also the last comedy style film filmed before Lin Qingxia retired.
However, although there is a luxurious lineup, after the release of the film, it has a double box office reputation, and Hong Kong only received 7.25 million box office, far lower than other films invested by Tang Guangrong, and even wong Kar-wai's literary film "The Legend of Ah Fei".
In this issue of "Forgotten Hong Kong Films", let's talk about the gains and losses of this movie -
Black Panther
Warriors: The Black Panther
The film was released in 1993 and is produced by Deng Guangrong's own Film Zhijie Pictures.
Deng Guangrong's brother Deng Guangzhou is the producer of the film, and Deng Guangrong himself served as the film's producer and first star.
Therefore, although the director of the film is Huo Yaoliang, the people behind the whole film are actually Deng Guangrong.
Tang Guangrong is well-known in the Hong Kong film industry, becoming an actor in the 60s, shooting many films with the theme of youth when he was young, which can be said to be a gold medal student on the screen at that time. In the 1970s, Deng Guangrong transformed behind the scenes and began to invest in filmmaking.
In addition to his status as a movie tycoon, Deng Guangrong's family has a deep relationship with the underworld gang. Since middle school, Tang Guangrong has been regarded as the successor of the gang, and this identity background has helped him gain a firm foothold in the Hong Kong film industry. As a gangster, Deng Guangrong enjoys a high reputation in the circle, and Andy Lau, Li Ming, Ren Dahua, etc. have all been promoted by him.
At the end of the 1980s, Deng Guangrong established Shadow Zhijie Pictures, the most important significance of which was to discover a fledgling young filmmaker, Wong Kar-wai.
In 1990, under the reuse of Deng Guangrong, Wong Kar-wai filmed "Carmen in Mong Kok" and "Ah Fei Zheng Biography", but he did not expect that "Ah Fei Zheng Biography" was dismal at the box office and lost more than 20 million yuan, this blow once put Deng Guangrong in the hospital, fortunately, the film later won a lot of awards, which was considered to save face for Deng Guangrong.
It's just that Deng Guangrong at that time probably didn't think that three years later, "Black Panther World", starring himself, was also a strong production team with stars, and the box office was even worse than Wong Kar-wai.
When filming "Black Panther World", Deng Guangrong used his personal connections to find a number of popular film stars at that time to help, and the theme of the film was an action comedy that focused on commercial entertainment, obviously hoping to gain something at the box office and let the "shadow master" who lost at the box office reverse the predicament, but he did not expect that the film accelerated the decline of Deng Guangrong's film career.
The film is a modern martial arts film, telling the story of a legendary rogue Black Panther and his brother in law.
The protagonist, Black Panther (Deng Guangrong), is a well-known rogue in the jianghu, although he is highly skilled, he believes in thieves, so he has long quit the jianghu and has now become an expert who specializes in helping people test and inspect the security system.
At the beginning of the movie, Black Panther meets Sir Qiu (Wong Kam-sun) of the police station, and the two are old rivals who have been feeling sorry for each other for many years.
After a fight with Black Panther in the street, Sir Qiu gives Black Panther a new task, asking him to go to the heavily guarded police station and help steal a mysterious box to verify whether the police station's security system is unbreakable, and after the fact, the boss behind the scenes will pay him a hundred million honorarium.
Logically, the police find a thief to steal important physical evidence from the police station, which is obviously unreliable, not to mention that the other party also proposed to give a sky-high honorarium, which can only show that the transaction is not coming from the right place.
But As an old jianghu, Black Panther did not have the slightest doubt, and completely agreed to it for money.
After the Black Panther took over the task, he began to recruit soldiers, and various masters who had cooperated with the Black Panther for many years appeared one after another.
They are: the marksmanship is like a god, and the "gun god" Meng Bohui (played by Leung Ka Fai) in a hundred shots;
The charming, feminine and proficient "Lady Rose" thousand needles (played by Wu Jiali);
Cheng Ren (Ren Dahua), a professional gambler and a superb "gambling monster" with thousands of skills;
Robert (Zhang Weijian), a strange hacker who is proficient in computer hacking techniques;
In the same door as the Black Panther Division, the sister "Qingqing" (played by Lin Qingxia), who was once a lover for many years,
In addition, there is a mysterious female assistant Zhenzhen (Chen Mingzhen) next to the Black Panther.
Including the black panther at the head, a total of seven people formed a black panther group.
Although the members look at each other unfavorably, and the Black Panther also has a relationship with Qingqing and Qianzhi, resulting in the relationship between the three people being cut and messed up, plus Qingqing has always suspected the authenticity of the female assistant, resulting in the Black Panther group being like a scattered sand, and the members are all gathered together for the sake of profit.
Fortunately, The Black Panther was quite prestigious, and under his leadership, the crowd began to move, and after understanding the mission objectives, everyone came to the police station to step on the spot.
After some investigation, it was found that there was an electronic security system in the archive where the boxes were stored, and it was necessary to rely on special magnetic cards to enter. The vault's safe is guarded by two supervisors, a man and a woman.
To open the safe, the fat supervisor must stand on the gravity sensor device, and the fingerprint of the female supervisor must unlock the anti-theft system.
