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My favourite is Spiritual Kung Fu. I've always preferred this to Snake in the Eagle's Shadow.

I found it to be more funnier and original. The tonfa fight sequence where Jackie pits himself against all the staff-equipped monks is an absolute winner.

Second to that, Dragon Fist is a film that I always found to be more better than Drunken Master. More of an intriguing storyline and some really intense action (like that part at the end where Jackie gives that short-haired guy with the moustache some serious comeuppance).

Some interesting pieces of trivia:

Chiang Sheng is one of the 5 ghosts in Spiritual Kung Fu. He'd also made a brief appearance in the John Woo/Jackie Chan movie Hand of Death. The same thing could be said about Bill Yuen Biao too.

The reason why the finale for Fearless Hyena has Jackie taking on three spearmen prior to the main villain, like Snake & Crane Arts of Shaolin, was because Jackie was disappointed about the fact that Snake & Crane didn't do all that well at the box office (due to lack of advertising).

He felt that, with the exception of Half a Loaf of Kung Fu, it was the best Lo Wei-produced film he did and he felt that the spear fight would have been enough to make the movie a hit so he sort of resurrected the idea for his directorial debut (which had Lo Wei sort of acting as co-director ala Sammo Hung's Blade of Fury).

Sammo had always intended to work with Jackie during the Old School era.

He wanted him to play the character of Chan Wing in The Victim (the role that Sammo played) when the film first began production in 1977 (but had to get delayed due to a combination of budgeting issues and Sammo's work at Golden Harvest conflicting - think Bruce Lee delaying Game of Death to work on Enter the Dragon).

The reason why Jackie didn't appear in the movie was because Jackie had been perceived as box office poison, so the producers advised Sammo to play Chan Wing. It was also felt that Sammo had the most star power with him being established in films like Enter the Dragon, Hapkido and The Skyhawk.

I always felt that The Victim was the best Kung Fu movie ever made (at least from that era anyway) and even though it's hard to imagine anyone playing Chan Wing other than Sammo, just imagine how good the fight scenes would have been with Jackie (more acrobatics).

Bill's character in Knockabout was going to be played by Jackie and with Leung's character being played by Bill but due to Lo Wei not willing to lend Jackie out to Golden Harvest, Sammo had to change casting arrangements. Since the casting wasn't going to plan, he thought what a perfect way to have actors play against type hence why Bill and Leung played opposite roles to what they would have played.

The casting for that movie sort of reminded me of how Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter were originally going to play the opposite role to each other for Bill & Ted.

Sammo had envisioned Knockabout as being the perfect vehicle for Jackie and Bill to show their talents, as well as a great way to showcase two heart-throbs.

Wei Pei's character in The Magnificent Butcher was meant to be a special cameo role for Jackie but he was too busy working on The Young Master. Jackie sort of alluded to this in his autobiography about his meeting with Sammo in 1982 where Sammo said "You haven't had the time, huh, Little Brother."

It's funny because on the documentary Jackie Chan: My Story, when they show clips of the three brothers they use Magnificent Butcher to illustrate Bill and Sammo so it would have been even more convenient to have had Jackie play the Wei Pei role.

To be fair on Jackie, he was trying to get The Young Master completed as quickly as possible due to having some conflict with Lo Wei and his Triad influence.

If Jackie was in The Magnificent Butcher as originally planned and had Yuen Siu Tien lived long enough to be in the movie, I think we would have had a movie that would have been superior than SITES & DM combined (especially with both Sammo and Ping working behind the camera).

I think The Young Master could have been a three brothers movie. They could have had Sammo play Wei Pei's role and with all 3 joining in the finale to take on Whang Inn-Sik. Or even have Sammo resurrect his beggar character from Knockabout by having him act as someone who plays off the tension between Jackie and Bill before coming to their aid against Whang.

This leads to another good question...what films could Jackie, Bill and Sammo have done together?

I know Millionaire's Express was meant to have Jackie in it (Jackie was committed to Armour of God). I'm not sure which character but I think if we had Jackie play Kenny Bee's role as the bounty hunter there could have been opportunities for fight scenes particularly if there was a really good three way fight scene where Jackie and Bill try to catch Sammo whilst trying to claim ownership of him.

This would have made for a terrific action sequence (or series of fight scenes) and a great plot dynamic where each one is trying to outwit the other so with Jackie and Bill fighting each other to an extent but teaming up with each other to take on Sammo. Then this would allow for some really good comic moments where they try to con each other just when they think they've cornered Sammo.

On a characteristic level, it would have been good to have Jackie play more of a cockier character with a more rugged image (kind of similar to the character he played in Armour Of God but with a more edgy image). With the bounty hunter character being someone who proves to have an interest in the treasure map, it could have allowed for a better plot development where he's having to choose between what's more important - Sammo or the treasure.

Then for the finale, we would had Jackie, Sammo and Bill take on Hwang Jang Lee as opposed to just Sammo and Bill.

We could have something even better than Wheels On Meals and Dragons Forever.

I wonder what the story for Project A 2 would have been like had Sammo and Bill been in the movie.

With the nature of Twin Dragons being this star-studded movie, it would have been cool to have had Sammo and Bill play two car mechanics who help out the two Jackies. Again, something that not only would help raise the bar for the film's action but also allow for some great comic potential as they have to figure out that there's two Jackies and only one of whom can fight.

Don't Give A Damn could have had Bill in Takeshi Kaneshiro's role as the young eager police inspector and with Jackie in Bill's role as the equally eager customs officer. As it turns out, the film was actually set to be a reunion for the three brothers but Jackie had to pull out to work on Rumble In The Bronx.

Similar to the trivia listed above, Sammo had wanted Bill to make an appearance in Mr. Nice Guy but the latter was too busy being in Corey Yuen's remake of Chang Cheh's Boxer From Shantung, Hero.

The Young Master has a very endearing quality about it. What I appreciate about the film is the way Jackie wanted to prove that a martial arts film didn't have to contain training sequences, revenge and have really violent scenes in order to be immensely entertaining.

Another thing that I appreciated about it was the sheer contrast in styles that Jackie applied for the film. On one hand, Jackie does a tremendously convincing job in exploring the range of the Hapkido style in the finale but on the other, Jackie has to go beyond traditional technique to succeed in winning against Whang.

Alongside Sammo, Jackie (who I think is second best to Sammo in terms of action directing) is someone who is the true successor to Bruce Lee in terms of fight choreography. Bruce was always into emotion and self expression, as epitomized in his vision for Game of Death, so Jackie took that philosophy further by proving that those two characteristic traits are sometimes more important than tradition and pure skill.

I'd go so far to say that The Young Master contains Jackie's best performance from that period of Hong Kong filmmaking. Whether it be ballistic rage, animated humour or tear-jerking poignancy, Jackie seems to show more comfortability in conveying a wide facet of emotions in this film.

Due to him having full directorial control, it's his first true movie as director. In fact, I've always come to see this as his directorial debut (maybe subconsciously because it was his first film for Golden Harvest) and come to perceive Fearless Hyena as a film where he had a hand in the directing if not a full-fledged directorial effort (due to Lo having some input and influence of some kind).

It's just a shame that there was no real uncut/ultimate version of the film since I feel that the consistency of the film's story would have been more fluid had it retained the scenes that were exclusive to the Taiwanese and international prints.