Laughing Times International Artwork Poster

Before he made his name as the master of high octane Hong Kong gunplay actioners, director John Woo was known as The Young King of Comedy. In 1980, he channeled the master when he teamed with comic star Dean Shek to make  the ultimate Chinese homage to Charlie Chaplin, ‘Laughing Times’. Woo recreated the persona of Chaplin’s Little Tramp SO perfectly that Cinema City received a legal challenge from the actor/director’s estate. Charlie Chaplin himself had died three years before the film was made. The movie was subsequently withdrawn from distribution, and has been little seen since.

The film borrows liberally from Chaplin’s 1921 classic, ‘The Kid’, which had also inspired a 1950 film of the same name, starring a very young Bruce Lee. ‘Laughing Times’ even features some silent comedy style action, choreographed by an uncredited Sammo Hung. Hong Kong comedian Richard Ng, who starred in Woo’s earlier ‘The Pilferer’s Progress’, had started his career working with the real Charlie Chaplin on ‘The Countess from Hong Kong’.

Reel East celebrates this lost comic classic from John Woo’s canon with this stunning large format international poster: