The movie starts off with a typical fast kung fu 70s introduction related to the odd concept of chess where Ah Pao flips around in some heavily edited clips of him moving across a Chinese chess board. We get a demonstration of him and Jack Long’s kung fu that will be used here along with bombastic music before the actual movie begins. From there, the evil master, Wan Chun Shan or the Ghost Face Killer, takes out his first victim.

Now, let me stop here and I have to interject some commentary right off the bat. This guy Wan Chun Shan does a LOT of talking and posing, which comes off as bragging before he goes to attack his foes. I found this display quite irritating because it makes no sense in the context of a fight. What I mean by that is that you shouldn’t show off to an enemy what you know, even if you could beat him. And in the case of Wan Chun Shan, he does numerous moves before actually engaging with his enemies. In contrast, his foes typically just stand around and identify his style out loud with “Five Elements!” before the guy goes on attack as opposed to either running away or trying to go on offensive immediately to throw the guy off. I know that the Long brothers were main characters here and so this felt like them masturbating with a tree in showing off their skillz as opposed to portraying an actual fight.

Once that fight is done, we go to Ah Pao “advising” a kung fu student in a game of chess against Jack Long, who plays a chess master, Chi Siu Tien, running a small chess based gambling stand. The student loses from taking Ah Pao’s advice and is embarrassed, forming a permanent hatred towards Ah Pao. Ah Pao is cocky like almost everyone else in this movie and the student tells him that he won’t forgive him unless Ah Pao kowtows to him. Since Ah Pao makes it known he’s in town to study kung fu, Chi Siu Tien informs him to pay his respects to be able to join the school.

For whatever reason, Ah Pao actually pays his respect all the way to the school. Once he’s inside, he continues to pay his respects but the student (who is considered the senior student) has Ah Pao bullied until the real master shows up and decides to take Ah Pao in. Accepted by the master, Ah Pao tries to integrate himself but the senior student (who has no name) gets the other students to bully Ah Pao around especially during dinner where he’s forced to serve the other students rice.

While the other students practice normally, Ah Pao is relegated to cleaning duties as he’s at the lowest rung on the chain. In turn, he meets the old cook, Yuan, played by Simon Yuen. Yuan is a bit of a red herring in the movie because he generally plays the ultimate master or trainer for the hero in numerous movies. Here, he’s got more of a cameo role but he still trains Ah Pao while claiming he has no actual knowledge of kung fu. As an aside, I think at this point, Simon Yuen’s film career was coming to a close and it seemed like he was doing more cameo appearances. The Mystery of Chess Boxing would be one of his later films so I imagine part of his involvement was to be able to work with the Long brothers and Li Yi-Min.

Either way, Ah Pao’s training proves fruitful as he is able to serve his classmates more efficiently and impresses most of them (except the senior guy). Eventually, the master of his school learns that Ah Pao is carrying a plate that signifies the evil bad guy’s signature and kicks him out without letting Ah Pao explain why he’s carrying it. Ah Pao somehow manages to track down the chess master, whom I think the cook instructed him to find.

Before that happens the evil master continues to search for his main nemesis, the chess master and almost catches him in town. But Chi Siu Tien feigns knowing any kung fu, which throws the evil master off his scent. Also, there’s another fight between the evil master and another rival. Note that throughout the movie Wan Chun Shan would frequently encounter these random “masters” and kick their asses to death as a kind of reverse filler (meaning I think part of the purpose is for the actor to show off his kung fu)

At any rate, Chi Siu Tien takes Ah Pao in under recommendation from his daughter, who obviously has a crush on Ah Pao. Initially, Ah Pao undergoes mental training by playing chess against Chi Siu Tien but becomes impatient when he feels that he has not learned anything during the month of staying. Instead, Chi Siu Tien reveals the thesis of the movie in terms of the connection between kung fu, the mental aspect of kung fu, calmness and playing chess. As a result, Chi Siu Tien insists that Ah Pao has been learning by playing against Chi Siu Tien the entire time. Then he starts working on Ah Pao’s physical attributes and eventually teaching him the actual kung fu itself.

