The Man From Hong Kong, 1975 Ozploitation Film
This action-packed ironic comedy was released in Australia in 1975 and since has had a revival at various film festivals around the world. Released in the US as The Dragon Flies, it enjoys a somewhat cult following.
NFSA and AFTRS presented Brian Trenchard-Smith, director of The Man from Hong Kong, at a special screening of the film at AFTRS in Sydney. Brian was in conversation with Bachelor of Arts Screen graduate Alexei Toliopoulos and answered questions from the audience.
It must be a real thrill to see this film with an audience, like this, that fully embraced the comedy and the irony?
Yes, definitely. I have seen it with a thousand people in the Czech Republic at a film festival, with subtitles, and they got it… they laughed in all the right places, so I guess the humour does travel internationally.
How did you get the idea for the story?
I saw Seven Samurai when I was 15 and saw all of Kurosawa’s Samurai pictures in the 70s. I watched all of the banned movies in downtown Sydney in Chinese theatres: Five Fingers of Death, The One Armed Swordsman, The Master of the Flying Guillotine and that was the germination of it. Then Bruce Lee came on, and because of my involvement with Greater Union and all the promotional work I was doing for them, I went to Hong Kong to arrange publicity for the Australian release of Bruce Lee movies. The idea of Bruce Lee coming to Australia occurred to me and it appealed to Raymond Chow and Greater Union. So I was in the right place at the right time.
The idea was to celebrate and satirise the genre where the ‘James Bond’ invincible guy vanquishes all the bad guys and beds a number of women along the way! Originally I wrote it under the title of The Yellow Peril, but I realized that irony is sometimes not recognized. I wanted to have a Chinese Dirty Harry who was smarter than any of the white guys, and unlike James Bond who goes to Japan and seduces Asian ladies, this would be a Chinese guy who comes to Australia and seduces Australian ladies. The ‘racism’ was intended as satire and I don’t know if people grasp that at times. I know this is all politically incorrect now (mea culpa) but at the time I thought I was breaking new ground.
Was this your first narrative feature?
This was my first narrative feature film and the first Asian-Australian co-production. Hong Kong had a very experienced film industry, producing over 200 films per year at the time — Jimmy Wang Yu was famous there.
Half our scenes were filmed in Australia and the other half in Hong Kong as 50% of the production costs had to be spent in each country; a challenge to achieve as only 20% of the film is set in Hong Kong.
In the prison sequence where Sammo is interrogated, the corridor is in Australia but the prison cell is in Hong Kong. So when the prison guards rush up the corridor into the cell and get thrown out, we had to find doubles for the guards who come into the cell in Hong Kong and get thrown out of the cell five weeks later in Australia. Continuity was difficult as the Martial Arts Academy was built entirely in Hong Kong and one of the apartments was in Hong Kong as well.
Golden Harvest didn’t object to the amount of blood used but cut some of the humour to suit a Chinese audience. So when Jimmy is making love to Rebecca Gilling and she says, “Mmmm this is nice!” and he replies, “What did you expect… acupuncture?”, they translated his line to, “What did you expect… a jackhammer?”
I hoped this would be the first of a long series of Australia and Hong Kong co-productions. I’m disappointed that my concept didn’t do well and the R rating hurt it. The Australian censor didn’t like all the mayhem happening in the streets of Sydney at the time. In Hong Kong or America maybe, but not here where Australian kids might imitate. It was only changed to an MA a few years ago when it should have always been an M rating.
It’s such an ambitious film stunt-wise. Were there any challenges with that?
Jimmy was an amazing athlete and very physically adept. He had produced and directed eight films prior to this one. I don’t think he grasped my sense of humour, but he saw we were serious about the action scenes. Basically, it was a homage to classical balletic-kung fu in the Martial Arts Academy scene, but I wanted dirty street fighting and Jimmy certainly knew how to do that.
Partly out of vanity and partly economics, I played the Martial Arts Academy night manager to save sending an actor to Hong Kong for a one-liner and a couple of fight scenes. However, I’m not a great martial artist, so I was quickly beaten up. Jimmy hit me hard, saying if I wanted to be a Hong Kong stuntman, he would treat me like a Hong Kong stuntman — which meant contact!
I would often write in scenes that I wanted to see or do myself. I had never dived through glass before. We had two sheets of toffee glass so I ran a bit harder the second time. Another scene I wanted to do was a fight on top of a descending elevator and that was dangerous.
Then Herbie Nelson broke both ankles when a motorbike collided with him. We didn’t realise that Herbie was a bit deaf and as the motorbike wasn’t working, it had to be towed up to speed — it made no sound and Herbie didn’t turn at the right time.
Also during a fire scene, George Lazenby burnt his wrist. I had set myself on fire to show George it was safe — the Hong Kong crew were a bit surprised to see their director, just behind the scenery, on fire. It was the wrong thing to do of course as I had put him in a position he couldn’t refuse. We practised it a number of times but when George put a barrier between his water gel soaked underwear and the jacket, it made the jacket difficult to get off, so he struggled more than we had anticipated. In the process to get the jacket off, the sleeve wiped some of the water gel off his wrist and he got burnt there.
I also accidentally kicked Corey Yuen in the head. Corey was on the stunt team and went on to be a brilliant director. I was demonstrating a round-house kick, it was a little inaccurate and I ended up kicking him in the head — not too hard though…
How did you discover Grant Page, a screen legend in the stunt world?
I needed someone to do rope slides on my first dramatized documentary The Stunt Men (which won Best Documentary in the 1973 Benson & Hedges Awards). This gave me credibility when it came to action especially when my script was presented to Raymond Chow.
Grant had been a trawler fisherman, insurance salesman and a former commando — there was nothing he couldn’t do. He had studied physical education, taught Phys Ed, understood physics and even fought a leopard in Danger Freaks.
He had a roguish charm, a contemporary Errol Flynn with screen chemistry and an actor who could do his own stunts. He did Kung Fu Killers, then he was noticed in The Man From Hong Kong by George Miller and was hired for the first Mad Max movie. Grant was then established as far as the Australian film industry was concerned and it showed the world what Australians could do in the action department. I made Stunt Rock just before Mad Max and he met other stunt actors in America — his stunt career was up and running.
Grant pioneered a lot of stunts that no-one knew how to do. He is now 80 years old and told me that he has booked his next car roll to do when he is 85!
Were the Hong Kong characters dubbed in Mandarin?
Jimmy came from Shanghai and the Hong Kong release dubbed him into Cantonese as he chose to speak in Mandarin and wherever Mandarin was spoken, it was dubbed into Mandarin. Jimmy was dubbed too by Roy Chiao (Temple of Doom) as his voice was not ideal for a hero.
How was the theme song “Sky High” arranged?
Noel Quinlan did an amazing music score for the film. He was an Australian working in Hong Kong and therefore we could use him. Noel had written an opening song for the film called “Power” but when we sent the film to the distributor in London, EMI said they had a band called Jigsaw who would do a hit song for the film (a 2 minute pop song and a 4 minute version for the titles). They had one of the Beatles arrangers, Richard Hewson, and “Sky High” became a #1 hit in the UK and #2 in the US.
Do you think it’s possible to make another Ozploitation film?
What has happened over the last 40 years is that the studios are making major exploitation movies on big budgets. Many are the same format as mine (one action scene, one dialogue scene, one action scene, one dialogue scene and so on…) If you make something on the Ozploitation budget, it has to compete with much bigger visuals, so there needs to be real originality in the script as everything I did in this film has been done since. The Mad Max movies initially did well as they were fresh to Australian audiences. I would love to see more Aussie action pictures, but Australian audiences seem to think America does action better.
What are you working on now?
My last film was Drive Hard, an odd couple buddy comedy without much budget. Ageism being what it is, I might not make another one, but if there are any producers out there, I’m available.
So I started writing a novel which started as a screenplay via Amazon Kindle: Alice Through the Multiverse, which is a time-twisting paranormal thriller with a strong female protagonist, a political subtext and a surprise at the end; basically written as a movie in prose.
NFSA — National Film and Sound Archive of Australia
AFTRS — Australian Film, Television and Radio School
