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  The cyclone kick from Dragons Forever (1988 AKA Cyclone Z)

I hope you know which kick I'm referring to. It's the spectacular jumping spinning left kick that comes right at the end of the final battle of Dragons Forever. (pic on right)
A lot people as well as books and magazines say that Yuen Biao doubled Jackie Chan for this kick. Well I always knew that this was not Jackie Chan, but then, could it be Yuen Biao?, because it doesn't look exactly like Yuen Biao to me either. Then if not Biao, who could it be? Let's take a look.

1. The hair style is not like that of Biao's.
2. The body size of this person is slightly larger than Biao's.
3. If it had been Chan or Biao, it is more likely that they would have used their right leg to do this hard-to-perform kick. (which indicates that this person who is doubling could may well be left-handed.)
4. To back up #3, this person's left shoulder is more muscular than his right. This is seen clearly when he lands on the ground hands first.
5. Again to confirm that this person is left-handed. Look at his left hand while he takes the kick. He makes a particular shape with his left hand, his index finger slightly sticking out and a little loose than the other fingers. (see the circled zoom-in image inside the picture)The same hand shape can be seen in a shot that comes a few minutes before this one, where the supposedly Chan runs towards Benny and shoots out a jumping left outward cresent kick. This kick again looks doubled since the body size differ from Chan's. And this doubling guy has the same distinctive hand shape while performing this outward kick, his index finger loose. Considering the fact that the double person, who has a habit of having his fingers in a distinctive form, always kicks out a left kick, he is highly likely to be a left-handed person.
6. How about the form of the kick? If it had been Biao, I would imagine that he would have had his inner circulating arm more widely spread out to gain more height in the jump. Also, his hand will be open, not tightly closed. This is quite obvious when you compare it with the two whirlwind kicks he performed in "Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars" and "Righting Wrongs."

     
      Two from Righting Wrongs.                         From Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars.

The easiest thing is to just simply find out who this left-handed guy could be, if he's not Biao.
Well a friend of mine, MEGUMI, told me that she once read a magazine article saying that this cyclone kick was doubled by Chin Kar-Lok. She has also confirmed that Chin Kar-Lok is actually left-handed. And if you look at the picture again as Chin Kar-Lok in mind, well, doesn't this person very much resemble Kar-Lok? His body shape, size, hair style, and even the length of his neck! (Yes, Kar-Lok does have a fairly long and rather thin neck. Check out First Mission)

Thus, I strongly suspect that this was not Yuen Biao but Chin Kar-Lok.
(Addition 2001.03.15 - Finally confirmed that the person is Kar-Lok.)

So, now we get another question, "Why didn't Chan do it himself?"
Perhaps Kar-Lok was simply better at this type of kick, or maybe Chan had a bad back and couldn't get the twist in this kick right, or even moreso, Chan and Biao were both having a hard schedule and couldn't perform it. But whilest there are numerous speculations, I would like to consider the strange flow this whole scene has. If you watch the movie again, you will notice that the editing is obviously pretty strange. The scene quickly jumps from one another - Chan fighting Benny, then a close-up shot of an up-rising elbow, followed by this magnificent cyclone kick. It just doesn't connect correctly.
With all this in mind, I imagine that this cyclone kick was never actually choreographed in the first place when Chan and Benny were filming the fight scene. In the first plan, the fight was to end with Jackie's kick which sends Benny into the glass. But after they filmed it, Sammo being a perfectionist, saw lack of a highlight moment in this fight, thus got Kar-lok to add up a bit of spice to the ending, shooting this great cyclone kick using Kar-lok as the performer.

Just my speculation. What do you think?

( To "MEGUMI-sama" and "Omomo-sama": Special Thanks for providing the information!! )

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