Recommend Martial Arts Movies

More modern:
Drunken Master II w/ Jackie Chan

Mad Monkey Kung Fu
Master Killer (AKA 36 Chambers of Shaolin)
Ninja Vs. Shaolin
Dirty Ho (NOT WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE!)
Legendary Weapons of Kung Fu

Also be sure to check out his protoge Sammo Hung's (NOT WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE!) Golden Harvest era comedies. Sammo is the fat dude that was in the dumb TV show 'Martial Law' and sidekicked for Jackie Chan a lot - as well as directing many of Jackie's movies. He's probably my fave ma movie star period, 'cause he looks like a chinese santa claus but moves with the nimbleness of a spider monkey and the force of a prison riot. Anyway, some of his best material, all of these with Yuen Biao*:

The Prodigal Son
The Victim
Knockabout
Eastern Condors
Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind

Also, although it doesn't have Yuen Biao in it, Pedicab Driver is great, and has what is probably Sammo's greatest fight scene ever - against Liu Chia Liang!

That should get you started.

* Yuen Biao is a smaller, nimbler yet guy who is a star in his own right. Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao and Sammo Hung made many movies together, all recommended, and attended the Peking Opera School together. Taken together, along with four other guys who are mostly character actors they were known as the Seven Little Fortunes.

ONG BAK!

Followup coming soon!

TOM YUM GOONG!

Promises to be the best violent movie ever made about noodle soup!

http://www.tomyumgoongmovie.com/

TRAILER ON SITE!

for the bean curd scene alone

plus:
Arhats In Fury
Tigers of Shaolin
Dragon Princess
Duel to the Death

all i ever seem to watch for kung-fu these days is a sonny chiba ten pack a few years back.

Fong Sai Yuk 1 & 2
The Swordsman 2
Fist of Legend
Tai Chi Master
New Legend of Shaolin
Once Upon At Time In China 1 & 2 & 3
Bodyguard From Beijing
The Black Mask

There a couple of earlier ones which are good, too, but I can't remember the titles off the top of my head.

Jackie Chan must sees:

Police Story
Drunken Master 1 & 2
Project A 1 & 2
Armour of God 1 & 2

Non-Jet, non-Jackie classiques:

Eastern Condors
Iron Monkey

Non-Jet, non-Jackie stuff, not very martial art-y but super worthwhile:

The Blade
Ashes of Time
Time and Tide
Full Contact
Heroic Trio
Naked Killer
Rikki O
Black Cat
Zu: Warriors From The Magic Mountain
Bride With White Hair

I will come back with some 70's/early 80's stuff later.

also, for american work, you could always go for Rapid Fire(Brandon Lee doing Wing Chun). It has Powers Boothe as a crusty policeman!

any Stephen Chow flicks.

Bruce Li's Deadly Strike - can only find this on vhs I think and the pan and scan is terrible, but I love it. kind of a chinese dirty dozen with cool villians starring Bruce Li(not in fake-Bruce mode though, he kicks ass here)

Shaolin vs. Lama(not Shaolin against Lama! which is terrible)

Master of the Flying Guillotine(as opposed to the inferior but still enjoyable Fatal Flying Guillotine) - the DVD edition comes with commentary, which is rare.

any of the films now marketed under "Wu Tang Collection" (Iron Man,
Ninja Checkmate, Invicible Armour, et al.). sometimes come with Wu videos!

I'll spare you some others I like, I have a high tolerance for this stuff so I might have a skewed vision of what's "good" at this point.

"Dragons Forever" and "Wheels on Meals" - both starring Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao, and Sammo Hung, and each climaxing with a punch out between Jackie Chan and real life kickboxing champ Benny 'The Jet' Urquidez. I can never decide which of them is my favorite kungfu fight onscreen.

ha, i saw this recently. its a love story about a boy & his elephant! theres one amazing scene where he rips through a vice den, i dont think its in one take but it fells like it is & goes on for about 10 minutes, he wastes about 100 people

One-Armed Swordsman and Return Of The One-Armed Swordsman (the third can be ignored, but might be worth a watch for completists' sake)

Magnificent Butcher - classic Yuen Woo Ping flick starring Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao. Amazing fight choreography and funny as hell.

(Actually, I think Kung Fu is more interesting to watch.)

"They've just never felt the sting of Japanese fists!"

Pluck the Needle from the Bottom of the Sea!

Jade Lady Works the Loom's Shuttle!

Snake Creeping on the Ground!

(fwiw, these really are some faves of mine)

Anyway, for sheer spectacle - if not coherence or depth - I gotta recommend it.

If it's true that after the balletic fighting and heroic, tragic gore the main charm of these things is the extravagantly terrible dubbing, this might be an alltime winner.

Also, do not see "No Blood, No Tears."

I watched "Dynamite Warrior" last night, do not repeat my mistake. It tries to combine "Ong Bak" and "Kungfu Hustle" but fails to replicate any of the virtues of either, while also failing to bring in any original virtues of its own. The choreography sucks, the fx are weak, the jokes are dull, and the plot is too convoluted to follow or care about. There are several germs of good ideas in here, but none are developed in an interesting way at all.

I heard something about Tony Jaa being cast as a villain in the next Bond picture, though. That would be something worth seeing.

am i the only one who doesn't like Ong Bak much? i think its admirable that he avoided wire fu but too much of the action was one-sided and the story was much much dumber than usual. i liked some of the visuals but there's much better.

my choices:

king boxer (aka five fingers of death)
tai chi master
The Big Boss
Fists of Fury
Game of Death (despite the horrible crap they did w/ the Lee standins)
The 36th Chamber of Shaolin/Return to the 36th Chamber
five deadly venoms
enter the dragon
crouching tiger, hidden dragon
fearless
hero
bloodsport

legend of the wolf!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WnaQgQwGa4

i would advise against watching the entire movie though, its ~2/3rds filler, 1/3rd non-stop beat-em-up showdown. the donnie yen / wilson yip collabs are v nice too imo.

yay, my Fist of the White Lotus dvd arrived.

the Octagon is on Showtime right now

the out-loud echoing whispered thoughts of Chuck are delicious

NINJA Ninja ninja

hard to decide what recreational drug would be the best one on which to watch this movie - they'd all have their advantages

Just watched:

Crippled Avengers--I know the alternate title is "Return of the Five Deadly Venoms", but I for the life of me can't tell why, as it doesn't seem to have any noticeable link to that movie that I could see. I was enjoying what I saw of it then got sleepy and had to turn it off -- I hate when that happens!

Heroes of the East--A lot of fun. It felt more like a documentary on the differences/similtarities between Japanese/Chinese martial arts, but it was still a lot of fun.

Fist of the White Lotus--So incredibly BORING. Bought it as it had the famous Pai Mei character, AND, Gordon Liu, but after a fantastic opening this went nowhere fast. I mean it had good martial arts but the training sequences were meh.

The Mystery of Chessboxing--I bought it because of the Wu connection. And I didn't like it. The storyline wasn't terribly interesting and they threw the Ghostface Killer in your face with no real explanation within seconds of the movie's opening, which was quite confusing.

The Kid with the Golden Arm--Loved this. Not only did it have great fighting sequences, I enjoyed the storyline, the unique concept of the four different styles. Although I clearly got a bootleg and the entire movie is available with subtitles on Youtube (in much higher quality than what I got).

Also arrived/arriving in the mail:

Bloodsport (saw this when I was 8 -- regardless of whether Dux is a liar or not, can't wait to see this again)
Disciples of the Master Killer (aka Disciples of the 36th Chamber)
8-Diagram Pole Fighter

Disciples of the Master Killer: Clearly the worst in the series, and not a very good film at all. Gordon Liu barely appears until the second half, and the story is a pointless waste. An insubordinate kid who is no better at the end than he was at the beginning?

The last 20 minutes are fairly exciting, but I was so exhausted from boredom from the first 70 minutes that it didn't matter. Oh well.

Five Element Ninjas is highly recommended by me. holy fuck.

oh and finally got around to seeing Police Story with Jackie Chan. by far the most entertaining thing of his I've seen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Mkl9rtttog
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gTkUcXGF_Q

"Duel of the Iron Fist" or the duel now playing in widescreen on youtube. David Chiang is fucking cutting motherfuckers.

This is a bad video copy of the trailer, go halfway through to the knife fights.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moRBZVZKn3U

this is part two of just some fighting here. intrigue and violence etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRwgb0fyWDI&feature=related

Um can I just say The flag of Iron is badass?

The end fight has some jawdropping choreography.

I'll rep for Ip Man too.

Trailer for Tsui Hark's latest: http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/detectivedee/

looks bonkers!

CROUCHING TIGER MEETS SHERLOCK HOMES!

Also I think there is a sequence where a deer gets flying kicked.

can anybody recommend some Shaw Brothers movies not previously named itt. there's so many of them...

not sure if it is your cup of tea but i enjoyed a bunch of chu yuan's wuxia stuff, e.g. the sentimental swordsman, which stars di long as alcoholic guy who wanders the country and is chased around by people trying to do away with him for some mysterious reason

also some of the later ones have some really entertainingly bizarre sequences-- bloody parrot, portrait in crystal, demon of the lute

also remember soul of the sword being good...one of those ones that presents an ambivalent take on the whole chasing glories in the martial world thing

Can anyone ID this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc99HcPgKmk

duel to the death.

I wonder if The Raid series and Merantau are going to have any influence on the industry? I'd prefer there was some stylistic variety if there was a renaissance.

I had a phase that lasted maybe a year but I haven't returned much to the genre...

Zu Warriors From The Magic Mountain
Knockout
Spooky Encounters (the sequel has some great moments too)
Boxers Omen
Iceman Cometh (hilarious and underrated)
Drunken Master 2 (for fight scenes only)
Snake In The Eagles Shadow
Buddha's Palm (Shaw version)
Chinese Ghost Story 1-2-3
Merantau
The Raid
Rumble In The Bronx
Master Of The Flying Guillotine

I wouldn't recommend it as a whole but Ip Man has some great fights. But even most of my recommended films have significant flaws.

Raid 2 was badass too

raid 2 had soooo much 'crime movie' stuff that I really did not find very compelling. but whenever the action started up, man, all was forgiven.

pretty strange contrast since raid 1 is notable for having next to no plot at all. but the director has said the script for raid 2 predated the first one. it's an awkward movie but I basically ended up loving it anyway since it still delivered 100% on what I was watching it for (extremely violent martial arts action)

yeah watching it go linear was strange at first but it worked IMO.

the sheer scope of the action in the 1st was tough to beat though.

Not seen it yet.

Kindle spell correct must have changed Knockabout to knockout in my previous post.

It seems like virtually every semi famous HK martial arts film is on YouTube. Maybe that's why recent martial arts DVD selections have been so poor. A lot of films are getting rare and expensive so I'm unlikely to get back into these films in a big way unless I get a streaming service with a large selection.
Though the quality of some DVDs are horrendous. I bought Green Snake last year and made sure to avoid one edition that was said to be missing a huge chunk of the film, seemingly not from editing or censorship but just a major fuckup. But the other available version had a very small screen size and poor quality picture. I didn't like it that much but I guess it wasn't really a martial arts film.

I also have to say that the fandom for martial arts films seems to have seriously dwindled, there should be tv channels devoted to them.

rented a johnnie to dvd from netflix the other weekend (the mission) and the quality was totally laughable. there was text burned into the print that was visible the whole time! and the aspect ratio was totally weird. but I just rolled with it, and tbh, the shoddiness kinda made me nostalgic for when I initially got into hk films and was getting any weird bootleg I could get my hands on.

Can't recall the name of the film but there was a DVD of a 70s film I have with English subtitles, English dubbing and some East Asian subtitles (don't know which language) and it was hilarious how different the English dubbing and subtitles were. Sometimes it was like translations of two different films.

Zu Warriors From The Magic Mountain

I went on a big wuxia kick last year and this was my favourite of the bunch. Such a great mix of schlock and epic.

Yes, I wish there was more like it. I bought quite a few films in search of something similar. There was a film called Maidens Of The Heavenly Mountains that I couldn't make head nor tail of and it wasn't that exciting, but quite pretty.
I'd strongly recommend Buddha's Palm (make sure you get the Shaw film and not the modern tv series), it is kinda similar in style and has a funny character who shouts his own name whenever he enters a scene.

