Chan So/Beggar Su Chan (Gordon Liu Chia-Hui) has no interest in being part of the family winery. Getting drunk, carousing with friends and getting into the occasion row is enough or him. His half brother Jiabao (Wong Yu) is no better, preferring spending the family money to helping run the winery.Chan So, in his stepmother's (Leung San) mind, stands between her and control of the family winery and its funds. She and her brother (Lam Fai-Wong) are not satisfied with skimming the winery profits. They want it all and nothing is beneath them to accomplish it. Chan So and Jiabao are sent to a Jesuit school to learn English after a language misunderstanding leads to a brawl at an event held by their father. A fight during a soccer match leads to Chan So leaving the school and returning to his studies with Liaoshi, Liang Hang (Jason Pia Paio). A dinner following an incident with wine hidden in a teapot leads to Chan So learning his bookish Liaoshi knows a special form of Kung Fu. A skill Hang only reveals when intoxicated. Chan So decides he must learn Kung Fu from Hang and visits often with wine in hand. Hang figures out what Chan So is doing and decides to teach the skills while sober.Chan So develops a relationship with Ding Ding (Wong Man-Ying), a Jesuit school student who is having issues studying Chinese poetry. She's the daughter of the local police captain, Iron Tooth (Ku Feng), who has an altercation with Chan So and Jiabao are the local brothel. A place Iron Tooth ha promised his wife, he does not frequent.Chan So's stepmother decides it's time to eliminate him and has her brother hire someone to do the job. Wu Gong/Centipede (Johnny Wang Lung-Wei) has no problem accepting the job, so long as they agree to his price terms. Wu Gong has decided he want to rob the local bank and the hit is simply getting his foot in the door.Wu Gong exhibits true OCD behavior. He wears white and freaks when it gets dirty. Think MONK from the TV series. It is that bad with Gong. Chan So and Jiabao interrupt the robbery and become targets for Wu Gong. Chan So's stepmother gets Wu Gong to leave Jiabao alone, for an increase in his fee. It will come back to haunt her when Wu Gong mistake Jiabao for Chan So. Ding Ding is also killed to keep the mistake from getting out. Chan So's stepmother blames him for Jiabao's death.Chan so returns home to find the entire staff and his father have been killed. His Step Uncle reveals Wu Gong and his gang killed everyone before drawing his last breath.The finale fight is incredible to watch. It isn't the usual walk in circles, talk a bit about life and why one of them needs killed fight. This is a no holds barred, bloody, no words be said fight. It is intense and savage. There are some continuity issues while they're in the vat (they are swimming one moment an standing straight up the next in the same vat). Otherwise, this a supreme battle to observe.This is marketed as a comedy. It definitely has comical moments. The last twenty minutes are anything but comical. I highly recommend this movie not so much for the plot, which is the usual comedy, but for this fight.

THE YOUNG VAGABOND is one of the very last period kung fu films put out by the Shaw Brothers studio before it closed. Despite the slight drop in quality evident in a slightly lower budget than before and fight scenes which feel a little choppier than previously, this is still surprisingly good material for a studio which was evidently on its last legs, although not that you'd know from watching this.The tale is a knockabout comedy in the old Sammo or Jackie mould. Gordon Liu and Wong Yue play two schoolboys who get up to all kinds of hijinks when they enrol at a local English school. The comedy comes from the girl-chasing and the bust-ups with various rivals and a lot of it feels a bit dated, although a big football match around the halfway mark is a highlight here. The 'serious' story is more interesting and features a vengeful villain searching for one of his men who has gone into hiding as a teacher. The tale is linked to the famous tigers of Kwangtung and at a couple of points there are a team of men fighting together as a human centipede which is outlandish and works well.As is usual for the genre, comedy gives way to eventual tragedy, with one of the darkest last twenty minutes I can remember seeing in a Shaw Brothers film. The final fight is quite excellent because it mixes character comedy (the bad guy hates getting his clothes dirty) with great fight action. Although Liu and Yue were a little old to play schoolboys there's very little to dislike about this solid Shaw outing.

Presently listed as 1982, this film is from 1985Wong Yu and Liu Chia Liang play step brothers, Jiabao and Chan, who are in school together. Their father has a thriving wine business where Chan liberally partakes of the wares. The father decides to send the men to the Jesuit school so they can learn English. This leads to some trouble and Chan quits the school to protect his brother from unjust punishment. Chan returns to the traditional Chinese school but brings wine in a teapot to relieve the boredom. The teacher, played by Jason Pai Piao, discovers the wine but instead of getting mad, invites Chan to his house. There the teacher gets drunk and teaches kung fu to Chan who is happy to learn. Meanwhile their father's second wife and her crooked brother conspire to take over her husband's winery by killing Chan and influencing the lazy Jiabao. To enable the plan they ask for help from a notorious criminal, The Centipede, played by Wang Lung Wei. (No relation to the Five Deadly Venoms)Much like that same year's Crazy Shaolin Disciples the first half of the film focuses on student antics, including a silly soccer game where the brothers figure out how to cheat without touching the ball with their hands. Once the film introduces the drunk kung fu teacher and the Centipede we enter traditional kung fu film territory and the film starts to get better. Many Shaw regulars are here and are quite good in their roles. Jason Pai Piao and Lui Chia Hui and both great. The fighting while not up to Tang Chia or Liu Chia Liang's standards is good overall with some unfortunate choppy action and rough editing marring the flow. The vagabond of the title refers to a classical Chinese character but really has no relation to anything in this film except that Chan gets dirty when he's drunk. Lui Chia Hui and Wong Yu were getting too old to play schoolboys at this point as well.Entertaining but not great.