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Odd Couple
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - Eureka Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (1st March 2022). |
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The Film
 The King of Sabres (Eastern Condors' Sammo Hung) and the King of Spears (The 36th Chamber of Shaolin's Lau Kar-wing, who also directed) challenge each other every decade at the ghost festival to determine which is the superior fighter; however, both are so good that their competition always ends in a draw. Both men are growing old and they reason that the only way that they can settle matters is to determine whose teaching is superior by each taking on pupils and training them for a competition as the next ghost festival. When the King of Sabres witnesses the raw potential in the fighting style of Stubborn Wing (also Lau), he attempts to take him on as a pupil but the younger man refuses his offer. Requiring that a loyal pupil be “homeless, jobless, and alone in the world,” the wily King of Sabre burns down Wing’s meager cottage and sabotages his reputation in his home village, whereupon Wing accepts his offer (if only to kill him in retaliation once he reaches the peak of his training). The King of Spears is more manipulative in making cocky Fatty (also Hung) beg him to become his Sifu. When the next ghost festival comes around, each master tells their pupil that they can only receive their inherited title by defeating the other master. Both unaware of the other’s identity, Wing and Fatty take to the road on the way to the ghost festival. The King of Sabres and the King of Spears each send their servants – respectively, Potato Head (Police Story's Mars) and Hunchback (The Big Boss' Billy Chan) – to make sure each believes the other is already the master of their weapon and, thus, their opponent. Both masters and their pupils, however, are unaware that an old enemy now known as the notorious Laughing Bandit (Warriors Two's Kar Yan Leung) is waiting to settle a score with them after spading years perfecting a fighting style suited to taking on masters of both weapons. A production of Golden Harvest subsidiary company Gar Bo, a partnership with Hung, actor Karl Maka and actor/director Lau which disbanded in 1980 when Maka went to Cinema City – where he became a star with the Aces Go Places series – and Hung formed the new subsidiary Bo Ho under which he would helm all of his eighties hits – Odd Couple anticipates the early Bo Ho productions in their combination of period martial arts and comedy. The casting of both Hung and Wing in dual roles allows each as actors to demonstrate ability in both swords and spears even though the expertise and training of each character is restricted to one or the other. The various comic fight scenes involving mistaken identities, the manipulations of the servants, and much humiliation of bully dandy Master Rocking (Drunken Master's Dean Shek) during the middle of the film do have the function of not merely padding the film to feature-length but also allowing the young pupils to be observed and the villain to surmise that his two enemies must still be alive and a means of how to draw them out. Characterization is basic, but we do see a contrast between the two masters who are too proud to take on their enemy together and the younger pupils who must combine their abilities and come up with a different solution when they honor their masters’ wish and their fight results in a draw as well. Maka appears early on as a man foolish enough to take on the King of Sabres. The Gar Bo partnership would result in two more films: Dirty Tiger, Crazy Frog and By Hook or By Crook. After Hung broke with Golden Harvest, he would reunite with Wing, and Maka in 1990 for the wildly offensive buddy cop comedy Skinny Tiger and Fatty Dragon. 
Video
In spite of the sudden wave of popularity with Drunken Master-style martial arts comedies of the period, Odd Couple appears to have had little distribution outside of Asian territories, not widely available in English-friendly form until Mei Ah's non-anamorphic subtitled DVD – apparently not imported stateside by Tai Seng – and then a remastered transfer appearing in the UK and Netherlands from Hong Kong Legends with an anamorphic transfer and a modern English dub (see audio remarks below). An HD master appeared in Japan as a BD-R bonus disc on a pressed DVD release – the same case as with Skinny Tiger and Fatty Dragon – but Eureka's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen Blu-ray comes from a new 2K restoration in which the largely daylight exterior-shot film boasts crisp detail and popping wardrobe colors – Hung's old age make-up and gray-streaked hair in HD could charitably be described as "theatrical" – while the few night exteriors and interiors of Laughing Bandits lair reveal some light noise in the shadows. Unlike some other Mei Ah remasters, the bilingual credits appear to be originals (although this may be because they were animated). Lau is credited as "Bruce Lau" in his acting and director's credits here. 