I wouldn't know where to start if I got back into these films. I find a lot of the older ones a bit of a slog (sounds like blasphemy but I found some Bruce Lee films quite boring), I'm not terribly fond of the adventure style films that Jackie Chan often did and a lot of newer films are blandly slick. I guess I should probably go for the King Hu, Tsui Hark and Jackie Chan classics I haven't seen. I'm very fond of Yuen Biao and Sammo Hung so maybe getting more of their highlights would be the best way.

Imdb is really good for going to each martial artist's forums and usually there is a thread for ranking the best films for that actor. Maybe I should look over this thread again.

Just came back from Raid 2 and it probably surpassed my expectations. What surprised me was how much more cartoony this film was with videogame style characters and less realism in general.

I assume there is no further sequel to come?

Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars. This is part of a series (I've always been confused by so many Hong Kong series with similar titles but no numbering, or even lots of unrelated films with similar titles.
This film is like two in one, a crime film but also a beach holiday comedy about a lecherous group of guys. Chan and Biao don't even show up until 30 minutes in. Some of its quite funny, a bit too little fighting but a few scenes are really good but could have done with less camera cuts.

pretty strange contrast since raid 1 is notable for having next to no plot at all. but the director has said the script for raid 2 predated the first one. it's an awkward movie but I basically ended up loving it anyway since it still delivered 100% on what I was watching it for (extremely violent martial arts action)

Raid 2 is amazing. No less than a half-dozen amazing fight sequences plus one absolutely stellar car chase. Plot totally unnecessary but frankly anyone who gives a shit about that probably shouldn't be trusted.

Often I would agree that the plot should be thrown out but in this film it takes up a lot of space (yes maybe a bit too long) and even creates some real suspense.

If you were talking about Drunken Master 2 I'd totally agree. One of the best martial arts films despite the terrible weakness of the non-fight scenes.

I actually thought the plot was pretty good too and the acting was serviceable (for the most part) but even they were both total garbage when there are this many great pieces, I am deeply suspicious of anyone complaining about either one.

Hoping to see Righting Wrongs soon. Supposed to be one of the better Yuen Biao films.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GUmBHVK9cQ

She Shoots Straight trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm2V7r0FKjY

Interesting when it looks like they're not even fighting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv-O_530Kp8

two words: dirty. ho.

Gonna watch The Raid 2 tonight. I watched the first last night and loved it.

liked that video

Raid 2 is great but it falls into more traditional movie format this time. just a word of forewarning

the best part of seeing The Raid in a theatre was the not knowing it was an MA flick going in and just thinking it would be a foreign gritty cop flick and then seeing the martial arts show up 30 mins in and feeling like I just got a surprise xmas gift

Yeah, the plot wasn't as gripping this time, the spacing between action setpieces more predictable. I like the kind of contained setting that the first movie has. But, you can't have a car chase in a building and that was an amazing scene. Yayan Ruhian steals the show in both.

Now to check out Merantau? It looks like there are some other silat films out there - not sure if they're anything like these ones. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silat#Film

Some of the main guys in the Raid movies are going to be in Star Wars too.

I have seen the raid 2 but not the raid 1

I thought it was really impressive but the brutality was a little much for me, lol @ me

Some of the main guys in the Raid movies are going to be in Star Wars too.

Yayan was so great in boh film, though it was kind of bizarre to have him play basically the same character

The bad guy in Merantau is the biggest scumbag of a villain I can remember in quite some time.

the raid 2 was... way... too... long. eventually i got kind of numbed.

Yes, but it takes a while to single-handedly kill all the gangsters, and that's really the only way to solve complex undercover anti-corruption cases.

worked for Crockett/Tubbs iirc

xpost

yes, and settled law says you have to take them on one and a time.

one AT a time

tbf there's still a shitload of gangsters alive at the end who are probably ready to take over the city in The Raid 3
but yes I love this movie's attitude that you have to kill EVERYONE to tackle this level of systemic corruption

for an old-school head who used to have to hunt this stuff down in sketchy video stores, the YouTube/download era really is a revelation.

also every time this thread gets bumped I read it as "marital arts movies" and chuckle.

but that's just me, right?

for an old-school head who used to have to hunt this stuff down in sketchy video stores, the YouTube/download era really is a revelation.

been pretty impressed lately watching these remastered digital HD films put out by Shaw Brothers/Celestial on iTunes. just watched Challenge of the Masters the other day, good stuff

also every time this thread gets bumped I read it as "marital arts movies" and chuckle

EASTERN CONDORS

Despite the acclaim, I resisted this one for a while because I wasn't interested in the guns and grenades/military/war stuff, but there is actually a lot of proper martial arts in here too.

Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao, Joyce Godenzi, Yuen Wah and Lam Ching-Ying (who unfortunately has no fight scenes in this film).

It's all over the place in terms of seriousness/humour, so it was difficult for me to tell what was supposed to be taken seriously, but it never drags the film down because it's pretty fun.
Sammo Hung lost loads of weight because he thought his usual fatness was too funny for this film but that doesn't really make sense because even the death scenes are loaded with jokes.

I found the plot very hard to follow, the whole thing seems extremely unconvincing but even that doesn't really bother me too much because they clearly put so much effort into the action. This is a really ambitious production for Hung, with quite a few things I'm not used to seeing in Hong Kong action films.

The original trailer reveals lots of scenes that were cut from the final film. I really wish they had kept them in because they looked good. But apparently they're gone forever.

see: Heroes of the East
― Nhex, Monday, June 1, 2015

lol touché

omg, Killer Clans was so dope. I mean the last 25 minutes are so clumsy with the 3 million plot twists, but as a pseudo-wuxia it actually works (good dialogue too!). wish the fight sequences lasted longer, but they are fairly bloody which is cool.

also enjoyed Flying Guillotine (not to be confused with "Master of the Flying Guillotine") and "The Avenging Eagle".

Not sure if a lot of the titles are similar on purpose, on the Chinese end or English translation or English re-titling.

Heads up to UK readers who own a television, starting tonight in 2 hours

http://www.film4.com/whats-on/martial-arts-gold-on-film4

From Friday 15th January Film4 brings you Martial Arts gold, a season dedicated to kung fu classics from Hong Kong’s legendary Shaw Brothers studio.

Our season begins with The 36th Chamber of Shaolin and continues for the next three Friday nights, with King Boxer (featuring superstar Lieh Lo), Come Drink with Me (directed by martial arts maestro King Hu) and the original One-Armed Swordsman, from director Cheh Chang. A second season – including Five Deadly Venoms and The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter – will follow in March and April. All films are in their original aspect ratio, and original language with English subtitles.

nice

I missed 36th Chamber but King Boxer was very good. A standard plot, two dimensional characters thoroughly manipulating your emotions through horrible injustice and revenge.

New film The Assassin probably doesn't have enough fighting to be a martial arts film but has anyone seen it? First Chinese wuxia film getting a proper western release in ages, but I doubt it'll do much business.
I'm intrigued because it looks lovely, and without the overly artificial gloss I've become used to from 00s onward wuxia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxkr4wS7XqY

Keep meaning to see King Boxer, definitely on my list.
Saw a preview of Ip Man 3 last week. It was decent. Yuen Woo Ping choreography, so that was good. The villain from The Grandmaster did a really good job in his role. Thankfully the jingoism was minimal this time around, which sort of ruined it the first two for me. All those movies have good production but don't rise to the level of great.

xp oh god karl whyyyyyyyy

keep an eye out for ya, stingray!

xxxp the assassin is dope, there's some talk on the Hou Hsiao-Hsien thread.

Come Drink With Me must be the oldest martial arts film I've seen (1966). Good film, lovely in places, some singing, some surprising brutality but the fights aren't edited very smoothly, I don't know whether this is just the rough early days of complex Hong Kong fight scenes or what King Hu fans would defend as good choices?

The early days of East Asian cinema are sketchy for a lot of casual viewers but I just realised I know nothing about when Hong Kong martial arts films started or found their form. Were female main characters who can fight always there?

Watched on youtube Art Of Action: Martial Arts In The Movies (2002). It's pretty poor overall but it did fill me in on the things I wanted to know most and some of the interviews are interesting.
Samuel L Jackson presents it, there's lots of silly editing and music choices, the camera is right up in Jackson's face most of the time, too much about the western films influenced by Hong Kong.

There's a decent amount of footage of silent martial arts films and stuff up to the 50s, I get the impression they were always popular but it doesn't really say. To be honest, not much of this footage was very dynamic.
It did say that women were mainly the stars until the mid 60s because male actors considered films beneath them, so women were usually playing men. Or were they? From the footage I saw, it didn't look like they were trying to be men. At the start of Come Drink With Me, the main character is bafflingly mistaken for a man (that actress is interviewed here and I had no idea she was the older woman in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon). So it seems that King Hu in the 60s was the main turning point in the genre?
The very biggest directors and actors are discussed. Annoyingly, it never tells you who the people being interviewed are.

Another documentary, Kung Fu Fighting, from the late 90s and its only half an hour but was quite good considering it was a third of the length of the other documentary.
It talks quite a lot about how dangerous it is to make these films. I guess this could be the main reason these films have declined, people are generally less willing to take that kind of risk today, even though that annoys me, I can't really blame them.

In both documentaries, Bruce Lee and Donnie Yen talk a lot about martial arts as self expression. I never completely understood this.

It can be as much self-expression than ballet or wrestling. Many martial arts movies are very much about physical expression of ideas. Have you seen Dirty Ho?

I haven't seen that, but I got the impression they weren't just talking about their performances, but the entire discipline as self expression.

I just watched King Hu's Dragon Inn. It's good in places, it feels like a Kurosawa film to me but far too long and I didn't like it as much as Come Drink With Me.

Saw the restored early '70s genre klassik A Touch of Zen yesterday. If wuxia rocks your world you'll undoubtedly love it. There are at least a couple great sequences but i was bored about half the time; don't expect any 'action' in the first of the 3 hours.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_Qd3UicjPs

I got the Eureka edition recently. I haven't finished watching it yet. I have been bored most of the time but there is plenty of great images to compensate me.

if you like art movie martial arts this is on netflix now. slow and dreamy and cool to look at.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKFtNsQ78oI

been wanting to see that, thanks for lmk

one of the very best martial-arts films -- nay, one of the very best FILMS -- ever made, tsui hark's THE BLADE, is finally out in a decent DVD edition. unfortunately, as with a number of other Golden Harvest films released by Warner Archive in recent months, the subtitles are actually closed-caption titles, so they have things like "loud music plays" in addition to translations of the dialogue. but still, everyone should see this film -- and Sammo Hung's PEDICAB DRIVER, which is also newly out on DVD.

also dr morbs you might like "dragon inn" a little better than "touch of zen." it definitely is also a slow-boil film, but it gets to the action more quickly, and it's more concise in general.

("dragon inn" is out on a dvd/blu-ray in the UK, not terribly expensive to import)

Thanks for the headsup
http://cityonfire.com/have-yourself-a-golden-harvest-christmas-warner-archive-dvd-collection/
This is the fullest listing I can find.

yeah, it's amazing that those are actually easily (and cheaply) available in good-quality editions (at least in terms of visual quality, uncut prints, etc.). the subtitles thing is pretty head-scratching though.

all of the films in that series are worth seeing, but THE BLADE and PEDICAB DRIVER are the standouts. the latter is just a great, compact, hilarious and exciting action film. the former is a flat-out visionary masterpiece. (HE'S A WOMAN, SHE'S A WOMAN is good lowbrow fun, too.)

UK netflix currently has some good seventies Shaw Bros classics to stream, all yr Shaolin Temple, Deadly Venom etc faves.

Anyone seen Downtown Torpedoes? Is that considered a modern classic?

