Prodigal Son

Leung Chang (Yuen Biao) is a spoiled son who thinks he is the baddest kung fu master around--until he is pounded in a fight with an effeminate Wing Chun master (Lam Ching-Ying) who plays a girl in a traveling Peking Opera troupe. Realizing that his father has been paying his opponents to lose, Leung begs to become the Wing Chun master's student. The master, however, doesn't agree to teach Leung until another spoiled son appears--a Manchu noble seeking to test his fighting skills. THE PRODIGAL SON is one of the earliest films with Yuen Biao in a lead role. The film helped Yuen, one of the most talented acrobats of his generation, attain a stardom nearly equal to that of his "brothers," Jackie Chan and director Sammo Hung. For Hung, THE PRODIGAL SON is his second film to depict the Wing Chun fighting system (the first was WARRIORS TWO); both films are considered classics in Wing Chun cinema. Hung appears in THE PRODIGAL SON as a portly master of long-form Wing Chun; in comic asides, Hung also demonstrates two new martial arts forms, calligraphy kung fu and toiletry kung fu.