The Odd Couple is an odd movie, one half is arguably the greatest display of weapons fighting captured on screen, and the other an attrition of tiresome comedy. Eureka beautifully presents the 1970 film on Blu-ray for the first time, so you can decide which one wins out.
Sammo Hung and director, Lau Kar-wing, play the King of Sabres and King of Spears – two elderly, bickering rivals who meet every year to test their skills. Every year it’s a draw, so they decide to train disciples, played by the younger Sammo and Lau. It’s a quirky set-up with our stars playing old and young, whilst the action on display is exemplary – Sammo’s movement with the spear and sword are astonishing to watch, and the end duel featuring the unarmed disciples taking on villain Bryan Leung (famously known as Beardy) contains two bone-crunching kicks that will have you reaching for the rewind button. You just have to get through some stomach-churning scenes, typified by Sammo cracking eight eggs into the mouth of comedy stalwart, Dean Shek, and then proceeding to force him to regurgitate them onto a table. Yuck!
The disc contains the usual sets of audio commentary – Frank Djeng and Bobby Samuel provide an overview of the film while Mike Leeder and Arne Venema provide more hilarious stories about the Hong Kong film industry. We get an archival interview with Lau Kar-wing, in which he details the decisions surrounding the film (large parts of the interview can already be found on the Skinny Tiger and Fatty Dragon disc). Finally, Beardy himself provides an insightful interview about how demanding the film was and confirms how powerful those kicks really were. Like Mr Leung, if you can handle the hard times, the rewards are great.