"dragon inn" is out on a dvd/blu-ray in the UK

Yes, from Eureka/Masters of Cinema - they've also issued Touch of Zen in a nice edition. I know Criterion are planning their own Touch of Zen set, wonder if it will share the same source material/supplements etc as the Region 2

As much as I have complained about these films being neglected and it's really nice to see several King Hu and Golden Harvest films get rereleased on disc, I can see why they might be a hard sell despite their obvious attractions.
Watching some of the Shaw Brothers film's recently, it's easy to get frustrated and bored with the cliched characters and plots. It wouldn't matter if the duration was more fight scene dominated but there's so many dragged out character drama where you know exactly what's going to happen. I wasn't that taken with One Armed Swordsman, it is pretty good in some ways but all those scenes demonstrating how virtuous the main character is (virtue signalling haha) grow pretty tiresome.
The charisma of the later more comedy orientated actors goes a long way.

i would have to think so, WF

US is also getting a new digital iteration of Dragon Inn

Still haven't finished Touch Of Zen, but I hope Eureka also puts out more King Hu. I'd like Legend Of The Mountain.

Just about anything with Donnie Yen is worth seeing. All the Ip Man films are great fun. "The Lost Bladesman" and "Dragon" are very cool.

lol did you see Ip Man 3? I enjoyed it for the fantastic fight sequences, but the story was a bit weird, and I couldn't not laugh at Mike Tyson. still...fun for what it was.

Yeah I've watched them all. I mean - you don't go into watching these films expecting a great acting performance from anyone least of all Iron Mike! They're supposed to be hammy and fun.

And the stories are usually always weird, aren't they?

I had a blast (saw it in the theatre) but Mike Tyson in anything makes me LOL, much less an HK martial arts film.

don't feel like it was as solid as the first one, and I actually don't think I saw the second?

I've seen the first two. The first felt very much like a fairly serious prestige film, the second was a bit sillier and falling back on old habits of the genre.

Agree with RAG here. Also both had some ridiculous nationalism/propaganda - at least IM3 toned it down. Thought it was better than the second if just for having that dude from The Grandmaster (let alone the insanely goofy fake-Brit villain of IM2).

I don't remember any propaganda. The Japanese and the goofy brit boxer were bastards but that seemed fair for the context.

What I disliked was the way both films use (better than Jesus) Bruce Lee to validate Ip Man.

Amazingly, there's been like 5 or 6 different Ip Man film and tv series in the last decade. Anyone seen the Wong Kar-Wai one?

Are you kidding? Though kung fu movies have a long long history of anti-foreign sentiment, the Ip Man movies (hardly alone in this in the past 20 years of mainstream HK/Chinese filmmaking) love to paint an idyllic pre-WW2 picture of unified Chinese patriotism, staving off the European and Japanese devils, almost as if they're trying to paper over a certain enormous conflict that happened about that time...

(See also the ridiculous final act of True Legend which had nothing to do with the rest of the film. And good lord, the "first" Ip Man 3 origin story where the huge twist revealed is that Ip Man had a brother who was secretly a Japanese spy, infiltrated since birth as a sleeper agent.)

The use of Bruce lee is pretty corny in all of them. Thank goodness we didn't get CGI Bruce Lee in Ip Man 3 like they planned...

I thought The Grandmaster was worthwhile. If you've seen WKW's other films it's got plenty of his trademark style, lots of intense closeups of Zhang Ziyi looking agonizingly pretty...

Kuro Obi (2007) gives an interesting perspective on the "evil Japanese" trope; it's a Japanese movie about karate practitioners caught up in the Imperial Army in Manchuria. The training and fight sequences are quite different from Chinese martial arts movies (some of the actors are high-ranking karateka). I think it's on YouTube.

Nhex- I don't know enough about China in that period to really criticize but I would have guessed it was simplified. You're saying the propaganda was mostly about what was happening between Chinese people? Having Ip Man make a polite speech about tolerance between Chinese and British in the second film didn't seem too controversial.

I thought it was interesting that in real life, Ip Man initially refused to teach Bruce Lee because their ethnicity was different.

The two main things I heard about The Grandmaster are that WKW is holding back from making political statements now and it's getting more like a shampoo commercial.

Also heard that the big studio Japanese films are being are being increasingly influenced by the government to have nationalistic messages.

yeah the whitewashing of history that occurs in so many popular chinese films (going way way back) would be offensive if it didn't seem so transparent and silly much of the time.

the idea of foreign powers (often acting through chinese intermediates like warlords etc.) being the driving force behind keeping china divided is the basic background (generally taken completely for granted) of a million hong kong melodramas and action films that otherwise don't have a political thought in their minds.

of course i'm excepting mao-era PRC propaganda films in which the nationalists /and/ the japanese are often equally insidious, and pre-1980s taiwanese films in which the communists are the bad guys.

i know that's true, but in the last couple years i've been catching up on a lot of kung fu movies and gooooooood it gets tiresome. often seems like the higher the budget, the more they have to shoehorn in this stuff...

new re-release of Dragon Inn is Friday in NYC

To whoever recommended Sammo Hung's "Pedicab Driver" way upthread: Thank You!Thank You!Thank You!
Managed to track down a very murky quality rip of this on a torrent and laughed my ass off watching it last night. Completely off the wall film.

that was me. yeah, it's nutty in the best hong kong tradition.

maybe i'll rewatch it tonight, or maybe i'll watch "dragons forever"

Finished A Touch Of Zen and all its extras. I like it far more than Dragon Inn. Dragon Inn's "end boss" might be more impressive but this has many more great images, much better locations, the heroine diving across the forest with her sword, the main character laughing after the battle for a ridiculously long time, the psychedelic monk stuff.
It is far too long but the photography of the settings are head and shoulders above any wuxia film I've seen.

Bring on more King Hu.

SPOILER ALERT

dragon inn has that remarkable climax where the bad guy is dispatched almost offhandedly, in extreme long shot. i remember that as being literally breath-taking.

and yeah the choreography of camera and actors in king hu's film is virtuoso and miles above what almost any other director was doing in the early 1970s

filmS

Anyone seen the Detective Dee films?

Big thank you to Amateurist for recommending both these films.

PEDICAB DRIVER was fun. I can't say anything about it was particularly unusual but it feels like an odd mixture nonetheless. Got the new DVD version of this.

THE BLADE reminds me of a lot of the things that made Asian film attractive in the 90s for a lot of people including myself: it's mad, energetic, stylish and dark in a specific way I really like. I really miss stuff like this and it's always a pleasure to find more. Great soundtrack, so many good visual flourishes, a lot of it confused me but it's quite bizarre and beautiful. I doubt anyone's making anything like this today. Unfortunately I got an older DVD copy that wasn't the best quality so I might even seek out the newest version.

it's definitely a little bit confusing as a story -- very elliptical at times. but it's so visually dynamic that i never minded much. glad you enjoyed the movies... have you seen tsui hark's peking opera blues or shanghai blues?

I haven't seen those but I've seen Zu Warriors From The Magic Mountain, Green Snake, Chinese Ghost Story trilogy and Iron Monkey. I know he's only listed as producer on the latter 4 but I've heard he basically co-directs anything he produces.

I didn't like Green Snake much (didn't matter that it isn't really a martial arts film) but the rest are great.

I've seen that some martial arts fans resent his influence and think he's a hypocrite for complaining that Hong Kong films have become too Hollywood blockbustery.

well he was known as the "spielberg of hong kong" in the 1980s/early 1990s -- i think that tsui at his best is better than spielberg, but he's not always at his best, esp. not since the mid-late 1990s.

the two i mentioned aren't martial arts films, either, btw. but they are a lot of fun.

yeah i'm kind of mixed on him tbh

I'm going to watch his first Detective Dee film soon. I thought people didn't like his newer films at all but some people seem to love Seven Swords (2005) as much as his earlier stuff.

I got an hour into Detective Dee: Mystery Of The Phantom Flame and just fast forwarded the rest. It's pretty much as I feared. Just an excess of gloss, cgi (including a talking deer and other fighting deers) and slow motion. Even ten minutes in I was getting really bored and its 2 hours long. Oddly there's quite a few action scenes where the frame rate seems to change and it just doesn't look right. There's a lot of good costume and location design but it's wasted on this.

There was a whole bunch of Cine-Asia trailers and most of it looked unappealing in the same way (I might give Chocolate a try). I'm surprised these films still use slow motion so extensively. I hope this trend dies off because I don't remember it ever working.
I'm generally not into blockbuster films anyway but I'm surprised this approach seems to be so commercially successful (or is it?).

I sadly believe that the slow motion thing will never die

Some favorites of mine I haven't seen anyone mention yet

7 Grandmasters
The gold standard of martial arts as hardcore genre filmmaking, at least as far as the indie/no-name flicks go. Real generous with action, I remember almost half the movie being very well choreographed fight scenes. The other half is totally standard but likeable characterization set to constant shots of beautiful Taiwanese countryside.

Born Invincible
If you've ever seen Kung Pow, this is like the old unintentional version of that. The sets and costumes, the implausible weapons, the sloppy editing, the terrible dubbed voice acting, the dialogue, all sources of unending laughter. Perfect cheese. Nice action too, although the first fight blows everything else in the movie out of the water.

The Young Master
One of Jackie Chan's top 5 movies, for sure. Avoid the hacked up Western dvd releases and find the original, which features a grueling half hour final fight against some Taekwondo master who accidentally broke one of Jackie's bones during the shooting.

Elimination Pursuit
The Lost Swordship
Virtually lost films at one point. Low low budget wuxia, but ironically just like in the pure kf genre, the low budget stuff is more pleasing to the eye than a lot of Shaw Brothers/GH stuff because they had to use real landscapes instead of sets. Psychedelic and strangely fascinating in how their ambition exceeds their technical scope. Better viewed as ambling visual poems/parables than as stories.

The Magnificent Butcher
Sammo + Yuen Woo-ping = almost too good to be true. Typically broad Cantohumor is the only thing keeping this ridiculously fun effort from being perfect.

Snake in the Monkey's Shadow
Blatant ripoff of Jackie's film with the same title except "eagle" in place of "monkey." Probably a better movie though.

Human Lanterns
Wuxia meets Hammer horror.

Dance of the Drunk Mantis
The "original" sequel to Drunken Master, released just a year or so after the first. Disappoints people because Jackie isn't in it, but hard to go wrong with Yuen clan choreography and Hwang Jang Lee playing the bad guy. Be prepared for cringeworthy comedy.

After a while explaining what's good about these is an exercise in repeating yourself, it's all part of the same pool of cliches and grainy ambience, but anyway, these are also well above average
Buddhist Fist
Invincible Armour
Crystal Fist (AKA Jade Claw)
Secret Rivals

I guess apart from Young Master and Magnificent Butcher, all these are hard to get on disc?

Nope, they're all on the US market non-bootlegged. (Dunno about outside region 1 though.) Some sorta rare, some on incredibly common multi-disc sets.

Ironically the Jackie Chan movie is the hardest one to find a good version of.

Can someone give me a rundown of the quality of each film in the Police Story, Once Upon A Time In China and The Legend Of Fong Sai Yuk series? I still haven't seen any of them.

Bought Police Story, Once Upon A Time In China Trilogy, Human Lanterns, Born Invincible, 7 Grandmasters.

No affordable Police Story box sets in English subtitles.

Human Lanterns is pretty messy but I mostly liked it for the well designed packed sets and the villain's costume (which would be really great as an actual monster). I didn't realise the Shaw Brothers studio could be this nasty with all the rape and gore. There is a lot of comedy in the film but I'm not always sure what isn't supposed to be funny; like the wounded rival of the main character being carried into action on a stretcher was very funny but it looks like it's played straight. I think a lot of the drama and horror was supposed to be straight but it's impossible to take any of it seriously.

Born Invincible
If you've ever seen Kung Pow, this is like the old unintentional version of that. The sets and costumes, the implausible weapons, the sloppy editing, the terrible dubbed voice acting, the dialogue, all sources of unending laughter. Perfect cheese. Nice action too, although the first fight blows everything else in the movie out of the water.

This was actually better than I expected. The sloppy editing and bad wigs didn't inspire much confidence but what I loved was how eager this was to keep moving onto the next fight. Some of the music was great. The steel ball spitting was fun. The bad English dubbing was irritating just as often as it was funny, the dubbing guys clearly weren't taking their job seriously. Recognised the big guy Carter Wong from Big Trouble In Little China quite quickly.

Not much to be said of 7 Grandmasters. It's just a good film in the genre.

Main character has a lovely face
http://www.hkcinemagic.com/en/people.asp?id=1906

Police Story was a bit flabby in places and for a while I thought it was going to disappoint but the end really makes up for it.

All the main action scenes are great, especially the bus and supermarket scenes, which I'd already seen parts of in documentaries.

