Master With Cracked Fingers (1971, 1979, HK; 1981, USA)

Starring: Jackie Chan, Simon Yuen, Dean Shek, Kwan Young Moon. Directed by: Mu Chu.

This movie is a movie that was spliced together from three different sources in 1979 or so after Jackie Chan made it big in Asia. First and foremost, a little-known movie Jackie made as a teenager in 1971 called "Little Tiger of Canton" was used for the majority of the movie. A Jackie Chan double was used for some of the action scenes (particularly in the blindfolded fighting scenes) and scenes from some of Jackie and Simon Yuen's movies such as "Drunken Master" were interspersed in mix. This spliced-together movie was then released as an entirely different Jackie Chan film altogether.

In 1981, Dick Randall in the US came across this movie, dubbed it into English, and released it as "Master With Cracked Fingers".

In "Master...", Jackie Chan plays himself as a young boy living with his foster dad and sister in a Chinese village in the days of old. He wants to learn kung-fu, but his dad doesn't want him to fight and won't enroll him at the local kung fu school. An old beggar (Yuen) who is simply called "The Man Who Isn't There" sees the young boy and decides to teach him, putting him through very rigorous training for about 10 years.

Fast forward 10 years and Jackie is working at a local restaurant for a local man. He gets into fights with a group of local extortionists who are pressuring the restaurant owner to pay rent he can't afford and their boss (Kwan) obviously doesn't like it. They decide to retaliate against Jackie and retaliate hard. Can Jackie fight back?

This is a pretty good early Jackie Chan movie and naturally, the kung fu is very decent and despite the fact that this is a spliced movie, the storyline is very well seamed together. If you want to see him as a teenager, you definitely won't want to miss this! It's also part of a long collaboration of movies Jackie would have with Yuen Siu Tien (Simon Yuen) before he died in 1979 and the two perform very well together as sifu (master) and student.

Also directed by: Jackie Chan (as Chan Yuan Lung), Se Fu Yai

Also known as: 廣東小老虎/Guang dong xiao lao hu (original Mandarin title-HK), 广东小老虎 (Simplified characters), Little Tiger of Canton (original 1971 English title-HK), Snake Fist Fighter (alternate US title), Snake Fist Ninja (alternate US VHS title), Ten Fingers of Death (alternate US DVD title), Stranger in Hong Kong (unknown), 'The Master' mit den gebrochenen Händen (West Germany), La furia de Jackie (Spain), and others.