No Surrender Cinema: Kung Fu from Beyond the Grave
Who doesn’t love a good horror flick? How about a little old school kung fu to pass the time? Now imagine those two genres merging together like some sort of cinematic superpower! There’s all sorts of supernatural shenanigans happening, but Billy Chong ain’t afraid of no ghost…not when it’s his father’s spirit commanding him to take revenge on his killers! No Surrender Cinema is getting in the spirit of spooky season with the chop-socky insanity of Kung Fu From Beyond The Grave!
The film starts off the same way an old school Casper cartoon would have, with mysterious laughter, food flying around, and all the usual haunted house tropes. These happenings are alerting us (the audience) that the dead are returning to Earth, because in the world of Kung Fu From Beyond The Grave, that’s a regular happening during the seventh month of the year. All of the ghostly goofiness goes unnoticed by Chun Sing (Billy Chong), until he accidentally kicks his dead father in the face! Yes, the young man practicing martial arts in the dead of night ends up kicking the spirit of dear ol’ dad right in the mush, and is shocked to see his father’s decaying corpse floating in front of him. Apparently pops saved enough money down in Hell to bribe his way out, and it was to tell his son to gain vengeance in his name. Given that his father was 1) in HELL, not Heaven, and 2) he had to bribe his way out of there, one has to wonder if his request is on the up and up. Nevertheless, Chun Sing acts on the orders of his dead dad and sets out to avenge him.
Chun Sing’s unexpected reunion with his father isn’t the only crazy thing that happens in the early moments of Kung Fu From Beyond The Grave, because as Chun sets out on his quest, we see two wizards facing off in a sword fight in the woods! There’s floating, there’s fire, and there’s an act of mercy, which proves to be a mistake as it leads to the good wizard being stabbed to death by his rival. The bad guy is looking for some type of book, but takes off when Chun Sing approaches. Chun finds the “book of magic” inside the handle of the deceased wizard’s sword and buries it before moving on to find a place to sleep for the night. Unfortunately for him, since his father’s spirit can’t rest, neither can he, as his father’s spirit continues to torment him and encourage him to go and kill the man who killed him.
Continuing on with the WTF aspect of Kung Fu From Beyond The Grave, Chun’s place of rest comes under attack by a pair of thugs (man and woman) who work for the evil sorcerer, who is using his black magic tactics to protect Chun’s father’s killer! Apparently his rituals include the need for human hearts, which have to be ripped out of them at the point of orgasm(!), which is a pretty kinky fetish, even for a murderous magician. Chun has not yet made an enemy of these people yet, but when he does visit he beats the crap out of a few of the sorcerer’s flunkies and makes his identity and his intentions known. Chun is nearly laughed out of the village, but he doesn’t leave before making demands that he feels will enable his father to enjoy peace in the afterlife. This puts him in the crosshairs of the evildoers, but luckily he discovers a book of magic inside a sword handle and performs his own little seance that ends up raising the dead for backup, like a group of ghosts that act as Chun’s first line of defense against the group of killers.
This is the point where things start getting really wacky; the evil sorcerer doesn’t bat an eye that there is now a group of ghosts embarking on a full fledged assault against him and his crew. He makes his cape float in the air as a makeshift shield like Dr. Strange, flies backwards away from the good ghosts, and calls upon some undead friends of his own to take part in the fight. The best part of this sequence, and maybe one of the best things I’ve ever seen happen on film, is when the sorcerer realizes that Chun Sing has taken possession of the book of magic and retaliates by fanning a wad of cash and calling on COUNT DRACULA for help! I guess Ted DiBiase was right when he said that everybody had a price! I thought that I’d seen it all when I first watched The Crippled Masters years ago, but now I’m watching someone dressed like the yacht rock version of Danhausen acting as a hired gun for the big bad. This is the first and last time we see Dracula in the film, and the American actor does no martial arts to speak of, but it’s a mesmerizing scene due to the absurdity of it all.
Dracula only proves to be a formidable foe for a brief time, and then Chun’s ghostly acquaintances take their leave as well, although that doesn’t mean that things settle down. Chun Sing heads out in search of his father’s remains, while the evil wizard engages in numerous rituals in his attempts to vanquish our hero. He convulses, he sucks in smoke and breathes out fire, and he calls upon a deadly ghost to put an end to Chun’s quest, only for it retreat when he tries to grab onto Chun’s female friend and yellow smoke emerges from her panties! I’m not sure how much more outrageous this film can get, but it sure as hell loves to trump itself every few minutes!
Kung Fu From Beyond The Grave kicks things into high gear (literally!) from the jump, and with each passing moment gets more bizarre and more entertaining. The pure WFT-ness of black magic, quirky ghosts, and a silly supernatural storyline are the aspects that make it most memorable, but it shouldn’t detract from the fact that Billy Chong kicked a lot of ass as the hero of the story. The man’s got skills, although I’ve read previously that those skills caused his head to swell, earning him an ego that eventually became his downfall. Whatever his issues were when the cameras weren’t rolling, I liked him as the protagonist that was able to switch back and forth between an avenging son and a befuddled goof caught in a crazy situation.
Kung Fu From Beyond The Grave is another oddity from a bygone era that I’m glad I was able to discover. Do I think it’s an unheralded classic of the period like Mean Streets of Kung Fu? It’s not a fair comparison, because Kung Fu From Beyond The Grave at times feels more like a goofy ghost story that happens to have martial arts actors in it as opposed to a martial arts film with a supernatural story. That said, it’s a film that is never dull, not even for one second, because even when the fists and feet stop flying, your attention will be directed to whatever wacky situation or character trait is being played out on the screen.
Kung Fu From Beyond The Grave is currently available on Tubi, YouTube, and other streaming apps. You can also find it on DVD on some budget Kung Fu compilations.
