On the 25th of January 2002, Kung Pow: Enter the Fist was released, man it was indeed a good day! So allow me to tell you all a little bit about it, should you have not seen it yet. Kung Pow: Enter the Fist follows the story of the Chosen one, a born martial arts expert and his quest to avenge the deaths of his parents at the hands of kung-fu legend Master Pain, soon to be known as Betty. The Chosen one drifts from town to town in search of his parent's murderers, in one town he meets a sifu by the name of Master Tang, the Chosen one asks for the assistance of Master Tang to help him improve his already impressive Martial Arts skills, so he is ready to take on whatever it may be that he could be up against. Tang is at first a litte hesitant to help, right up until the Chosen one shows him his mark, which is his sentient tongue, aptly named toungey..Throughout the film the Chosen one comes up against an assortment of characters, one of which you really might not believe, is a cow, trained in the Martial Arts. Sooooooo, if that has not peaked any form of interest, you might be visiting the wrong page. Kung Pow, written, directed, produced and starring Steve Oedekerk really is quite the unique film (Martial Arts cows and french aliens not included) like seriously, the film is essentially a film within a film, obviously intended as a spoof to the Martial Arts film from the 70s, it is very cleverly put together as it consists mainly of footage from the 1976 Kung Fu film, Tiger & Crane Fists (AKA Savage Killers) but completely re-dubbed and Oedekerk super imposed himself onto the original footage, mixed with a bit of newly filmed material. To parody how bad the dubbing used to be within the old Kung Fu films, Oedekerk re-dubbed all of the original actors dialogue himself, creating various different voices for all of the separate characters, only one other persons voice can be heard within the movie and it is that of the character "Whoa" voiced by actress Jennifer Tung. During the recording of the Chosen one and Whoa's scenes, actors Oedekerk and Tung would speak complete nonsense and dialogue that made absolutely no sense at all, then in post production these lines got dubbed and made for the effect of extremely bad dubs, as seen in the movies of the day. I guess somethings you do just need to see to fully believe and Kung Pow is one of them. On first release the film did not do quite so well and was disregarded, however it has gone on to become something of a hit in circles and a long awaited follow up has been rumoured to be in the works for a number of years now, so far nothing! I guess we shall just have to stick watching the trailer created for a sequel that appears after the first one entitled Kung Pow 2: Tongue of Fury, now that would be rad! One thing though that is a dead certainty, is that Kung Pow: Enter the Fist is well and truly rad!! -Otto
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