In "Mad Monkey Kung Fu," Liu Chia-liang temporarily veered away from his successful Shaolin formula to experiment with the animal-style slapstick that had made Jackie Chan an overnight sensation. It's not a bad film (and it's fun to see Liu taking on a starring role for the first time), but it lacks the gravity of "Executioners from Shaolin" and "The Thirty-Sixth Chamber of Shaolin"...and suffers from script inconsistencies and odd pacing, to boot.
Chen (Liu) is a talented opera performer with a weakness for liquor. Local tycoon and all-around jerk Tuan (Lo Lieh) frames Chen for rape, taking Chen's sister (Kara Hui) as his concubine and breaking Chen's hands so that he no longer poses a threat. Chen becomes a street performer and is befriended by a young man known only as Monkey (Hsiao Ho). Hot-headed and a little simple, Monkey is always getting into trouble with a gang of thugs, so Chen teaches him how to defend himself. It turns out that the thugs work for Tuan, and when Monkey gives them a sound beating, he also incurs Tuan's wrath. Chen is finally obliged to intervene despite his apparently ruined hands.
The production values are top-notch (they always were in Shaw Brothers films), and the martial arts choreography is of course flawless, but Ni Kuang's script is noticeably disjointed. Chen's whole existence is upended in one overly busy fifteen-minute scene, after which Tuan's character disappears from the film for an extended period. Implausibly, Chen does not attempt to remain in contact with his sister and seems to have no idea that the thugs harassing him and Monkey are Tuan's men (though it's fairly obvious all along). Finally, events veer from the comic to the tragic and back again with a dizzying lack of warning, making "Mad Monkey Kung Fu" a schizophrenic viewing experience. See it for the fights, especially the climactic confrontation at Tuan's brothel. Objectively speaking, this is not Liu Chia-liang's greatest moment; subjectively, your rating will depend on your tolerance level for traditional Chinese comedy and capering monkey impersonations.
