Jackie and Frankie Chan

Frankie Chan while filming Chinese Zodiac

Because Jackie has been working quite closely with Frankie Chan recently and because I came across this information which quite surprised me I thought I would share it with you and learn more about Frankie and Jackie's long association going right back to the early days.

All in all, Frankie Chan and Jackie Chan's origins deal, Frankie Chan's first starring work, "Shuāng Bǎo Chuǎng Bā Guān" was produced by Golden Harvest, so they are also considered to be out of the same company. His second film, was directed by Sammo Hung. Since his performance in “bàijiā zǐ”, once again with Sammo Hung, Frankie and Jackie Chan are also considered to have a friendship. From "Dragon Master" onwards Frankie Chan received many invitations to work with Jackie Chan as executive director, action director and co-director in films such as: "Operation Condor," "Drunken Master 2", "Thunderbolt " , " Gorgeous " , "Rush Hour" and so on.

SOURCE: ENT.QQ.COM

FRANKIE CHAN IMDB

From IMDB we can see that Frankie was the composer on movies such as "Master with Cracked Fingers" (1971) and "Spiritual Kungfu" (1978) . He was second unit director on "Operation Condor" (1991) and was the stunt co-ordinator for "Thunderbolt" (1995). Clearly Jackie and Frankie have known each other and worked together for a long time.

With this history I have high hopes for their association on Armour of God 3 - Chinese Zodiac.

Zorbs, Treetop Rafts and Jackie Chan

1990 :
In contradiction with my forecasts, the Zorb was still of interest! Jackie Chan contacted me for his film ’Operation Condor’, which was released the following year. I started production of a new Zorb and took the job of stuntman for spectacular shooting in the Philippines.

SOURCE: ZORB.IN

And if you have seen 'Who Am I' this image of the treetop raft will be familiar:

It was invented by the same French architect/inventor as the Zorb - Gilles Ebersolt and was featured in a National Geographic article about research in the Amazon Forest - preserved in a PDF HERE (Right click to save)

Why do Chinese Vampires hop?

 

Who remembers Jackie pretending to be a vampire in Armour of God 2: Operation Condor? I watched it again recently and wondered for the umpteenth time why Chinese Vampires hop? And I finally got off my proverbial and found out. So here are the results of my research.

Chinese Vampires hop either because their joints are stiff and immobilised because the body is dead or because they feed off yin energy which only travels in straight lines thus they have to hop and can only turn at right angles.

For an excellent article on Chinese Vampires and Taoism in Hong Kong Cinema take a look here.