Eagle's Claw. I'm not sure what to make of the fights in this, they're well composed but seem a bit slow sometimes, as if they're afraid of hitting each other too hard. The British English dubbing is probably the worst dubbing I've ever heard and it's funny for the accents and awkwardness.

That's not gonna be nearly as good as The Avenging Eagle, is it

I haven't seen Avenging Eagle but Eagle's Claw looks very cheap compared to it.

Watched the Once Upon A Time In China trilogy (there are six films though, with changing stars and directors). It's fine but the sometimes amazing action lacks the impact it should have had, there's a lot of cutting and slow motion and the camera is often a bit too distant from the fights.
The first is usually considered the best (it has the famous ladder fight) but I thought the other two seemed more focused.
The second film has some really beautiful scenes where the glow of the sun saturates everything.

Was trying to think of way to describe Rosamund Kwan. She posted an image of Audrey Tautou as Amelie on her instagram and she is quite like her.

I've heard that some directors have trouble with Jet Li because his smile is too cute for playing more serious characters (this character is serious even though there is lots of comedy). I much prefer him when he's not playing a serious character.

Attack Of The Joyful Goddess. I've seen some people say it's a gem but most say it's appallingly bad but I was very intrigued by the favourable reviews. It was so boring I ended up skipping around the film with fast forward. The English dubbing on the disc I got was a patchwork of different dubbing jobs and some of them were among the worst I've ever heard. But some of the fight scenes are bizarre and striking, like a vampire woman with a long tongue fighting a living doll. It's all set around Chinese opera so there's lots of fancy costumes. With a remaster some of it might look really good but perhaps I should have made do with the clips on youtube. The ending fights is where all the good parts seem to be at.

Kill Zone 2 - so-so movie, but damned if it doesn't some of the best modern fight choreography outside of the Raid films.

Didn't know about this series. Did you see it on cinema?

Nope, it's on Netflix. Haven't seen the original, but it came out ten years earlier and supposedly it's a sequel in name-only.

Note the one I'm talking about has Tony Jaa and Jin Zhang (fun actor who was recently the antagonists of The Grandmaster and Ip Man 3), and Louis Koo in really weird makeup. Simon Yam and Jing Wu "return" from the original Kill Zone in completely different roles, apparently.

Just saw Headshot at the the cinema, featuring The Raid stars Iko Uwais and Julie Estelle. It's not bad. The directors previously done horror films and it shows in the violence which is pretty nasty for a martial arts film (or maybe this is becoming normal?). Rather than saving the violence for a few shock moments, it's pretty violent throughout.

Call of Heroes and Once Upon a Time in Shanghai are both fun.

BESOURO/THE ASSAILANT

Brazilian historical fantasy film about a legendary Capoeirista in a time after slavery was officially over but black people were still treated like slaves. It's very nicely shot, has a touch of psychedelia and there's quite a lot of African mythology. Very unusual and pretty good.

DRAGONS FOREVER

Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao, Yuen Wah. Chan and Hung are dishonest creeps to begin with, Biao just has mental problems. It's a romantic comedy crossed with drug crime and martial arts. Contains offensive bits. Yuen Wah is really good with the physical comedy, I'm growing pretty fond of him. There's some funny deleted scenes they really should have left in that focus on Biao.

MILLIONAIRE EXPRESS

Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao and a large cast of familiar faces. It's kind of a western with lots of chases, funny mix-ups, railway action, Japanese ninjas with swords and Cynthia Rothrock. They pack so much into it and Yuen Biao is great in it. One of the best Hong Kong action comedies I've seen.

Looks like Warner Bros didn't go any further with those Golden Harvest releases?

Most of the martial arts dvds I get are from the Hong Kong Legends label. Here's a list challenge.

http://www.listchallenges.com/list-of-hong-kong-legends-films-released-on-dvd

I just scored 22 of 101.

I seen the trailer for Scorpion King. It looks so odd, the star looks like he's from the early Human League days.

CHOCOLATE

Jeeja Yanin plays a heavily autistic girl who learns to fight from watching films, she even fights a boy with tourettes whose style revolves around his unpredictably (the film is dedicated to "special children").
Quite an amateurish film in some respects but it makes up for it in the fight scenes, particularly the ending, which looked really dangerous and indeed people got hurt making it. Yanin uses her knees, elbows and flips quite a lot, so I thought her moves were quite distinctive (but maybe this is more normal in Thai films?).

THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR

Story is dime a dozen fluff but it's a great looking film (especially the pool scenes), there's quite a bunch of these Hong Kong films from the early 90s: drenched in blue light, quite misty, characters gliding across the screen a lot (which I like but it can get tiresome easily, seeming like a substitute type of action for actors who aren't martial arts specialists), sometimes there's a romance and supernatural elements.
Not a lot of them on western disc releases and when they are they can be very poor quality prints. This is the worst Tartan dvd I've ever seen, for some reason it's a windowboxed/postage stamp small screen which is incredibly difficult to get along with or change the ratio to make it more watchable. I'm avoiding the sequel from Tartan in case it's also windowboxed. Would be nice to see some of this subgenre on Bluray because they really are some of the prettiest films, I guess Ashes Of Time might be my only option right now.

RAINING IN THE MOUNTAIN

My fourth King Hu, with even less fight scenes than the others (Come Drink With Me, Dragon Inn, Touch Of Zen). This is more focused on Buddhism, scheming, thievery and stealth. It's pretty good but there's not as many standout moments as the others.

Didn't plan to but I coincidently seen two films about Chinese vs Japanese warriors: Five Element Ninjas and Duel To Death. They're only a year, maybe months apart (1982-1983) but the latter is way way more modern, much better looking, with cool theme music and a level of over-the-topness that seems ahead of its time, which is fun but Five Element Ninjas is more satisfying overall, with a good ending.

Five Element Ninjas is fuckin' awesome. I've heard good things about Duel to the Death and have been meaning to see it

i haven't watched duel to the death for a long time but i remember digging it

i'll have to check out five element ninjas

THE BANQUET/LEGEND OF THE BLACK SCORPION

The best looking modern wuxia film I've seen, although I haven't cared to see many after the trailers.

The excessive slow motion is still there but this pulls it off way better than most, apart from a rape scene that looks troublingly graceful and the rape victim ends up happy after the really nasty part is not shown.

There's not any really noticeable cgi apart from a short cityscape scene.

I wasn't very intrigued by the story but the ending is good.

Lots of Zhang Ziyi and Zhou Xun whispering.

Might regret it but I bought Chinese Ghost Story (2011), Painted Skin (2008) and Painted Skin: Resurrection. They're very cgi heavy and I doubt the action is much fun but there's still some cool looking stuff in there.

I've seen all of the original Chinese Ghost Story trilogy (they're patchy but well worth seeing) but never seen King Hu's Painted Skin.

If you want to watch the really original Chinese Ghost Story, check out Li Han-hsiang's The Enchanted Shadow. It's very early Shaw Brothers. I'd wager Tsui Hark's version could probably be better.

I saw the trailer for it a few months ago. I thought 88 Films might release it but I'd probably have to go for the Celestial dvd.

It's worth subscribing to Celestial Pictures Limited youtube channel, they have hundreds of trailers and clips of the best Shaw fight scenes.

Might want to see ZhongKui: Snow Girl And The Dark Crystal too.

I fear these films will probably be really bad but even with all the cgi there's some outlandish designs I can still appreciate. I might see Valerian for this reason. The wonderful clothes and pretty people are real though.

Fox Lover has some amazing real landscapes and gardens but also these cgi mountain landscapes which are still quite impressive.

I have no memory of Dragon Blade or Forbidden Kingdom coming out on cinemas. These must have been made for an international audience. Unless John Cusack is huge in China.

PAINTED SKIN (2008)
PAINTED SKIN 2: THE RESURRECTION/DEMON HUNTER: THE RESURRECTION

Still want to see the 90s King Hu version of this, might buy it soon.

First film in this newer version is romance/fantasy/martial arts with Donnie Yen. Second film drops the martial arts (no Donnie Yen either) and becomes romance/epic fantasy.

First film has 3 total babes, second film has 4 total babes. Zhao Wei and Zhou Xun star in both with Chen Kun the boyfriend in both.

First film is boring but picks up slightly in the second half. Music is oddly cheap but pleasant like a JRPG soundtrack. There's too much cutting and closeups for the fight scenes to be any good.

The sequel has the biggest upgrade I've ever seen. There's a ton of companies and producers behind it, the story is on a much bigger scale. You'd think it would just be more bloated but it's way more lively and colourful than the previous film. Despite being the same story it's different enough that I understand why it was retitled on UK DVD.
Yoshitaka Amano supplied the concept art. It's loaded with cgi (previous film had quite a lot already) but it doesn't completely destroy the film for me, there's a lot of lovely images in here and that's all I was hoping for really. Despite the awfully fake giant bear it's one of the prettier cgi epics I've seen.
Seems like they're trying to see how close they can get towards lesbian scenes without actually doing them. Not unlike the whispery scenes in The Banquet.
I won't go as far to call this a good film but I'll take this prettiness over most better scripted American cgi blockbusters.

A CHINESE GHOST STORY (2011)

Nice set design. Some bad cgi. Uses magic tricks I didn't see in the earlier films. Has the same theme song as the Ching Siu-Tung/Tsui Hark trilogy. Not as good as the films in that trilogy but it's okay.

xp these guys need to watch THE HANDMAIDEN, stat

Maybe they have. Is it a myth that homosexuality is pretty taboo in south Korea? Memento Mori was supposed to be very controversial in 1999 South Korea for its lesbian content. Maybe because it was schoolgirls? Maybe they've moved on a lot since then?
Probably a good few years before a mainstream Chinese film can do lesbian stuff? Zhao Wei has been accused of corrupting the Chinese youth, good on her.

I'm really fond of that Chinese Ghost Story theme song but I've never really looked into that sort of Chinese pop.

Liked Villainess, it's very twisty and must have been very complicated to shoot the fight scenes. Maybe Japan has just changed but South Korea is still making the sort of films that Tartan churned out on disc?

nice, i've been looking forward to that one

Also a scene in this a lot like the noose hanging one in the trailer for Atomic Blonde.

Kung Fu: Trailers Of Fury is an odd release. It's just a collection of trailers found in an old English cinema, but it's made worthwhile by the audio commentary and the main documentary (both of which feature Ric Meyers, who I'd guess is America's foremost expert on Chinese martial arts films).

The documentary frustratingly doesn't spend much time on the 80s or 90s and doesn't really go any further.

Unfortunately there's a lot of Brucesploitation trailers, but also a few interesting obscurities in there too. Lo Lieh is in more of the trailers than anyone else.

Some Interesting things from the commentary and documentary...

- Hong Kong films sometimes picked up unknown western actors and pretended they were a famous in the west. There's a really cute actress called Jennie Jones in the Death Blow trailer and I can't find anything else about her (her name is difficult to search because of the more famous Jenny Jones).
- Meyers says that despite Hong Kong film people putting so much passion into their work, they're frequently surprised anyone likes their work.
- How miserably these films paid actors sometimes.
- How normal it was for a Hong Kong film person to be an actor, choreographer, director, stunt person, camera crew and do hundreds of films.
- Oliver Stone's eagerness to talk to Meyers about Chinese actresses.

Snake In The Eagle's Shadow trailer shows you a cat vs snake fight I'm pretty sure wasn't in the version of the film I saw. Apparently they removed the snake's teeth so it couldn't properly hurt the cat. It's still quite alarming though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lMC-vk9it8

Not sure how this thread has gone on this long, without a mention of Ninja Thunderbolt!

Four Shaw Brothers films.

HOUSE OF TRAPS

Loved the architecture in this and the room of traps (not a whole house) is pretty cool. Shame about the ugly costumes.
I've never been attracted to Chang Cheh films but I'm starting to warm to them. They often have large male casts (I've seen Ang Lee and others remark that Cheh had no interest in women) and its not surprising there are queer studies of his films considering the relationships and costumes.

KILLER CONSTABLE

Probably the best of the 88 Films Shaw remasters so far, particularly in the cinematography. I liked fights in the rain and its far more morally complex than most old martial arts films.