One random day, Ah Pao is returning from who knows where and encounters his old bully student buddy on the road. They have a fight where Wan Chun Shan serendipitously appears to overhear of the student’s teacher. Wan Chun Shan engages with the bully student and gives him the ghost faced killer amulet to hand to his master after beating him. The master demands his students to leave, knowing that they will get killed if they stay around once Wan Chun Shan appears. So the students depart except for the bully student and Wan Chun Shan shows up to kill the master. the bully student submits himself to Wan Chun Shan and reveals that Ah Pao also has a pendant and knows about the chess master being the person Wan Chun Shan is seeking. In turn, the bully student guides Wan Chun Shan to Chi Siu Tien’s hideout, taking the daughter hostage so that Chi Siu Tien and Wan Chun Shan can have a fight.

Because of his age and other reasons, Chi Siu Tien cannot defeat Wan Chun Shan alone. Naturally, Ah Pao appears and takes over, managing to counter enough of Wan Chun Shan’s blows but not having enough skill to finish Wan Chun Shan. So Chi Siu Tien teams up with Ah Pao and the fight looks really gay. I’m not even joking about this. Just nonstop flips and turns that look like shit to me. It’s the one thing I really hate about the Taiwanese acrobats in so-called kung fu movies where a good chunk just devolves into nonstop flips that look too choreographed/rehearsed and impossible to execute in a real fight. Not only that but the fight lasts forever and I started getting madder because it was like watching modern pro-wrestling with nonstop kick outs. Eventually, Ah Pao delivers the death blow and Wan Chun Shan squirts blood from his neck as the picture abruptly ends.

On top of all this, during the climax, there’s a bunch of obviously animated shots of pieces on a chess board moving around that’s supposed to represent the counter techniques used that are accompanied by strange noises.

I’m sure at some point this movie probably came on Kung Fu Theater on channel 9 in my local area during the early/mid 80s because it just has that look. Li Yi-Min was one of those independent movie actor favorites that my mom liked and would call “Bobby” probably because we didn’t have imdb or hkmdb back then. And while I do like various Li Yi-Min movies like The Shaolin Temple as well as some of his independent movies (which I may eventually review down the line), this movie kinda sucked for me. If it did come on during the old Kung Fu Theater days, it wouldn’t have registered for me just because the movie is kinda lame.

I know that the Long brothers achieved a moderate amount of success and recognition during the late 70s and early 80s kung fu period, but I honestly never really remembered anything that they had done if, indeed, I had seen any of their stuff. This movie might demonstrate why because the kung fu was downright masturbatory where you had guys just showing off rather than having more violent fights. The plot itself was a typical spaghetti western revenge/training story from that period and the training itself was quite dull. Perhaps, the only aspect that is somewhat distinguishing is that stupid introduction with Li Yi-Min flipping around in a heavily edited format on a chess board. But that kinda shows you the direction the movie would head towards as it seemed ridiculous to me.

Now, speaking on Li Yi-Min, he’s someone that I couldn’t tell if he actually knew real kung fu or not. His Shaw Brothers days seem to use him for what he was best known for in terms of his acrobatics and weapon usage. His later years with the independent companies, he seemed to exhibit more “real” kung fu that was interspersed with his usual flipping. And don’t get me wrong; he’s definitely one of the better “flippers” out there as you can see that his training was fairly intense. But my argument is that half the fights were him just jumping around.

I did start watching another movie he had done around ’75 but it was horribly boring and terribly paced. I think around that period he had done a few independent movies outside of the Shaw Brothers. But he didn’t really develop himself as a more well rounded actor. It did occur to me that his best roles were a mixture of the comedic, downtrodden hero who gets serious in the second act after revealing some tragedy. Some of his later roles had him play an unconvincing villain but I think his baby face made him less credible in those parts compared to him smirking around and acting silly.

Finally, there’s the abrupt ending to this movie. This is something that seems to have been a common trope in numerous kung fu movies back then. I did the lasting and abrupt shot from Chinese Godfather in my recent review. But in some of these cases, the ending leaves a bad unfilled feeling because some things might still be loose. Like in this case, there was the bully student who had been holding the daughter hostage. Once Mark Long is dead, we don’t see what happens to him. Does he scamper off? Does he get killed? There’s no karmic redemption after all the horrendous things he had done. This scenario just showed how these movies seemed more concerned with moving from point A to point B without real considering on the holistic picture.

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