Audio
Audio options include the Cantonese track in original mono LPCM 1.0 and an English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track. We are not aware if the film was originally dubbed into English for export, but the 5.1 track is a modern creation from the early 2000s with a different music track, foley effects, and an anachronistic dub in which Master Rocking’s Peking Opera-trained assassins are rechristened from Wu Li and Tiger to “Well Hung Dick” and “Who Flung Dung” and Laughing Bandit’s four disciples Tien, Ha, Mo, and Dik – whose combined names mean “imbecile” – are renamed as members of The Spice Girls! The English subtitle track has been annotated in a few spots to clarify some Chinese word play. A second track is enabled by default with the English dub for text and a short sequence where the English track reverts to Cantonese. 
Extras
As with the recent Sammo Hung Eureka releases, the film is accompanied by dual commentary tracks. The first is an audio commentary by Asian film expert Frank Djeng (NY Asian Film Festival) and martial artist/actor Robert “Bobby” Samuels in which they comment on the "odd" English title – noting that the Cantonese title translates as "Deadly Sabre, Lethal Spear" – cover the brief history of Gar Bo, contrast the fighting style of Lau with the Peking Opera style of Hung, and provide background on the collaborative effort between Hung, Lau, and Maka along with key contributors including the credited action directors. They also note that Hung's younger character is dubbed by his usual dubber while the older is dubbed by a different performer, and that Maka was already being dubbed with the regional accent with which he would be associated from Aces Go Places onwards, note some Cantonese wordplay, and reveal that the protection money intimidation element common to martial arts films reflects contemporary triad tactics rather than the historical period of the setting and the martial arts literary genre. They also puzzle whether the occurrence of jump cuts during only one fight sequence is a deliberate stylistic choice or evidence of missing frames (which has been an issue with restorations of some Shaw titles but seemingly less prevalent with Golden Harvest titles). The second track is an audio commentary by action cinema experts Mike Leeder & Arne Venema who note that the introduction is a parody of the po-faced openings of older martial arts films, particularly Shaw Brothers productions, and that Drunken Master and Snake in the Eagle's Shadow may have opened the floodgates for such comic approaches but they were reflective of the transitional period in which Golden Harvest was overshadowing the formula-bound Shaw Brothers (noting that Gar Bo's three films were all comedies so they were not just trying out anything different and novel but pursuing a direction).  Ported over from the Hong Kong Legends DVD is "Master and Student" (26:55), an interview with director Lau Kar-wing which shares some footage with the interview featured on Hong Kong Legends' Skinny Tiger and Fatty Dragon (also ported over to Eureka's Blu-ray of that title) in its discussion of the careers of his father Lau Cham () – who had played his own mentor Lam Sai-Wing in the long-running Wong Fei-hung film series that ran through the fifties and sixties – and brother Lau Kar Leung (My Young Auntie) and his own Peking Opera training, following his brother to Shaw and becoming an action director. This time, however, the interview focuses on the Gar Bo days rather than skipping ahead to the later film, discussing his northern training and Hung's northern training, keeping the older and younger characters distinct, not wanting to repeat fight scenes from earlier films, and Maka's presence behind the camera to assure him things were good while he was onscreen. Also ported over is "Natural Born Killer" (22:22), an interview with actor Leung Kar-yan in which he recalls auditioning when filmmaker Cheng Cheh was looking for actors, being picked by personally by Lau Kar Leung, learning the southern style first and Hung's northern style later – the latter he believes is more polished and more suited to film – his "baddie beard" that signified him as a villain on film, and the use of real weapons. The disc also includes the Hong Kong theatrical trailer (4:28) and a home video trailer (1:39).
Packaging
The first 2,000 copies include a limited edition O-Card slipcase featuring new artwork by Darren Wheeling and a collector's booklet featuring new writing by James Oliver, neither of which were provided for review.
Overall
The product of a short-lived partnership between lifelong friends Sammo Hung, Lau Kar-wing, and Karl Maka, Odd Couple anticipates the Hung's subsequent hit Bo Ho productions in their combination of period martial arts and comedy.
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