About this episode
Samm and John are about to embark on a long series covering the first few decades of the career of a Hong Kong legend: Wong Jing. Producer, director, writer, actor, and professional hater, Jing helped shape Hong Kong cinema in the ’80s and ’90s. In this first episode in the series, we’re diving in to his early work as a screenwriter on martial arts classics like Magnificent Butcher (1979), Dreadnaught (1981), and The Prodigal Son (1981), and then we discuss his first few action films as a director with Shaw Brothers: his wonderful gambling comedies Challenge of the Gamesters (1981) and Winner Takes All (1982), and the explosive Mercenaries from Hong Kong (1982), an important influence on the emerging heroic bloodshed subgenre. Thanks for listing and please follow Samm and John over at Patreon for more!