PROLIFIC PIONEER WHO LEFT A POWERFUL BODY OF WORK
Wu Ma acted in 300 films and directed more than 45 others. A local expert traces his career
Hong Kong filmmakers and performers are often prolific, but few can match character actor Wu Ma, who appeared in more than 300 films and also made a name for himself as a director.
Frank Djeng, who provided the commentary for the Eureka Entertainment release of Wu Ma’s best film, the horror-martial arts comedy
The Dead and the Deadly (1982), discusses his incredible career.
Sammo Hung Kam-bo, the film’s star, often gets the credit for The Dead and the Deadly, but it was directed by Wu Ma.
Yes, it may look and feel like a Sammo Hung film, but it’s directed by Wu Ma, who was a prolific actor as well as a director.
He directed more than 45 films and acted in some 300 films, so it’s not an exaggeration to say that Wu was indeed the hardest-working man in Hong Kong show business!
Born Fung Wang-yuen in Tianjin, northern China, in 1942, he moved to Hong Kong in 1959. He was a graduate of the first Shaw Brothers acting course in 1963, and became a contract player for Shaw Brothers a year later, as well as a protégé of both Chang Cheh and King Hu.
What does his stage name mean?
He changed his name to Wu Ma because he was born in the Year of the Horse, and Ma is Chinese for horse.
The Chinese character for Wu only has four strokes, which meant that his name would appear much earlier in the credits than if he used his real name, and it was also short enough for audiences to remember easily.
How did he transition from acting to directing?
He was in Shaw Brothers classics like
Temple of the Red Lotus, The Knight of Knights and Trail of the Broken Blade.
Acting allowed him to pick up skills behind the scenes and he gradually started learning how to be an action choreographer as well as a director, as he felt that his ordinary looks could not compare with good-looking stars such as Ti Lung and David Chiang (Da-wei).
He stumbled into directing when he was offered a trip to Japan to work as assistant director. After this experience, he decided to become a director.
Wu Ma directed the classic martial arts film The Deaf and Mute Heroine, as early as 1971.
He later forged strong working relationships with Sammo Hung and Tsui Hark.
Wu Ma’s association with Sammo Hung went back quite a way, starting with 1974’s
The Manchu Boxer in which Wu served as action choreographer.
This was the start of a great working partnership between the two, which would lead to Wu Ma appearing in many of Sammo’s films. Hung also often produced the films Wu directed.
But he is probably best known to Westerners for his show-stopping turn as the rapping Taoist priest Yin Chek Ha in (Tony) Ching Siu-tung’s classic A Chinese
Ghost Story, a role which he reprised in two sequels.
Tsui Hark produced that film and Wu appeared in many of Tsui’s other films, such as Peking Opera Blues, Swordsman, and Once Upon a Time in China.
Wu’s The Dead and the Deadly might not be the most sophisticated film, but it’s bursting with energy. Was that emblematic of the Hong Kong film industry at that time?
It’s definitely in line with most of the films coming out of Hong Kong at that time – the early 1980s was the start of a golden age of Hong Kong cinema. But it has been overshadowed by horror comedies like the Mr Vampire series and The Haunted Cop Shop.
Furthermore, hardly anyone in the West got to see The Dead and the Deadly, because it never received a proper video release outside Hong Kong.
What’s the film’s relationship with Hung’s earlier horror-martial arts comedy Encounter of the Spooky Kind, in which Wu Ma had a substantial role?
It’s not a sequel to Encounter of the Spooky
Kind as it has different characters, but it’s definitely set in the same “universe”. The
Dead and the Deadly is more of a revenge tale since Wu Ma’s character dies and has to seek the help of Sammo’s character to exact revenge. The Chinese titles for both films were also similar.
There is a lot of Chinese folklore in these films.
Some of the Chinese folklore elements are real, such as when those who live under certain zodiac signs turn their backs on the coffin when it’s raised from the ground in Mr Vampire – it’s considered bad luck for them to see it.
Was some of the folklore made up?
Yes, most of the practices in these films were made up, including the voodoo rituals in Encounter of the Spooky Kind.
But even these imaginary elements were based on genuine folklore related to the Chinese belief that ghosts, and especially
jiangshi, the Chinese version of the vampire, exist.
Things like using sticky rice to repel vampires in Mr Vampire, or having Wu Ma’s soul taking over Hung’s body in
The Dead and the Deadly, were derived from folklore.
So Chinese audiences ate them up, even though most of them were concocted by Hung and screenwriters like the late Barry Wong. Although they were made up, they were in line with folk tales that Chinese viewers were familiar with.
The martial arts don’t really start until about an hour into The Dead and the Deadly, and when they do, they are very acrobatic.
The film’s action credits look great on paper, with contributions by Sammo Hung, his stunt team, Yuen Biao, Lam Ching-ying and Billy Chan Wui-ngai. But martial arts fans might be disappointed that there are really just two proper action sequences, with the first one not arriving until almost an hour into the film.
The second fight scene is much loved by martial arts fans.
The second fight that begins with the
“soul shifting” sequence, where the ghost of Wu Ma’s character “borrows” the body of Hung’s character, is definitely one of the best fights that Hung has ever done.
Because he’s not actually fighting as Hung – he’s fighting as Wu Ma, and with a vengeance – there’s an additional ruthlessness and mean-spiritedness to the fight that Hung rarely duplicated later.
When Sammo beats up both Chung Fat and Kwon Yeong-moon, it’s quality fighting – a masterclass in editing, rhythm, and expert choreography. Too bad the fight didn’t go on for longer.
In this regular feature series on the best of Hong Kong cinema, we examine the legacy of classic films, re-evaluate the careers of its greatest stars, and revisit some of the lesser-known aspects of the beloved industry.
Wu Ma stumbled into directing when he was offered a trip to Japan to work as assistant director