Director: Chan Chuen
Screenplay: Lo Wei
Starring: Jackie Chan (kind of), Jacky Chang, Dean Shek, Yam Sai-koon and James Tien
Country: Hong Kong
Running Time: 92 min
Year: 1983
If you’re interested in the world of Asian martial arts films, you’re probably familiar with the concept of ‘fake films’ in the genre. What I mean when I say ‘fake’ is that they were completed without the original actor’s permission, either due to a dispute behind-the-scenes or them passing away. The most notorious example is Bruce Lee’s Game of Death, a film that Lee died during the production of, so Enter the Dragon director Robert Clouse was brought in to film new scenes with a Lee lookalike and try to make it coherent. While I’m rarely a fan of these fake films, I find them utterly fascinating.
Last year, I covered Enter the Clones of Bruce for this site (read that review here), a documentary about the entire Bruceploitation movement, a genre dedicated to creating films reusing old Lee footage or using lookalikes to market off of his success and found it fascinating but outside of Game of Death and a few others, my experience with the genre of fake films is limited. Thankfully, the Jackie Chan enthusiasts over at 88 Films have put together a Blu-ray for one of these films, Fearless Hyena Part II, a sequel to Chan’s directorial debut.
For a quick breakdown on what happened, Chan left the film mid-production after butting heads with Lo Wei, due to Chan moving over to rival studio Golden Harvest and leaving director Chan Chuen with an incomplete film. So, instead of scrapping the project entirely, Chuen re-used footage from prior Chan films and incorporated a lookalike, the marvellously named Jacky Chang to portray Chan’s character Cheng Lung in the new scenes. How is the film, you might be asking? Well…
If you’ve watched the original Fearless Hyena or the Chan/Lo Wei collaboration Spiritual Kung-Fu, you’ll recognize footage from being reused almost immediately, with the initial new footage mostly consisting of an extended flashback sequence. It’s a sequel to the original film in name only, with most of the film attempting to re-use plot points from the first without them having the same love and care that makes Fearless Hyena so enjoyable.
Still, the film has an undeniable charm to it thanks to how utterly incoherent it is, barely functioning as a narrative feature and more so a series of sequences that kind of consist of a story. Watching the film so closely to the films that it borrows footage from only made the experience all the more hilarious to me, and while I’m in the minority here, I had a blast with the awful Jackie Chan lookalikes who play his ‘relatives’ that never existed before, with the most outrageous wigs and fake beards you’ll ever see, outside of Team America: World Police.
There’s occasionally decent fight sequences, but they never come close to competing with the real Chan, even when they’re using him in them! Can I recommend it? I’m not quite sure. It’s a film that’s only recommended to die-hard completionists or fans of so-bad-it’s-good cinema, because I can’t imagine many people rewatching this over and over like Chan’s actual films. Still, as an oddity, it’s worth checking out at least once just to say that you have.
Film: 
Fearless Hyena Part II is being released on Blu-ray via 88 Films on 20th May. While the film itself is arguably the shoddiest title in Chan’s filmography, the A/V side of the disc is quite the opposite. The high definition transfer looks remarkable, with vibrant colours throughout and solid bitrates hovering between 28 and 30mbps and all three audio tracks do the job. I viewed the film with the 2.0 Cantonese Mono and it sounds exactly as you’d hope, with the two English dubs sounding pretty good too after testing them out. Fans of Fearless Hyena Part II (we’re a small community, I’m sure) will be impressed by the A/V side of this release. The following extras are included:
Slipcase with New Artwork by Kung Fu Bob O’Brien and booklet with notes by David West (First pressing only)
High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray Presentation in 2.39:1 Aspect Ratio
2.0 Cantonese Dual Mono with English Subtitles
2.0 English Dual Mono
2.0 Alternate English Dual Mono
Audio Commentary by Frank Djeng
Export Opening Credits
Japanese Theatrical End Credits
The audio commentary by film historians Frank Djeng and F.J. DeSanto is a delightful and informative commentary that highlights the film’s troubled production, as well as their surprisingly postive thoughts on the film as a whole. If you’ve heard a Djeng commentary before, you know you’re in for a jam-packed track packed with trivia about the film and DeSanto holds his own too, despite saying that he’d only seen the film for the first time while working on this audio commentary. It’s a great audio commentary, but given Djeng’s stellar past work, it’s no surprise. Give this one a listen!
Fake Shemps: How Fearless Hyena II Was Completed Without Jackie Chan is a brand new 2024 interview with film historian and filmmaker Steven Lawson, exclusive to this release that runs for 16 minutes and it’s my favourite extra on the disc. He talks about how Fearless Hyena II is a “fake movie”, given its notorious production history. The Fake Shemps title was coined by Raimi, and Lawson touches on other films like Plan 9 from Outer Space and Game of Death that created a film without the lead actors participation. Lawson covers other Jackie Chan films without Jackie’s participation, such as Master with Cracked Fingers and Fire Dragon. It’s a great appreciation for a film that in all reality, might not deserve it.
Export Opening Credits and Japanese End Credits are included on this release, which is great for people curious on how different regional versions of the film open and close. 88 Films are brilliant for including these whenever possible on their 88 Asia discs, and it’s great to see them featured here.
Hong Kong and Japanese theatrical trailers are included, presented in their original languages with optional English subtitles.
A stills gallery is also included.
I wasn’t provided with the slipcover or booklet unfortunately, but 88 Films usually knock their slips and booklets out of the park, so I assume it’s up to their typically high standards.
While I’m not going to argue that Fearless Hyena Part II is even remotely a good film, I can say that 88 Films’ release of the title is great. There’s not a ton of extras, but the ones included are all extensive, well-researched and offer a solid insight into the troubled production of the film that’s more interesting than the actual film itself. 88 Films have gone above and beyond to deliver the definitive release of a film so reviled that few other labels would care this much or put even half of the effort in that they did, so kudos to the team at 88.
Disc/Packaging: