“Give up crime and do honest deeds!” “What for?”

Flinthart’s review: I watched Dirty Ho at a friend’s place just last night. He’s a huge cinephile and a skilled film-maker himself. (Can I give a shout out to The Rejectables and their YouTube ouevre?) We’d decided we were gonna hang out and talk movies, so when I heard of this film purely by chance and chased it down — well, it was a no-brainer, right? And of course, the moment I mentioned the title to my friend he was like, “Well, I guess we’ve got no choice.”

And hey! This is definitely a win for mutants everywhere.

Look, the flowering of Hong Kong cinema through the seventies, eighties, and nineties brought a whole new dimension of skills, tropes, images, and ideas to mainstream cinema. I’ve talked about this stuff elsewhere so I won’t waste wordage on it here — but I will say that if you call yourself a Mutant and you’re not up on the wilder aspects of Hong Kong movies from that period, you’re fooling yourself.

Many of those movies have become bywords amongst cinephiles in these latter, streaming-fueled days. We’ve all heard of Infernal Affairs, for example, and anyone with any cinema chops knows how it influenced Scorsese, among others. I could list a fistful of similar titles, but the point I’d be making would be this: for some reason Dirty Ho is not amongst that list, and after watching it I really don’t understand why it isn’t better known.

First, let me say that Dirty Ho did NOT have the modern meaning back in 1979 Hong Kong. (But it does add a hilarious layer to the title now, doesn’t it?) This film is actually a kung fu comedy from the legendary Run Run Shaw, starring Yue Wong as ‘Dirty’ Ho Jen and Chia-Hui Liu as ‘Master Wang/Eleventh Prince.’ Run IMDB on those guys, and marvel at the list of legendary films they’ve inhabited. Then check up the director Chia-Liang Liu, and spit your coffee all over the keyboard when you discover he’s better known as (Total Legend!) Lau Kar-Leung who did Jackie Chan’s breakout Drunken Master II — and by now, you should realize that Dirty Ho was never gonna be your average chop-socky forgettable.

The story is what it is. ‘Dirty’ Ho Jen (or He Chen, depending on your subtitles) is an aspiring jewel thief who gets into a bidding war for a bunch of hookers at a restaurant/brothel with the mysterious Master Wang, who not only outbids him comprehensively but outfoxes him completely.

Ho is none too pleased by this so he comes back looking for revenge, but this time Master Wang tricks him into fighting with ‘The Four Handicapped Devils’ — a bunch of kung-fu thugs who pretend to have physical disabilities. (And yes, that is as hilarious as it is inappropriate. Shut up and eat your popcorn, okay?)

Arrested again, Ho returns once more but this time Master Wang beats the kung fu snot out of him — or rather, he skillfully puppeteers a pipa-playing courtesan into kung fu-ing Ho into yet another disaster.

By now, a theme has emerged. Master Wang is obviously a hell-on-wheels kung fu guy. He’s so good that he’s defeated Dirty Ho three times and Ho still hasn’t twigged that Wang has The Juice. So who is this Master Wang, who loves him some nifty Ming period antiques, tasteful watercolour paintings, and of course, top-notch wine (with bits of animals in it, as the Chinese are prone to delivering)? Well, we don’t know as yet. But we are shown segments of folk plotting against him: folk who are taking their orders from someone known only as “Fourth Prince.” Add to that the fact that Master Wang can completely shut down the local gendarmerie with one quick flash of a mysterious jade seal, and if you’ve any knowledge of Olde Chinese Pop Culture at all, you’ll figure out that Master Wang clearly has some pull at the Imperial Court.

Anyway: Dirty Ho returns again, but this time he wants an antidote for the poison on a sword which wounded him during his “fight” with the courtesan who was puppeteered by Master Wang. Wang outplays him yet again, tricking him into signing up to be his student, and then the two of them wander off through a series of set-piece encounters together. Gradually we learn that Master Wang is actually the Eleventh Prince, one of fourteen Imperial princes. It also transpires that the aging Emperor has not yet chosen a successor, and Master Wang/Eleventh Prince is currently supposed to be dutifully hanging around the Imperial court, not swanning about the provinces on an improvised Antiques Roadshow tour with added wine.

And finally: he’s also due back for a big old meet-and-greet with the brothers and Imperial Big Daddy, and if he doesn’t show up, his father will “lecture him.” (Apparently this is very bad, and Master Wang wants to avoid it.)

Of course, Fourth Prince’s minions continue to waylay and attack Master Wang and his increasingly skilled servant/student Dirty Ho, and our doughty pair chop, kick, slice, punch, stomp and smack their way through an increasingly silly range of villainy right up until Dirty Ho manages to get Master Wang back to the court in time for his meeting with the fam — whereupon the action halts so quickly, and so completely without anything like a real resolution of character arcs that one is forced to assume that the writer had a stroke, or maybe somebody embezzled the remaining budget. (Either of these is entirely plausible.)

So, why watch?

Because Dirty Ho is insane in a great way. It’s hilarious. The combat sequences… look, it’s not Bruce Lee level stuff, but the combination of action, comedic dialogue and ludicrous set-ups foreshadows the very best of Jackie Chan’s material. Watching Master Wang drink wine with a couple of would-be murderers who are constantly trying to kill him while he, with equal constancy continues to thwart them, all without raising a ruckus, breaking a sweat, disrupting the dialogue or even spilling the wine — it’s comedy gold. And all the risible use of unlikely weaponry and furniture, the impossible odds, the loopy battle sequences — all of it comes together into a wonderfully good-natured romp that no self-respecting Mutant could possibly resist.

Let me put it like this: I’m giving Dirty Ho 12 out of 14 inbred Imperial Princes… and I didn’t even have so much as a low-alcohol fruity mixer drink during (or before!) the viewing. Get Dirty, and have some fun.

Intermission!

• Hang on. Are they in a bidding war for a bunch of hookers? Oh, lord. They are.
• The Four Handicapped Devils? You’re shitting me, right? Ooops. Nope. You’re not.
• Is that hunchback trying to beat Ho to death with his hunch? Marty Feldman, move over!
• Oh look. The one-legged guy has two legs. And the one-armed guy has two arms. And the blind guy… isn’t. These Handicapped Devils do NOT deserve their parking spaces.
• Awesome use of a ‘courtesan’ as an improvised weapons platform.
• Aha! That explains the weird black spot on his forehead during the opening credits.
• Do the Chinese have ANY wine without nasty animal body parts floating in it?
• Uh-oh… Danger Shoes!
• Whoa! Not the paintings! Not the paintings!
• Damn! Those are some seriously protective paper umbrellas. NATO needs to look into these things.
• What? OMG. The ‘Seven Bitters’… words have failed me.
• Huh. Who knew that villainous homosexuality could be transmissible?