So, everyone went their separate ways, each playing their own strengths, to get the magnetic cards and data needed to open the security system.
The gun god Meng Bohui and the old Qiancheng Ren originally planned to rely on personal charm and wanted to seduce the female supervisor, but the plan failed, and under the wrong circumstances, the female supervisor left a palm print on the face of the hacker Robert, so that the Black Panther team successfully got the fingerprint.
And a thousand needles and Zhenzhen cooperated, using the beauty meter to approach the male supervisor, Qingqing came out of the horse, and took the opportunity to measure the weight of the other party. Finally, robert the hacker copied a magnetic card to crack and open the archive.
The operation goes well, but Black Panther does not want anyone else to act with him, so he enters the archives alone and steals the mystery box.
However, just after the Panther got the box, Sir Qiu suddenly turned back to the water and began to hunt down the Panther with a large group of people. In order to get rid of the tracking, The Panther had to temporarily hide the box and escape from the police station alone.
The fleeing Panther encounters an attack by a mysterious master, who is highly skilled in martial arts and engages in a fierce fight with the Panther, and is eventually defeated and captured.
On the other side, Qingqing, Meng Bohui and others, who had originally stayed in the secret villa of the Black Panther, were suddenly besieged by a large group of mysterious assassins, but fortunately, the group of six had special skills and finally repelled the assassin gang.
After this storm, the crowd suspected that there was an inner ghost, so they began to be suspicious of each other, causing the Black Panther group to fall apart.
At this time, the black hand behind the curtain revealed his true body, and it turned out to be the black panther's brother, the blood wolf (yuanhua).
Many years ago, Black Panther and Blood Wolf were brothers of the same disciple, and The Blood Wolf was ambitious, he was jealous of his master's preference for his master and disciple Black Panther, so he betrayed the division, secretly killed his master, and faked his death in an operation, so as to make Black Panther feel guilty for a lifetime.
The Blood Wolf then uses Qiu Sir to pretend to hire him to get the mysterious box from the police station and takes the opportunity to eliminate the Black Panther, but the Black Panther hides it after getting the box, so the Blood Wolf captures the Black Panther and forces him to ask him about the whereabouts of the box.
Black Panther took the opportunity to get out of trouble and contacted Qingqing and others, and Qingqing also found out the truth, and the inner ghost was The Female Assistant of Black Panther.
Later, Panther got the box and found that inside the box was a piece of photosensitive film paper, and after restoration, it turned out to be a photo of the Blood Wolf killing the Master with his own hands, and the Blood Wolf had always wanted to destroy the evidence, so he tried to take the photo.
In the end, inspired by the Black Panther, everyone turned enemies into friends, got back together, and decided to join forces to help the Black Panther eliminate the Blood Wolf. In order to deal with the blood wolf, the black panther picked up the leopard head knife passed down by the division and launched a deadly duel with the same master brother.
After a big war, The Black Panther clears the portal, the Black Panther team disbands again, each embarking on a new adventure, and the Black Panther also decides to find qingqing, who disappeared after the Great War, and the story ends here.
This "Black Panther World" is an assembly line-style work spawned by the Hong Kong commercial film model in the 1990s.
It is said that the plot of the movie was born out of Ma Rongcheng's comic "Black Panther Legend", but after the screenwriter's major changes, it is almost impossible to see the relationship with the original work, but the overall style of the film still has a comic-style exaggeration.
Unfortunately, although the film is filmed lively, the plot is more chaotic, and the story cannot withstand scrutiny. The creators are completely aimed at entertaining the public, so there are all kinds of genre elements, martial arts, gunfights, treasure theft, comedy chaos stew, exaggerated character design, conflict and contradiction are relatively simple, more like a cult movie that is off the line.
And this film seems to be in the creative stage, after a large revision, so that the plot of the movie is often a hammer in the east and a stick in the west, forced to cut together, many of the plot of the previous scene and the next scene are not next to each other, such as: after Zhenzhen rescued the panther, Qingqing took the leopard head knife of the division to hunt down Zhenzhen.
In the previous shot, The Panther himself held the knife and chased after it, but in the next shot, Qingqing actually handed the knife to the hand of the falling Panther, and the two shots before and after were obviously in the wrong order, which was simply illogical.
However, this film wins the big name gathering, can see these film emperors and queens get together to play treasure funny, but also have a lot of fun, Lin Qingxia and Wu Jiali in the film's shape is quite stunning, in addition to the film's almost crazy action design and Lu Guanting's soundtrack, but also the film added a lot of points.
Looking at the whole film, the most crotchy should still be Deng Guangrong as the first starring, Deng Guangrong has a feeling of black boss no matter what role he plays, playing a righteous and awe-inspiring rogue image, obviously some violations, the film's final box office failure, it is estimated that deng Guangrong himself is inseparable.
After the film failed, the undead Deng Guangrong invested in the martial arts comedy "Lun Wen Shu Lao Dian Liu Xiankai" the following year, although the film was also a strong star lineup, but the box office was still very bleak, so that Deng Guangrong was completely discouraged and chose to fade out of the film circle.