Dirty Ho

Dirty Ho
The Hong Kong movie poster.
Directed by	Lau Kar-leung
Produced by	Mona Fong Run Run Shaw
Written by	Ni Kuang
Starring	Gordon Liu Wong Yue Wang Lung Wei
Music by	Eddie Wang
Cinematography	Arthur Wong
Edited by	Chiang Hsing-lung Yen Hae Li
Distributed by	Shaw Brothers
Release date	August 4, 1979
Running time	97 minutes
Country	Hong Kong
Language	Mandarin

Dirty Ho (爛頭何 Lan tou He) is a 1979 Hong Kong martial arts-comedy film directed by Lau Kar-leung and starring Gordon Liu and Wong Yue.

Master Wang is actually the 11th prince of Manchuria in disguise. Posing as a sophisticated jewellery dealer and connoisseur of fine art and wine, the prince is trying to determine which of the other 14 heirs to the throne is trying to assassinate him. A jewel thief, Dirty Ho (Wong Yue) runs afoul of the prince, who uses Wong Yue to help him flush out his enemies.

Wang is a martial arts expert, but in order to conceal his identity he systematically hides his skills, even as he deploys them.

In the opening sequence of the film proper (after a title sequence which already features two highly abstract fight sequences by the principals) Wang encounters a jewel thief named Dirty Ho at a brothel. They come into conflict by vying with one another for the attentions of the courtesans. Dirty Ho, who is not too bright, can't figure out why his efforts to fight with the seemingly cowardly, effete Wang inevitably result in clumsy disaster. It is Wang, of course, who skillfully deflects Ho into tripping over chairs and so forth.

In a later confrontation with Ho, Wang pretends that a female musician is his "bodyguard", invisibly manipulating the bewildered woman's arms, legs and musical instrument in order to make her fight with Ho and eventually to graze him in the forehead with a poisoned blade.

It is, however, all part of Wang's scheme: he is secretly protecting Ho from the police, and is training the bumbling Ho as his disciple and bodyguard. Ho eventually seeks out Wang in order to discover the antidote for the poison, which Wang administers to him in return for Ho's becoming his disciple.

Ho is initially puzzled at this since he has not detected any kung fu prowess in his master at all, and he remains initially a clueless bystander during two attempts on Wang's life: first, an attack at a wine-tasting, and then a visit to an antique-dealer's shop. Wang manages to defend himself admirably while maintaining the fiction that he is simply having a friendly aesthetic conversation with his opponents. Only at the end of the antique-shop attack does Ho figure out what's going on and intervene, but Wang receives a wound in the leg through a stratagem of the antiques dealer.