Return To The 36 Chambers
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- For album by Ol' Dirty Bastard see Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version.
Return To The 36 Chambers (originally Shao Lin ta peng hsiao tzu) is a film from 1980 starring Gordon Liu, produced by the Shaw Brothers Studio. The film was directed by Chia-Liang Liu and written by Kuang Ni.
[edit] Plot
The film has the same theme as its predecessor, only on a smaller scale: it starts at a dyeworks facility. The quality of the dyes has noticably worsened, and the factory owner and his subordinate chief, Boss Wang (Lung Wei Wang), have decided to hire some Manchu overseers to improve the work. However, the owner has decided to shorten the workers' salary to pay the mercenaries, and when the workers protest they are viciously thrashed.
When sitting in a tea house discussing their problems, the workers are joined by Chao Yen-Cheh (Gordon Liu), a good-hearted small-time con man posing as a monk. He offers to help them, but since he cannot actually do kung fu, he and the foreman's assistant, Ah Chong (Siu Hau), devise a plan to trick the Manchu into reinstating the full salary pay, with Yen-Cheh posing as the Shaolin's head abbot, San Te Hoo.
At first the scheme works, but the factory owner quickly works out that this man is actually an impostor, and has him driven away and his Manchu hirelings retaliate against the workers. Feeling guilty about what has happened, Yen-Cheh leaves and heads for the Shaolin temple. His first attempts to enter by stealth are thwarted by the vigilant monks and his own bumbling, but eventually he manages to sneak his way in - just to run into the abbot San Te Hoo himself. He, too, realizes that Yen-Cheh is not what he claims to be, but he announces that he wants to give him a chance: Yen-Cheh is to built a set of gantries all around the outer temple wall and to paint it along its entire length.
Somewhat reluctantly, Yen-Cheh goes to work, but he is constantly distracted by the acolytes working out in the training courtyard (which he can look into from his high vantage point) and eventually begins to train in kung fu by himself, using the conditions of his assignment to improvise training facilities. However, this causes him to lag behind, and it takes him a full year to finish the gantry. As soon as Yen-Cheh announces that he is finished, the abbot wants him to dismantle his work and leave the monastery. Rebelling against this decision, Yen-Cheh lands in the training courtyard and while trying to evade the abbot chasing him, he inadvertently manages to pass all hazards set in the yard with ease. The abbot finally corners him and forces him to leave, but with a strange smile playing around his lips.
Yen-Cheh returns to town to find that the conditions of the workers have worsened in the meantime; their salary has been cut down to nearly half, and any who have protested had been laid off immediately. When some of the frustrated workers attack him, Yen-Cheh manages to fight them off with his newly-discovered kung fu skills. And right the next morning, Yen-Cheh appears at the dye factory and thrashes the overseers, using bamboo fibers (like such as he used when building the gantry) to tie them up and incapacitate them and introducing his style as "rooftop kung fu".
Quickly, the factory owner and his bodyguards appear at the scene. Yen-Cheh lures them out of the city to a mansion under construction, where he uses the building equipment and the tight quarters to his advantage. Finally overpowering the big boss, he forces him to reemploy the dismissed workers and to pay them their full wages again - in addition to paying back the shortages as well. Reluctantly the boss admits defeat, and Yen-Cheh continues his training on the half-finished grounds.
