Master With Cracked Fingers

[1.0
stars] [IMDb Link]

[Amazon Link]
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My rating guidelines say one star means "bad with few redeeming features." There's just one redeeming feature here: a seventeen-year-old Jackie Chan, with occasional glimpses of the genius-to-be. (In fact, IMDB claims this is Jackie's first starring role.) But otherwise, this is only for people who have a lifetime mission to watch every Jackie Chan movie ever made.

And it was slightly better than the other movie in this Wal-Mart remainder-bin two-pack, Fantasy Mission Force.

The general idea, I think: Jackie undergoes surreptitious Kung Fu training from a wizened wizard. A number of fights happen. His father gets killed at some point, and Jackie eventually gets vengeance for that. The end.

Oh, I'm sorry: spoiler alert.

It's kind of a mess. I'll quote the amusing Wikipedia "Background" section:

The film was concocted using footage from other films, primarily from a little-seen independent 1973 film entitled Little Tiger of Canton (aka The Cub Tiger From Kwang Tung) which featured a teenage Chan in one of his earliest roles. After Chan had become famous through films like Snake in the Eagle's Shadow and Drunken Master in the late 1970s, the footage was re-edited. Additional material from the Drunken Master era and new footage of Dean Shek and Yuen Siu Tien (in another appearance of his beggar character), was tacked on. A rather obvious Jackie Chan double was also hired and fought blind-folded in an attempt to hide the doubling from the viewers. In 1981, the poorly edited and assembled footage was acquired by Dick Randall, who named it Master with Cracked Fingers and dubbed it into English. This version has also been released under the title Snake Fist Fighter.
"They just don't make 'em like that anymore."

Last Modified 2024-01-28 2:43 PM EDT