MASKED AVENGERS

Another Chang Cheh. Even for martial arts films, his set pieces violate the laws of physics in a ridiculous way. I'm surprised some of these films are from the 80s, they look a lot older to me. It's quite fun, I'm getting to like Philip Kwok as an enigmatic oddball.
Animal cruelty warning: a chicken gets impaled by a spear.

THE FLYING GUILLOTINE

I had seen the more brutal knockoff Master Of The Flying Guillotine (better known than the original) years ago, this is way more handsome and puts more effort into the drama.
I've never understood how Golden Harvest are the more modern lively studio yet old fashioned conservative Shaw Brothers have more extreme sex and violence.

Saw a HOUSE OF TRAPS screening last year, fun stuff. Not Cheh's best, but definitely enough interesting elements to make it worthwhile. MASKED AVENGERS is still on my list.

It was only last year I actually knew who he was but just discovered last week he co-directed Seven Golden Vampires!

heh yes. that's such a strange one due to the co-production!
have you seen FIVE DEADLY VENOMS or FIVE ELEMENT NINJA (aka CHINESE SUPER NINJA) yet? Would also recommend SHAOLIN MARTIAL ARTS, KID WITH THE GOLDEN ARM and of course ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN.

I've seen Five Element Ninjas and One Armed Swordsman (maybe the sequel too?)

I saw a godawful copy of Attack Of The Joyful Goddess for about 20 minutes but the picture quality of the dvd was so bad I had to stop. It's got some really nutty scenes in it though.

Been meaning to see Five Deadly Venoms (might have actually seen a bit of it but wasn't intrigued or in the mood at the time) but thanks for noting the others.

Crippled Avengers and Heaven & Hell are other fan favourites I hope to see.

Useful poll results. Imagine we were cool enough to do this poll.

http://www.shaolinchamber36.com/kungfufandom/index.php?/topic/7425-the-top-ten-must-own-shaws/

Shows much more than the top ten.

Heh, at least two people on that list saw The Magnificent Ruffians

I doubt these will be good but I'm impressed with the massive scope and some of the design.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLs6shM3t90
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRg8bbc22IU

This is awesome.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJLavwjY4xQ

oh god, 2 wacky

Wolf Devil Woman - Pearl Cheung/Chang Ling (and many other variations of those names) writes, directs and stars in this shoestring budget fantasy/horror/martial arts film.
A couple flee from a group of monster men (one wearing what looks like a Halloween mask from a costume store, but this is supposed to be his actual face), to save their baby, they kill themselves and cover the baby in their blood to keep it warm then headbutt the snowy hill they're on to hide the baby under the avalanche. Wolves find the baby under the snow and bring her up in their ice cave.

I quite like this, its energy overcomes the budget at times and I thought the fight scenes worked quite well (lots of wire work), Pearl has a few really cool costumes (and her bird claw rope weapon), I'm always happy to see snowy mountains and the weaknesses are amusing but don't spoil it completely. I wish more trash films were this watchable.

I'm a bit troubled by the rabbit scene. It appears to get shot by an arrow but I wasn't sure if it was really shot or if they used some trickery, I kept rewinding and it didn't look bloody or react the way I'd imagine an arrow shot rabbit would. Who knows?

Pearl directed a few films in the early eighties and Matching Escort is supposed to be an enjoyable oddity too but I cant find any information about her later life.

Wolf Devil Woman is English dubbed and "free" if you're subscribed to Amazon prime but there's subtitled versions on youtube. I have no idea if any creators or copyright holders see money for the Amazon streaming.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLg-lfaBbkY

Brave Archer - Another Chang Cheh film but this time an adaptation of a classic Jin Yong book series, so he didn't get to follow all his usual inclinations (there's a romance with a fun female lead). There is a main trilogy and an unofficial sequel Brave Archer And His Mate with the same director and star. There's only one brief scene of archery in the first film and I don't know if the later films feature more, so the title might seem misleading.

I've often found it hard to follow Chang Cheh films, but this time there's a relatively large sequence near the start introducing the very large cast (some posing and showing off moves), perhaps acknowledging it wont be easy to keep track of the characters? Some experts say Brave Archer is hard to follow and relied somewhat on the popularity of the novels, so I feel less bad about not keeping up.

There is some shoddiness (like the inconsistent eye injuries and some of the romantic dream scenes are bizarrely austere) and the absurd fairy tale logic wont work for everyone but I was engaged enough by the mythology. Two of the female characters were very enjoyable (one referred to as "Iron Corpse") which is apparently a real rarity for Chang Cheh and perhaps to please the fans of the books.

Fortunately the first volume of the source material (which Ashes Of Time and Eagle Shooting Heroes were also based on): Legends Of The Condor Heroes by Jin Yong is getting an English translation release in a few months. not many Jin Yong/Louis Cha books available in English but they're very important in the wuxia genre.

=====

There is an absolute ton of Shaw Brothers films available on subscription of Amazon Prime, no extra buying. This includes a lot of the films about to come out in the 88 Films Shaw series, so it seems like someone has been clumsy in allowing this (I'm committed to buying the series so it doesn't matter in my case). A great amount of them only have English dubbing as an option, so I'm wary of what I want to watch multiple times to hear the original audio.

thanks for the heads up, i never bother looking to see if there's anything good on Prime because there never usually is

I'd like to hear what you think about them, even if you don't like them at all.

Pretty much uncritically love the Shaws tbh, but let's see what's there

Well you'll have a great time, there's like over thirty Chang Cheh films and most of the classics.

The eccentric vagabond teacher in Brave Archer referred to as the Pope's brother. The commentary says it's a dig at the Vatican but I don't understand how this Song dynasty Chinese guy is supposed to be the pope's brother.

I would love it if the Shaw series films would comes out in box sets considering how many series there are like Brave Archer, Black Magic, Sentimental Swordsman, One Armed Swordsman, Bewitched/Boxer's Omen, Flying Guillotine and others.

On amazon prime there's also a couple of Sammo Hung, Leslie Cheung and Maggie Cheung films. Chang Ling and loads of cheap Taiwanese films. Tsui Hark's Butterfly Murders.

There's sooooo much good Shaw stuff on Amazon Prime, I just signed up and my mind boggles at it
Wish there was always the option to choose the original language, but since I grew up watching this stuff on TV with the cheesy dubs I'm kinda used to it

Wolf Devil Woman is actually playing near me this week (screened off VHS, lol), hopefully it lives up to your praise

Wow!

I wouldn't say praise but it's good by low budget trash standards.

Amazon Prime search engine is maybe the worst ever devised. have started to find the movies tho, might make a start tonight

Come Drink With Me is great of course, tho the last act feels a bit rushed and I think it's a shame when the focus moves away from Cheng Pei-pei. She's as cool as she is crushworthy and the villains are great fun. The fights, especially the big temple fight in the middle, are really well thought out, they explore the mechanics of space and emphasize the strategic struggle as much as flashy skills.

Did someone else take the lead at the end? I don't really remember.

Drunken Cat/Drunken Hero has to face off against his nemesis from school

Legend Of The Mountain is coming from Eureka soon. I've heard it's inferior to Raining In The Mountain but maybe not. I am bracing myself a bit because King Hu films can be really long.

http://www.denofgeek.com/uk/movies/kung-fu-movies/53019/10-of-the-weirdest-kung-fu-movies-ever

Here I'm talking about four Taiwanese films starring Hsiao-Lao Lin, including the Child Of Peach trilogy. I don't know why but she used to play male roles a lot (including these four films), not simply the common trope of women disguised as men. If the plot hadn't told you she was supposed to be playing boys, you'd never know that's what she's doing. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I really wasn't sure it was her in Magic Warriors, but all the databases say it is her. She's very cute, charming and I love her costumes.

It's worth noting that the first two Child Of Peach films feature men playing evil women and seduce some of the male heroes, this is played for humor but the second time is odd in that a masculine ghost woman (offscreen) fucks a comedy sidekick's brains out.

However outlandish all this sounds, keep in mind these are all low budget, although Child Of Peach is a bit more expensive looking. I assumed that these are all children's films but I'm not sure with all this violence, sex and gross out.

Kung Fu Wonder Child - Includes hopping vampires, a monster man, an evil sorcerer who turns into a 2D animated dragon, a facehugger and lots of toilet humour. Hsiao-Lao Lin dresses the same here as she does in the Child Of Peach films. This is reasonably entertaining but doesn't do anything well enough for me to recommend it much. The way the 2D dragon fights the characters and sight of a villain's spirit magically growing from a monster man's forehead were quite interesting though.

Child Of Peach - Based on the Japanese Momotaro legend. Features a Kabuki looking demon with red hair and white skin, large magic peaches that assemble into a big peach creature, monster people, a little fairy girl, a trio of children who can turn into animals or turn parts of their bodies into animal parts (a bird girl, a dog boy and a monkey boy). This is easily the best of the trilogy, with better effects, more impressive settings and use of real animals.

Magic Of Spell - a big downgrade from Child Of Peach but if you have the patience to get past of the lousy drama and comedy, the action scenes are quite imaginative, better and faster than the first film and still has some nice settings. The bird girl looks really cool in this, one transformation a bit odder this time. The thousand year old Ginseng boy forcing the Peach Boy to eat him is quite memorable too.

Magic Warriors - A further downgrade with less to redeem it. Despite a greater quantity of colorful characters transforming into animals, plants and objects, and a little boy doing a watery shit all over villains faces, it's mostly just boring. It's counted as a Child Of Peach film but it has none of the same characters. Hsiao-Lao Lin plays Little Flying Dragon this time, with different hair and more makeup.

sounds interesting, i'll have to look into these

Wolf Devil Woman aka Wolfen Ninja was a cute delight btw, I'll try hunt down the sequel at some point (known as Matching Escort lol)

I watched those four films on youtube and that seemed the only option.

Bat Without Wings - this is quite similar to Human Lanterns in many ways but focused on swordplay. The villain has make-up and hair obviously copied from Gene Simmons and a crazy friend chained in his lair.
I found myself pausing a lot to admire the set design. I really like it when Shaw Brothers do the historical gothic setting but it looks good as often as it does frustratingly cheap. So near yet so far.

Battle Wizard - features magic frogs and snakes, a fire breathing wizard with extending steel bird legs, a brute with sharp teeth and a chain extending crab claw on one arm, and the hero getting his super powers from drinking the blood of a giant snake (like in Brave Archer) so the evil wizard wants to feed the hero to his gorilla (a man in a lousy costume) so it can claim the powers.
This film runs on lots of old fairy tale logic and fails to make it work but it's short and amusing.

Butterfly Murders - The first Tsui Hark directed film and it feels really different than his later films to me, maybe a bit darker and less crowd pleasing? I spent a long time assuming this was just a supernatural murder mystery but the martial arts gets going eventually and the later confrontations are more engaging. Not only is there wire-fu but some of the characters use wire devices extensively. Two of the heroes have great hair.

The Victim - Sammo Hung directing and co-starring with Bryan "Beardy" Leung. Quite similar to Knockabout but with a much more flawed maneuvering of the serious parts. Still a lot of fun and I increasingly appreciate Sammo directed fights after seeing more martial arts films.

The Pirate - Ti Lung as a sort of Robin Hood pirate. There is a battle between two ships at the start but most of the action is on land. It's fine.

The Shadow Whip - A young woman (Pei-Pei Cheng) and her uncle wield their whips brutally against large crowds of attackers. Some fight scenes are jerkily sped up and that doesn't work at all and the villain reveals himself in a really dumb way but it's pretty good overall. Pleasant snowy setting.

One Armed Swordsman - Maybe only a year ago I seen this? After hearing so much about how enormously influential this film is, I think maybe it's one of those innovative films that has been so thoroughly absorbed into culture that it just doesn't stand out that much anymore. I enjoy it okay but I cant imagine ever pressing anyone to see it unless they needed to see it for the historical importance.

Dragon Missile - Considered a sort of spiritual sequel to the Flying Guillotine films, this time with a set of boomerang swords doing the decapitations. These weapons cut through large rocks and steel poles yet they're somehow captured by nets! Most of the cast are villains, including Lo Lieh as the main character with boomerang swords.

The Lady Is The Boss - This is a lot of fun. Kara Hui comes from America to revitalize a failing martial arts school by recruiting at discos and teaching sex workers to protect themselves, but her crass American hucksterism, new approaches and take-no-shit-from-anyone attitude doesn't please everyone. There's disco fights, bicycle action, tiny children kickboxing and Gordon Liu looks pretty funny in disco clothes.
Some may be disappointed that the spotlight goes away from Kara Hui towards the end, but I'd recommend you seek this film out.

Lady Is The Boss has been on my list for ages and finally came to Amazon Prime (and general US distro?) a few months ago, gotta get to it

The first two are Shaw competitors that I learned about in this piece.
http://www.davidbordwell.net/essays/shaw.php

Jade Bow (1966) - The fighting isn't particularly noteworthy but it's a cute romance. A shame they couldn't show an onscreen kiss, looks like it's deliberately avoided to comply with censors.

Redress (1969) - A bit like King Hu, but the youtube version I could find was not the best way to view it, it had german dubbing and comedic English subtitles. I did quite enjoy the subtitles, with all the talk of Fanta and Sprite, and when a crowd is gathering their weapons the subtitles say "Get the cutlery! The Good stuff!"

Red Heroine (1929) - apparently the first wuxia film. Unfortunately I didn't get much out of it apart from some interesting hairstyles, storytelling techniques and the general look of the film was inevitably different from wuxia films I'm used to.

I hope Lady Is The Boss comes to the UK bluray series

Sad that Gordon Liu has been in a nursing home so long and with all those family troubles. I haven't seen much of his films but he's such an impressive looking guy.

Super Inframan - This is a Shaw Brothers attempt at the tokusatsu/kaiju genre with a bit more martial arts than I suppose is normal. A lot of people seem to love this (including Roger Ebert) but I just found it boring. Not just daft or outlandish enough to be fun for me. Some of the monsters were kind of funny riding in the speedboat but the only thing that really amused me was the villainess exclaiming "What a Chinese Inframan!" (possibly an inaccurate subtitle but I like the idea of a villain being upset at how Chinese an Inframan is, whatever that means).

I just talked about Legend Of The Mountain in the King Hu thread because there's hardly any martial arts in it.

not really the right thread but have you ever seen Big Man Japan Robert? i think you'd appreciate it.

Saw Super Inframan about a month ago, it was.. OK. I found it goofy and amusing, but it felt really, really long, though I don't think it actually was. The villainess was excellent though.

I've seen the trailer for Big Man Japan. I've heard it's good but I'm not really into kaiju films but maybe it gets by on the comedy? Is it that funny?

i think it's pretty funny yes, in a very dry way. kind of like Kaurismäki or somebody almost.

Someone said on a martial arts forum that 88 Films are going to start releasing Golden Harvest films, if that's true I'll be over the moon but getting released on a monthly basis like the Shaw films seems too good to be true right now. Must have been nice for anyone who was buying them when Hong Kong Legends was bringing them out on dvd, a lot of them are very expensive now. Iceman Cometh wasn't cheap.

Five Deadly Venoms on film4 tonight, englishers. 01:35...

My local Alamo has been showing a lot of the new-ish digital restorations, it's been awesome. Saw KING BOXER and THE DUEL (1971) for the first time, both had way more action and gore than I was expecting from that time period. CRIPPLED AVENGERS was also a real treat.

I missed Five Deadly Venoms but I needed my bed.

Rigor Mortis - Maybe the strangest tribute to an earlier era of films I've ever seen. There's nothing retro about it and the tone is completely different than the films its looking back to: kung fu comedy horror. This is bleak and everyone seems like they've fallen far from their glory days. It has some of the cast of Mr Vampire but I think it's better than Mr Vampire and with slightly better special effects I think this could have been something quite special. As it is, I still recommend it.

Long Road To Gallantry (1984) - Based on same source material as Jade Bow (1966) but with superior martial arts, Kara Hui and Rosamund Kwan. Soundtrack sounds very Italian at points, the first fight scene even has proggy keyboard bashing. Despite so many improvements on Jade Bow, I'm not sure it's definitely better.

I just got my Eureka copy of Iron Monkey. Next they're doing a box of Police Story 1-2! I haven't seen the second or third so I don't know why they stopped at the second.

Recently read criticisms of Celestial, who do the remasters of all the Shaw films. They cut out some scenes if they cant be restored to a certain standard and aren't integral to the story. I understand why this upsets fans but there aren't really many alternatives to a newbie like myself.

Can't see why you couldn't include an uncut version alongside the remaster on the disc

Not motivated by this particular revelation but I cant justify buying every release in 88's current Shaw series anymore, there's just too many other things I want. So I'm skipping Black Magic 2 (which I saw streaming and I just didn't like much) and Human Goddess (a pure comedy, which is valuable because it's a big side of HK cinema that most of the world never sees, but I'm just not interested enough). I just ordered Spiritual Boxer and will probably buy Vengeful Beauty.

I'm generally not that interested in the non wuxia stuff so that narrows it down a bit but I've got a pile of other DVDs I'm meaning to work thru

"Man of Tai Chi" (2013), Keanu Reeves' directorial debut, is a lot better than I expected: an old-fashioned story in a contemporary setting, simple but well paced, with entertaining fights in a variety of styles. Orderly public tournament matches are contrasted with manic underground fights to good effect. Keanu is Satanic as the big boss tempting the young master to misuse his art. He's a much better actor than martial artist and wisely keeps himself out of the action until the big showdown at the temple, where he sells the final scene pretty well in spite of moving like a marionette.

Good fighting! Keanu is edging into Pacino territory with his... weird stylized delivery of... every single line.

Is that the film where they couldn't get the camera they developed for the film? Wasn't the camera part of the purpose of the film?

I gather Keanu's original plan was to use some crazy new robot-arm camera that would move all around the fighters, including overhead, for long continuous shots, but when it came time for actual shooting they decided it wasn't practical to ship that gear to China.

The fights use a lot of energetic camera movement but are edited and framed so you can full-body movements and follow their continuity ... the overall look is pretty typical of good modern-day Chinese martial arts films.

On revisiting, I'm not sure I like Iron Monkey that much. There's some good moments but the tone is all over the place, even for this type of film and the use of the Once Upon A time In China theme music is annoying.

Bad guy really does say "King Kong Palm".

Are we talking about the 1993 Iron Monkey? The final fight scene on those flaming poles is all time :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC171lpPDt0

It's a memorable scene but other than that I don't think it stands up high in its era. You might have heard that the film was a huge flop until it got western distribution.

Eureka also releasing Project A parts 1-2 and City Hunter.

Very annoyed to find out the Police Story box set has audio and color correction issues. Apparently not completely Eureka's fault but Fortune Star sent them some older versions of the films (some said they lied about it too!), rather than all the newest masters for some of them. There is said to be a replacement coming in a month with all the right stuff.

I'm making do with this version of the box set. Absolute ton of extras and multiple versions of the two films.

Just watched Police Story 2. Might be better than the first in terms of overall quality but the first film is superior for it's best action scenes even if it does drag in the non-action scenes.

Further UK disc releases coming up

Eureka's Once Upon A Time In China trilogy box set (I wont be getting it as I bought the dvd set a couple of years ago).

88Films starting a Jackie Chan collection with To Kill With Intrigue and Dragon Fist.

Just saw that Once Upon a Time box. I've only ever seen the first, are 2 and 3 good?

I kind of prefer them, the first is a tad long.

Project A box set (two films) - Really impressed with these, the second film is one of the greatest sequels ever, but both are great fun, even better set than the Police Story 1-2 box, considering the films and their extras.

First film co-stars Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao (always happy to see him) and Dick Wei. Second film co-stars Maggie Cheung, Rosamund Kwan and features a really brilliant farce sequence in which lots of people gradually enter a house either avoiding each other or unaware of other presences.

There's lots of lengthy interviews in the features. Dick Wei is tired of playing villains and has an amazing house. Something that comes across from Yuen Biao and a lot of these actors is how eager to please large audiences they are, they even ask for negative feedback from fans (HK action films are one of the few instances where I think crowdpleasing doesnt necessarily mean garbage). Mars (who plays Big Mouth in this series) talks quite comfortably about the long line of cruel nicknames he has had, he called himself Mars because people often called him "the martian (that's one of the nicer ones).

Tony Rayns explains some political background, speculates about Jackie Chan's level of iinvolvement in the direction and wether he actually saw those Buster Keaton films that both films homage. I knew that a lot of Chan's fanbase had soured on him due to various politcal statements but I wasnt aware this was a widespread shift in Hong Kong and other parts of asia. Given what China has done to other huge film stars and celebrities who didnt toe the line, I'm willing to consider that Jackie Chan is understandably terrified of not doing so.

Now that UK labels have really started pushing this genre again like they haven't in too many years, I'm biting my fingernails wondering which old dvds to track down and what might plausibly come out on bluray soon. Maybe Eureka will stop after they release some big hits? Those Hong Kong Legends dvds can either be cheap or incredibly steep. Was disappointed see Dreadnaught is the latter but I can still get Magnificent Butcher and a few others for cheap.

Forthcoming

Eureka: Wheels On Meals
88 Films: Battle Creek Brawl and Snake & Crane Arts Of Shaolin

I like Wheels On Meals but it seems like an odd choice to me. Surprised Eureka hasn't went for Snake In The Eagle's Shadow yet. Maybe they felt it was too similar to Drunken Master to release so soon but Snake is so much better.

Are there any American labels with a martial arts line right now? Or anywhere else outside asia for that matter?

Watched the two Lo Wei directed/Jackie Chan starring films recently released by 88 Films: Dragon Fist and To Kill With Intrigue. I feel a tad sorry for Lo Wei because his reputation seems mostly based around Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan not getting on with him and that he supposedly didn't understand what they were trying to do and was trying to fit them both into an older mold (maybe the Jimmy Wang Yu mold), so Jackie is a very serious hero in these.

And people say that Wei wasn't a very good director but I still like these better than most of the hyped up Shaw Brothers films that 88 Films has released. Bonus features note that Spiritual Boxer was the first true kungfu comedy but I didn't think much of that one either. Dragon Fist and To Kill With Intrigue begin as straightforwardly as possible but they redeem themselves with the complexity of the fights. It's kind of refreshing to see the historians being frank about the films because as much as I appreciate c-man unearthing things and his commentary(I had NO IDEA he was a former ilxor member! He has some involvement with a great number of the films I've been buying over the past few years), his praise is excessive. Nice to see it acknowledged that when we buy these films, we're sometimes buying history more than entertainment.

In Dragon Fist Jackie hands out some surprisingly brutal beatings (a bit reminiscent of the one at the end of Police Story but less comedic). I'm not sure how the mother kills herself here, it looks like she quickly strained her own body to death through sheer will power.

To Kill With Intrigue has Hsu Feng (best known for her films with King Hu) and she has a little lakeside hut, I love these little hermit houses, there should be a video compilation of the best waterside hermit homes from martial arts films.

Snake & Crane Arts Of Shaolin - Often considered one of Jackie Chan's best early films. The first few scenes, the last fight and joke with the guy who keeps speaking in two word phrases are all great but everything else about it was tedious for me.
Beggar's Union and Fragrant Division are pretty good names for groups though.

I did not enjoy The Prodigal Son.

Very unsatisfying conclusion, with a baddie that weren't all that bad. Very little fu!

Not one of my favorite but I'm sure there are a few great people in there.

Eureka announced a Sammo Hung box set (Magnificent Butcher, Iron Fisted Monk, Eastern Condors) and I've heard about a few more coming (Warriors Two and Dragons Forever?). Filling in some gaps for me. I'm very happy about this but there really needs to be a new Spooky Encounters edition for people who haven't seen it.

people like me!

I think I got it under the (even worse) title Encounters Of The Spooky Kind. But it's great and it has one of the greatest film monsters, and unlike the other hopping corpse films, it has a really well thought out fighting style. Worst thing is that it pretty much drops the horror in the last part of the film, in favor of a black magic infused fight.

Will anyone vouch for the Jackie Chan films Crime Story, Protector and Miracles? I don't know anything about them.

Sammo Hung might have directed a Soul Calibur film. What a missed opportunity! But it went to the Final Destination and American Pie producer before dying.

