No Surrender Cinema: Seven Steps of Kung Fu
A gang of invaders seeks to impose their will on a small Chinese village, but not if the local troublemaker and his master have anything to say about it! To defeat their foes, it will take skill, heart, a little bit of dirty work and Seven Steps of Kung Fu! No Surrender Cinema kicks off the month of October by going old school for a look back at another entry in the vast vault of golden age kung fu films!
Little Tiger (Ricky Cheng Tien-Chi, aka Tien-Chi Cheng) is an immature but likable young man that always seems to find trouble. During one instance where he gets into a fight over an apple (and then pickpockets the guy to pay for it), he ends up in possession of a medallion that belongs to a member of the Five Hand Gang. Master Li isn’t sure who all of the members of the Five Hand Gang are, but knowing that their arrival in town means trouble, he puts Tiger on high alert. More specifically, he tells Tiger he can’t behave like an idiot, and recruits him to do recon in town to see if he notices any newcomers around town. Within minutes, Tiger finds himself fighting in the center of town just as a mysterious woman is being led through. Tiger’s stranger danger alarm goes off, only for him to notice another unfamiliar face heading to Master Kung’s that night. Tiger gets caught spying around Master Kung’s (and gets called a bastard for good measure), but is able to escape unharmed and report back to Master Li.
Sure enough, Master Kung’s home is the gathering spot for the Five Hand Gang, which includes the mystery woman as well as another man that Tiger encountered in the opening minutes of the film (and the rightful owner of the medallion that Tiger found). In order to find out more about why Master Kung is meeting with these people, Tiger instigates a fight that he purposefully spills onto Kung’s property. In the midst of the melee he pickpockets one of Kung’s allies, and the information enclosed rattles Master Li. It’s not long before Kung and Co. are onto Tiger and Li, and while Tiger is able to defend himself against one of the members of the Five Hand Gang (killing him in the process), Master Li is not as fortunate, enduring a beating at the hands of Kung and several of his Five Hand henchmen. After being thrown down a hill and left for dead, the bad guys go to claim Li’s body to confirm his death, only for Li to have escaped his enemies and made it back home, where Tiger helps him recover.
It turns out that the Five Hand Gang (including Kung) report to the general, who demeans Kung for having hired Li as a kung fu teacher for his son (who we never see). Li is apparently a formidable foe that worries the villains based on this 30 second conversation, so the general orders his goons to go and kill Li for real this time, and to make sureLittle Tiger is a part of the body count too! As for the good guys, once Li has recovered, he starts training Tiger for battle, showing him how to walk on his hands, hop like a frog, and be fluid and fast in his movements. During one particular exercise, Master Li asks if it hurt (to which Tiger responds affirmatively), and Li’s response is to “practice until it doesn’t”! Motivated by a chance at revenge on his master’s behalf, Tiger leans into his training, eventually learning…what else…the Seven Steps of Kung Fu!
Although Little Tiger and Master Li have isolated themselves as they plan their attack, the woman member of the gang soon finds them after tracking Tiger from a meetup with Xiao Lai, a local girl who is smitten with him. Li and Tiger manage to capture the woman, then go and confront Kung himself, leaving his body to be found by the rest of the gang. The latter half of the film tends to follow the old adage of turnabout is fair play, because even though their the heroes of the story, Tiger and Li pull no punches (pardon the pun) with their effort to put an end to the Five Hand Gang. There’s even a scene that gets real uncomfortable real fast when Li orders Tiger to undress the woman, but he doesn’t get very far before Li notices that she feels shamed, and if she can feel that, it must mean that she has a sense of decency and honor. I guess I can see the sentiment behind testing one’s character, but for a few minutes there it felt like the movie took a left turn and was making the guy we’ve been rooting for out to be a pervy old man!
While our Dynamic Kung Fu Duo are off kung fu steppin’ all over the remaining gang members, The General discovers Xiao Lai and the woman at Master Li’s home. Despite a babyface turn by the woman, both she and Xiao Lai are killed by The General, further fueling Tiger and Li’s desire for revenge. The death of the woman also acts as a revelation to another gang member just how treacherous the villainous lifestyle can be, so he tells Li and Tiger where to find The General, giving them a heads up on where they need to be to cut the head off the snake of the Five Hand Gang once and for all!
Seven Steps of Kung Fu carries on a No Surrender Cinema tradition of being a classic kung fu movie that I knew nothing about going in, but came away from my first viewing loving it and needing it in my collection ASAP. The story is as derivative as you’d expect from a martial arts film of the era, but what sold it for me was Ricky Cheng Tien-Chi. After looking him up, I realized that he’d been in quite a few of my kung fu go-to’s, such as Five Elements Ninjas and The Mystery of Chess Boxing, and I really enjoyed him here as Little Tiger. He wasn’t too over the top with the comedy, and I loved the acrobatic spin on his fight scenes. There were times where it looked like he was in a breakdance battle and not a fight, and other points where I wondered if Tony Jaa took some inspiration from Ricky’s work. Every fight in the film was fun, but I especially liked the fight that he caused on purpose as part of his recon mission, and his first encounter with a member of the Five Hand Gang.
The other aspect of the film that made me appreciate it a bit more than other films of the era was the focus throughout the whole film on loyalty. Tiger was loyal to Master Li, who was loyal to the village and worked to protect it, while the Five Hand Gang were loyal to each other until several of them realized the true nature of their crimes. It was if Seven Steps To Kung Fu was intended to be more than just another quick cash-in on the martial arts craze of the 70’s and early 80’s, and was more of a morality play.
There hasn’t been a lot said about Seven Steps of Kung Fu, but don’t let the silence sway you. This was a fun film, one that I’d put up on the pedestal next to Barry Chan’s Mean Streets of Kung Fu and He Has Nothing But Kung Fu as another film that I was fortunate enough to come across. Tubi truly is a goldmine for classic kung fu cinema, and this film already has me looking to see if I can find more entries in Ricky Cheng Tien-Chi’s filmography that I haven’t yet seen.
Speaking of seeing things, you can see Seven Steps of Kung Fu (also known as Shaolin Raiders of Death) on Tubi, Youtube, and DVD. Here’s hoping this column can help pull this film back up to the surface and expose it to the millions of martial arts movie fans out there looking for a film that’s easy to follow, full of fun fights, and leaves you wanting more from its star.
