May 27, 2008 : Getting Carter : Meeting the master of 'Hapkido'

May 27, 2008

GETTING CARTER : Meeting the master of ‘Hapkido’.

Remember that old line about the journey being more important than the destination? Before our planned release of the Golden Harvest classic ‘Hapkido’ got pushed back in the schedule, I managed to catch up with one of the stars of the film, Carter Wong. Carter is without doubt one of the most charming and gracious gentlemen from that epic era of Hong Kong action cinema. He also has the biggest knuckles I’ve ever seen on a human being…

So few of Carter’s kung fu classics have had any kind of mainstream release in the west, fight film fans may only know him as Thunder from John Carpenter’s Big Trouble In Little China. (My kids have rewound his explosive demise in that film so many times; the DVD player almost did likewise.) Carter was one of the first bona fide martial arts experts to be signed to Golden Harvest in the wake of Bruce Lee’s success, and it was fascinating to hear his recollections of this now long lost era.

Given the impact the Bruce Lee movies had, ‘Hapkido’ itself has never really been given its due. This film was for action director Sammo Hung what ‘Fist Of Fury’ had been to Bruce Lee. On both movies each of these action icons was saddled with a journeyman director, on ‘Fist’ Lee was stuck with Lo Wei, on ‘Hapkido’, Sammo had his mentor, Huang Feng. The dialogue scenes on ‘Fist Of Fury’ are very static and stagy, and ‘Hapkido’ comes off well by comparison. Where ‘Fist Of Fury’ defined the Bruce Lee style, ‘Hapkido’ established the elements of the ground-breaking choreography that would make Sammo such a force in the next wave of Asian action.

At the forefront of the action were three rising martial arts stars, Angela Mao Ying, Carter and, of course, Sammo Hung. Visible in the background is the genre’s entire next generation : Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao, Corey Yuen, Ching Siu-tung…

Though Carter’s basic style was Goju Kai karate, he received an intensive course in movie-oriented Hapkido techniques. At the time, most of the ‘kung fu’ players working at Golden Harvest were training in this Korean art. (The trailer for the later ‘When Taekwondo Strikes’ actually describes Sammo as a ‘Hapkido expert Hun Ching-pao’, making no mention of his Chinese Opera background).

Due to our respective schedules, I recorded a commentary for ‘Hapkido’ before meeting up with Carter. We watched some scenes for the film, and he offered some inside information I hadn’t been aware of. Character actor Ma Lo, who played the dojo keeper with the Charlie Chaplin ‘tache in ‘Fist Of Fury’ and has a similar role at the start of ‘Hapkido’, was actually one of the latter film’s assistant directors. The opening scenes of the ‘Hapkido’, supposedly set in Korea, were actually shot in what was then countryside just beyond the Golden Harvest studios in Diamond Hill. I had thought that Bruce Lee was shooting ‘Way Of The Dragon’ at the same time as ‘Hapkido’, but Carter remembers very clearly that it was ‘Enter The Dragon’ being filmed at the studios simultaneously.

Carter sat for an in-depth interview, and recalled how he was discovered by director Huang Feng, described the working conditions at Golden Harvest and shared his memories of the late great Bruce Lee. He then demonstrated for us a new, composite martial arts form that he has devised.

After the success of ‘Hapkido’, Carter and Angela Mao were teamed for a whole series of films. Though it was shot later, Sammo’s choreography on ‘When Taekwondo Strikes’ is evidently inferior to that seen in ‘Hapkido’, even though the film features many of the same players. ‘The Opium Trail’ (aka ‘Deadly China Doll’) was produced by Andrew Vajna, who would later make the Rambo films. (Carter was hired, briefly, to train Sylvester Stallone in stick fighting for the opening sequence of ‘Rambo 3’.) Wong and Mao also worked together in the underrated ‘The Tournament’. This film saw Carter fly to Bangkok to shoot a choreographed Thai Boxing fight sequence. The experience began his passion for the sport, and Wong subsequently became a major promoter of kickboxing bouts in Mainland China. The actor shot another superior Harvest actioner of this era, ‘The Skyhawk’, in Thailand, for the Korean director Cheng Chang-ho. Ironically, Cheng gave him a more powerful lead role than his mentor Huang Feng ever did. Carter’s last major project at the studio was Dragon Tamers, a martial arts film shot in Korea by a then little known director: John Woo…

After his Harvest contract expired, Carter accepted lucrative offers from Taiwanese producers, and relocated to Taipei, where he starred in a whole string of actioners, most memorably ‘18 Bronze Men’. When he finally returned to Hong Kong, the new generation of film-makers had forgotten him. Undeterred, he (temporarily) relocated to the Hollywood and, on his return to Hong Kong, pursued other business interests.

When ‘Hapkido’ finally hits Dragon Dynasty, a new audience will be able to appreciate this unsung hero. In the meantime, these brief comments will have to suffice…