Holy Weapon - with Michelle Yeoh and Maggie Cheung. Persistently silly, lots of gender bending, rape jokes tossed around everywhere, references to Evil Dead 2 and The Thing, a man who turns into a flying blade, metal winged men, a spider woman, a gloopy demon and most impressively, the fight scene where 6 women lock their bodies together to create a larger fighter.
Worth seeing for the audacious fights, some of which work amazingly well considering this couldn't have been that high a budget. How did the flying men and the 6 women fighter jumping around look so convincing?
I discovered this from Movie Bob showing a clip.

That sounds awesome!

I do wonder why it isn't better known considering the last fight. I youtubed it because its very hard to find and maybe only VHS, picture is a bit murky and English subtitles are half offscreen but I followed it fine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ9JnxgngG0

I hear that Flying Dagger from the same year is a semi-sequel, watch out because quite a few films are called Flying Dagger.
Here's the trailer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bAWBZB8kjc
Some reviews claim Maggie Cheung spends a lot of time screaming like a cat. Easier to find on disc too.

Holy Weapon - with Michelle Yeoh and Maggie Cheung. Persistently silly, lots of gender bending, rape jokes tossed around everywhere

― Robert Adam Gilmour

...yeah i feel like this is why i've kind of moved away from watching "classic" martial arts films

Just the rape jokes? (it's listed on Jing Wong's imdb as a trademark for him; he produced the Raped By An Angel series, the 4th film is subtitled Raper's Union)
or the silliness and gender bending too?

Sadly martial arts films aren't going to get better any time soon and I wouldn't be surprised if the rape jokes are still going.

Nice news for Region A viewers, a series from VCI
https://cityonfire.com/the-leg-fighters-blu-ray-vci-entertainment/

Somebody from Eureka said there's going to be a lot more martial arts next year. I'm wondering what's likely to be released because some things surprised me and I don't want to get Police Story 3 (wish it had been in the box set), Wing Chun, The Legend 1-2, Butterfly And Sword and Kung Fu Cult Master on dvd then have blurays turn up.
And apparently the Shaw Bros are coming back to 88 Films eventually.

nawww there's definitely a lot less rape jokes since the '90s

I thought it might be a possibility because Hong Kong seems to be the only place that still makes old school sex comedies (not that I care for them).

Next year from 88 Films: Heart Of Dragon (Sammo Hung/Jackie Chan) and Come Drink With Me.

The title is asinine, but Iron Fists and Kung Fu Kicks, now on Netflix, is a good documentary history of the genre.

I might go for it but I seen a really dreadful one earlier this year. Seems like Grady Hendrix is in this new one? Something I've never liked and makes me hesitant to see this new one, is when documentaries focus so much on the most popular things inspired by/based on the main subject matter.

The Eureka set of Sammo Hung films:

Iron Fisted Monk - I've seen few films that went to such lengths to make the villains so despicable. They kill a very old man, rape two girls (the film has become slightly notorious for this), bully children and headbutt an old lady. Film is far too long but mostly redeemed by the fights (for me at least). Probably included because it was Hung's directorial debut.

Magnificent Butcher - I was mistaken that this set is all directed by Hung, this one is actually by Yuen Woo Ping. Features a drunken laughing tramp with brilliant fighting skills, a bit like characters from other Ping and Hung films. I don't know if this is the role the director's dad was supposed to play because I've never seen him as a full-on drunk. It's fun enough but maybe it's just sitting in the shadow of similar films.

I cant recall which of these first two films contains the line "I hope your son is born with two arses, you'll be busy all day!", but that might be my favorite line from any martial arts film.

Eastern Condors - I've seen this one before, written about it upthread, my estimation of it has increased. For all the overly similar martial arts films, this is one of the less repeatable ones. Rumor says that Hung tried to fill this film with as much talent as possible so that Jackie Chan would have less people to choose from.
I still don't get why anyone says this is a mostly serious film, it's clearly still a comedy but with extra brutality and moments of seriousness.
Yuen Wah is particularly good in this; I didn't realise that this made him famous and that his role in Dragons Forever was essentially the same character, makes sense now in retrospect and I understand the temptation to re-use that character type.
Yuen Biao ripping off a snake's head was previously censored from export versions; some people are unhappy about this being fully uncut and it raises questions about films like Snake In The Eagle's Shadow (a cat fights a snake in the original). I like the idea of seing films as they were made/intended but I'm also worried less people will watch Snake In The Eagle's Shadow because that uncut scene is quite alarming (I'm guessing the snake's teeth were removed though, which is another cruelty but I think most of us are more worried about the cat).
Really unusual bonus feature: several of the stars performed a stage version of the story and we see excerpts from that.

I have to wonder about the film choices, were Knockabout and Progidal Son not chosen because Sammo is not in the lead role? When is Spooky Encounters coming? what films were available? Can we please have another Sammo set? But this set is a lovely unexpected gift. Must buy for region B viewers. Nice seeing all the original poster art too, older releases hardly ever shown you that.

A bit from the commentary: When Yuen Wah was cast in Australia with Hugh Jackman, he asked if he was going to fight Wolverine, then was told this wasn't an action film.

Checked around the Shaolin Chamber forum for best martial arts films of the last two decades and I'm a bit disappointed based on the ones I have seen, but I should check more out. Apparently Yuen Woo Ping never lost his touch, I should try True Legend and Master Z.

People seem excited about Scott Adkins, I actually hadn't heard of him but he's in Ip Man 4 and Triple Threat (with Tony Jaa, Iko Uwais and Jeeja Yanin). Oddly the gritty british hard bastard prison film Avengement appeals. All these films out just this year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUQzHB8hs_s

I've got a lot of Jet Li films to see but somehow he just never appealed to me as much as the other major stars.

Distribution is an obvious problem. I thought of getting Mrs K but it would have cost 30 pounds minimum. Some real digging and fan discussion is probably needed to highlight the best of recent times and more countries are making the stuff now. Are period films even viable on anything but a high budget now?

Mrs. K is pretty fun but probably less action than you would expect, it's a sorta ripoff of Taken - but with ass-kicking Kara Hui, so good! I saw a screening a few years ago. Definitely not worth 30 pounds tho.

True Legend and Master Z, though both imperfect, are recommended. (Particularly True Legend, which has a really bleh third act, but a great first 2/3rds).

How about The Thousand Faces of Dunjia and Crouchin Tiger Hidden Dragon 2?

Any other good stuff you seen recently?

8 Diagram Pole Fighter coming in march. Glad I held off on watching everything on prime streaming. 88 Films seem to be going with safer bets.

Zu Warriors From The Magic Mountain coming on bluray. A film I'll happily buy a second time.

Iron Fists And Kung Fu Kicks - Better than the other martial arts film documentaries I've seen so far (that's not saying much, some of them were godawful). Grady Hendrix is in it and he seems almost strangely passionate. I feel slightly guilty at enjoying the stories about the risks taken while filming.

I hate it when these documentaries spend so much time talking about how Hong Kong influenced american films but this additionally follows other kinds of influence (work out videos, dance, youtube, african films).

I wish it clearly labeled all the film clips it shows, especially when there are alternate film titles.

Although it did fire me up and make me want to see everything, I think there should be a tv series on this or even something that goes deeper into chinese film/tv history in general. Because the pure Hong Kong comedies are often referenced but rarely seen by western viewers and there's a whole lot of other things that probably should be discussed.

Police Story 3: Supercop - Really wish this was in the Eureka boxed set. Apparently it can be difficult to find a good version of this, there are a few mistitled or similarly titled films that people buy by accident. I got the Umbrella edition.
The train/helecopter/motorbike scenes with Michelle Yeoh are amazing.

Butterfly & Sword - Michelle Yeoh, Donnie Yen and a few other stars of the era (actually those two are still big stars). Some of the better wirework I've seen. Sadly the ending in my dvd version was cut off in an extremely clumsy fashion. Someone thought the ending was too sad! They should have cut a few seconds earlier.

Wing Chun - Michelle Yeoh and Donnie Yen again. Solid.

Flying Dagger - Jing Wong filmed this same year as Holy Weapon with much of the same cast. Fun to see Maggie Cheung ripping through a tree while screaming like a cat. Pretty costumes.

Kung Fu Cult Master - Imdb says that Jing Wong and Sammo Hung directed this together but Hung had no official credit onscreen.
This clearly was supposed to have sequels but they were cancelled (the translation of the Jin Yong novel should be coming out soon, so I can maybe find out if the incest-baiting wasn't just in my head. But he revises his novels a lot.) The old man embedded in the rolling stone ball is interesting.

Biggest flaw is how obviously sped up much of the film is, even dialogue scenes look like they are on fast forward. The lushness of the visuals makes it all the more awkward, if it was more cheap and nasty looking, it might have had a chance of working. A stunning blunder for such a big film.

Fate Of Lee Khan - As with other King Hu films, the buildup takes a very long time. This might be more inn-bound than Dragon Inn (someone in the features very aptly compared it to Fawlty Towers!), but the last third is excellent. I'm ranking this just after Legend Of The Mountain.
Only real flaw is that allies seem to just stand around watching each other fight when they most need assistance.

Fingers crossed that Eureka releases The Valiant Ones and Painted Skin.

Miracles/ Mr Canton & Lady Rose - Jackie Chan's 1930s HK gangster film. This is incredibly long, the international cut shaves off 20 minutes and it's kind of understandable.
I wasn't wowed by it but someone in the features makes a quite convincing argument that it shows Chan as a particularly strong director and ideally should have led to better things for him and maybe there was a huge missed opportunity.

The Protector - Jackie Chan teamed with James Glickenhaus in the hopes of doing something more serious and becoming a star in America.
I watched the HK version with added fights but after seeing the comparison feature, I realized that the american version would have been a better idea, as the non-dubbed dialogue gives the actors far more presence and it's more stylistically coherent. Glickenhaus' direction is deliberately slow and almost Michael Mann-ish at times.

Interview with Glickenhaus is great, he doesn't pull his punches about his dislike for the HK version and he talks at length how Golden Harvest didn't support Chan's ambitions and Chan possibly didn't put the right work into becoming a global star.
Some other good interviews about the american and hong kong crews working together.

Crime Story - Yet again Jackie Chan teamed up with a harder edged director in hopes of doing something more serious and fell out with Kirk Wong because he was ultimately too perverse for Jackie. Some deleted scenes are still vaulted. Why? It seems like this is part of Jackie's image control.
As seen in the documentary mentioned above, some buildings were blown up without permission; there's a genuine sense of danger in these scenes.
Like a more stylish, down to earth and dirty version of Police Story.

I watched David West's commentaries to Dragon Missile and Spiritual Boxer. I'm always in discussion with myself how much time and money I want to put into Chinese martial arts films but I'm really enjoying just learning about them, filling in the gaps, recognizing more and more actors, learning which actors were previously martial artists and who learned on the job.

West mentioned the freeze frame endings both times and although they are initially confounding I think they are often the best kind of endings. I generally dislike endings that settle down and tuck you into bed.
Bringing back more abrupt endings might be a risk but people might come around to them. I think Killer Joe had one of the best endings of relatively recent times.
I wonder how Peter Jackson's Return Of The King might have been if it had ended with a freeze frame of Golem falling in mid-air.

I'm not a big fan of Spiritual Boxer but somehow the brief scene of Lau Kar-Leung shouting and posturing with his top off made my week. I've never seen him like that.

More forthcoming UK disc releases: Throw Down, Clan Of The White Lotus and Operation Condor.

8 Diagram Pole Fighter - I had some misgivings about this to start with. It's often treated as the last great Shaw studio film but the fake plain at the start (why couldn't they have used a real one?) makes the battle look like a reenactment and the two heroes who spend much of the first half lashing out in anger and madness get really annoying. But the very high complexity of the end fight, the bamboo cart used like a cannon and the dental devastation redeems everything.
The studio was so confident about the film that there's some text at the end saying something like "an undeniably good film". This is relying heavily on the second half.

The final fight scene in "8 Diagram Pole Fighter" is thoroughly insane.

I keep meaning to see that one.
Saw Martial Club recently; not one of the best overall, but the final fight scene is spectacular. Also, Kara Hui A+ as always.

This is a pretty good guide to Shaw blurays around the world.
https://www.36styles.com/kungfufandom/index.php?/topic/22567-shaw-brothers-on-blu-ray/

Germany is doing quite a lot but it's strange how little common ground there is between countries.

The Eureka bluray of Wheels On Meals is pretty great for interviews (and the film better than I remembered, I totally forgot most of it somehow), especially with the american martial artists. Benny The Jet was so energized and inspiring.

There's a super long podcast about martial arts with Tarantino
https://pca.st/gc7rtv9w
List of films discussed
https://letterboxd.com/juanmotoa/list/pure-cinema-podcast-kung-fu-cinema/

Was quite annoyed he was so positive that Kao Pao-shu/Gao Baoshu was THE ONLY female martial arts director. I'd be surprised if she and Pearl Chang were the only two.

Wikipedia says Dark Lady Of Kung Fu is a sequel to Wolf Devil Woman so I might check that out soon.

I don't suppose that's transcribed anywhere, because I am not gonna invest 2 and a half hours into that

I wouldn't recommend it that much. Quentin spends at least the first 15 minutes talking about people he interviewed early on (no martial arts people) and his voice is really echoey (I thought the technical things like that wouldn't be an issue for him).

Most interesting for me was how he rates Lo Lieh as the best martial arts actor, he thinks Jimmy Wang Yu was a really great director and talks about double and triple bill combinations that get an audience excited. It's very fixated on the early 70s, that seems to be his preference.

Didn't know Lee Yi Min starred in a Kamen Rider knockoff called Super Rider, but not so sure it is a complete knockoff because Toei are listed as the co-producers.

QT wrote a long article about Jimmy Wang Yu if you're more interested in that:
https://thenewbev.com/tarantinos-reviews/wang-yu-superstar-super-director/

I read a bit of it but I mostly taken away his main recommendations, which he also talked about in the podcast. Most of the films he talks about are on the Wu-Tang Collection on youtube, which seems sorta legit (they're on amazon prime) but I can't imagine they own the rights to them all or that they're public domain. I'm sure there's some Golden Harvest films in there.

Kind of taken me by surprise that Wang Yu is rated as such a great director because I've never before heard anyone say anything positive about him. Everything is about how badly he treated people, being accused of murder or that he didn't cut the mustard as a martial arts performer (Tarantino disputes this last part but admits his kicks weren't very good).

a timely thread. i only know the most famous martial arts movies and would like to know more. i watched the jet li 'fist of legend' tonight with my kids and they liked it.

we're going to watch 'wing chun' tomorrow (my third time seeing it)

I've got a ton of stuff lined up and I'm kind of impatient to order more but want to wait til things are a bit safer.

i don't think Wang Yu is - this is Tarantino talking him up because of his lack of fame, imo

Zu Warriors From The Magic Mountain - I was happy to buy this again because it's one of my favorite films ever. I still don't completely understand it (a lot of that is due to fast dialogue, and I only have so much patience for rewinding to re-read it all).

I was surprised to hear this was initially a flop. Now it seems like the main cinematic foundation for every chinese fantasy blockbuster. depending on how specific you want to be about approaches to wuxia, this can be considered the first of a certain kind of wuxia and I haven't seen or heard of anything bettering it.
The costumes and designs are wonderful (I think Brigette Lin has as many as 3 different costumes/hairstyles and they're all great) and the wirework scenes at least seem to me a lot more complex than almost any other film I can think of.

Interesting things from the Tony Rayns commentary:
Talking about Stanley Kwan's documentary on gender flipping in chinese film, I'd love to see this.
I didn't know that this was an adaptation (don't know why I was surprised because most fantasy leaning wuxia films seem to be adaptations of books), he says that Tsui Hark only did a very loose adaptation and wasn't interested in following what the novels were actually about. Rayns says the book series by Huanzhulouzhu is 64 books but I seen one listing saying 8 books; perhaps there's a core series and various spinoffs? Only the prequel is available in english and I'm hoping the recent Jin Yong and Gu Long translations make this series a possibility in english print.

The bonus interviews included are very long so the Eureka version has a lot that the Hong Kong Legends bluray didn't.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ku3kF6xZdeQ

Deadful Melody - A Story about a magic lyre which isn't particularly well told; Yuen Biao doesn't make notable use of his talents and Brigitte Lin completely steals the film from him (they were both in Zu Warriors From The Magic Mountain too). The villains are colorful (in the most literal sense) and all the best scenes are the ones with the lyre (and the big drum and hammer at the end), often creating explosions from Lin's rapid playing; it's worth seeing just for these few good things.

The Optimum dvd has an annoyingly small screen size (why was this so common back then?)

Story is based on a Ni Kuang novel. I'm surprised how often and where his name pops up. There's another Wisely film in production. Check his credits and biographies.

"a Chinese author whose life began unpromisingly as a teenage drop-out, before his swift rise through the ranks of the Communist Party security police. Accused of counter-revolutionary activities, he fled to Hong Kong in 1957 and embraced anti-Communist fiction with all the zeal of a convert
...
In public punditry, Ni presented a grim view of the future. Based on his own experience, he predicted that China's rising middle class would not become a catalyst for democracy, but merely a fresh crop of potential Communist stooges. Fearful for the consequences of the 1997 Handover for dissenting voices, he left for San Francisco in 1992, only to return in 2006, claiming neither he nor his wife could ever fit in. Hong Kong remained his home thereafter, but his antipathy for the Communist regime did not slacken in later years. In a 2009 interview, he provocatively announced that he was less afraid of China during the purges of the Mao era, since the worst possible danger to the world would be presented by a predatory capitalist system run by a dictatorial elite."

http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/ni_kuang
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ni_Kuang
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0393250/?ref_=ttfc_fc_wr4

I knew that name sounded familiar... he's done a bazillion Shaw movies

This trailer shows some of the cool bits
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F542CJFAIwE

I'm starting to use this thread to remember which Shaw films I've actually seen.

Some nice posters here
https://drelium.wordpress.com/2014/04/05/my-fan-arts/
I maybe like this one best because it has a 16-bit vibe
https://drelium.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/gwgex3_tsang2.jpg

how is Birth Of The Dragon? it's been on film4 recently.

Zu Warriors goes on the wishlist, i think.

Birth of the Dragon?
iirc that's the movie that's supposedly about Bruce Lee but makes it about some random white guy

Eureka just announced Mr Vampire. I've never liked it much (Encounters Of The Spooky Kind is superior) but I'm looking forward to the features.

Something else from Tony Rayns Zu commentary: he talks a bit about Mou Tun-fei, best known for the infamous Men Behind The Sun. Rayns says two of his earliest films are two of the nastiest sexploitation films, I think both were banned and his last film was never released (I think it was much like Men Behind The Sun). There's an interview/documentary about him on youtube.

How dare, I love Mr.Vampire! Honour the hopping vampires!

The hopping vampire in Encounters Of The Spooky Kind is superior, one of the best movie monsters ever.

I really gotta find a good copy of that

The sequel isn't as good but has some hilarious bits.

If I was a trillionaire I'd try to get Sammo to make a third film in the series.

I've heard that Mr Vampire 3 is quite good but most of the hopping corpse films are supposed to be total dross.

> Birth of the Dragon?
> iirc that's the movie that's supposedly about Bruce Lee but makes it about some random white guy

i see what you mean. i'd only seen the first 2 minutes and that was all subtitled, but 5 minutes in it's already all about the white guy and how the temple was against bruce lee because he was half-white, let alone teaching white guys.

Bride With The White Hair getting a Eureka bluray. It doesn't include the sequel (I've never heard that it's a step down). My Tartan dvd copy is shockingly bad for such a good label.

Someone from Eureka says there's hopefully going to be a Michelle Yeoh box set.

I had a fairly long list of Wu Tang Collection (youtube channel) films to watch but I ended up only watching one of them because most of them seem to have multiple problems. Older martial arts fans might say I'm a brat spoiled by the last 15 years of mostly reliably good disc versions (some of the earliest dvds are terrible) but I say why bother when there's a steady stream of remasters coming out?
The problems included bad picture quality, wrong aspect ratio, english dubbing and worst of all: screen cropping. Some fans actually seek out english dubs but wrong aspect ratios and screen cropping just destroy films.

The one that was scratchy but watchable was Crystal Fist/Jade Claw. It's not particularly distinct, I'm guessing the fights are the only reason anyone remembers it but I wouldn't really recommend it.

Kinda funny to see Eureka be the best label hands down in rereleasing Hong Kong cinema stuff but still sniffily witholding the Masters Of Cinema distinction even for releases directed by Tsui Hark or Jackie Chan when Criterion at this point has caved in and does a Bruce Lee boxset.

Drunken Master was in their Masters Of Cinema series, which is funny because it's really not one of his best films and as far as I know, Bruce Lee's films aren't often considered the best in the genre (apart from himself of course).

I think all the King Hu reissues have been in the Masters Of Cinema series and most of them fit comfortably enough in the genre.

I think it's wonderful that both Eureka and 88 Films are both sort of doing this together (much of the releases have the same reissue credits), but why has Arrow released so few martial arts films? They really ought to get in on it.

How did I miss this thread before now? Catnip!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaH_u3VlGjg

Great thread, btw, glad it's on my radar now.

Yeah they include King Hu but his stuff is more self-consciously "classy" than yer average Hong Kong actioner. All great stuff, don't get me wrong.

88 Films sorely lacking in extras featuring Nicky Wire in a banana suit.

King Hu is definitely more refined but I never thought there was anything self-conscious about it. And I never felt that the Chinese arthouse directors who do martial arts stuff needed to distance themselves and they always use the same actors that everyone else does. King Hu was an architect of the genre in the early days when the language was being properly established so I'm not sure it would occur to him to want to psychological distance himself from Chang Cheh or whoever else.

Kinda disagree on that one, at least A Touch of Zen feels like it's shooting for way higher than the average pic at the time. Of course, it's amazing, so who cares I guess

It has higher aspirations but I never saw any evidence that any of those kind of directors were pretending to be working in a wholly different tradition or that they hadn't seen the regular martial arts films. Touch Of Zen and Legend Of The Mountain have different priorities most of the time but Come Drink With Me and Fate Of Lee Khan are fairly straight forward.

I was surprised to find out that in italy, guys like Lucio Fulci could hang out with the arthouse directors.

But I did see Hsiao-Hsien Hou say that he thought super elaborate fights were annoying and that he wanted The Assassin to have a samurai film simplicity.

Comics writer Joshua Dysart made this list about Hong Kong cinema in general and I found the comments at the bottom really interesting discussion about the fate of the industry.
https://letterboxd.com/joshuadysart/list/the-annotated-story-of-hong-kong-cinema/detail/

Great list there! Very interesting.

Man, I'd love to see some of those Shaw Bros 'James Bond' knock offs, can't seem to find them after a surface search, need to dig deeper I guess.

Best awkward english title: A Punch To Revenge

Never even heard of this one, but I'm sure I'll buy it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kku4szSBGx8

Aw, was hoping that would be a different "The Master", with Chen Kuan-Tai.

It does look fun though!

Holy Flame Of The Martial World - This barely ever stops moving, not easy to keep up with; quite similar to Buddha's Palm but slightly less overt fantasy (still wild). Features lots of magic beams, magic swords, reanimated imported corpses, warriors that come out of paintings, hand animated neon ghosts, a technique called "ghostly laughter" that maddens and blows opponents away (some people are able to defend themselves by rolling up their ears as if they had muscles to do so).
It's good fun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke-9n2xcUiY

Agreed! was lucky enough to catch a screening of that a while back. very goofy

Do you see these things at festivals or is it just a local cinema that specializes?

I still need to see Demon Of The Lute, not sure how many more films are like this from this era.

A local cinema. iirc this was an unofficial screening, so I won't say which chain it was... you can guess.
I feel like there are tons of these kinds of weird magical fantasy-type action movies in the early 80s that are largely forgotten. At least John Carpenter noticed them at the time!

I hear that Taiwan did quite a lot of them. Films like Ginseng King, Magic Of The Universe and the Child Of Peach trilogy are starting to mix in my memory a bit.

https://letterboxd.com/ninjadomoesq/list/weird-and-wonderful-cinema-from-the-far-east/

Cynthia Rothrock’s early 90’s DTV action films are always worth a good laugh

Tsui Hark’s The Blade (1995) is probably my favourite Hong Kong martial arts film ever. Staggeringly beautiful

It's quite weird too. I wonder if if Hark's career would have been different if it had succeeded, because I've heard he was heartbroken that it flopped.

I feel like there are tons of these kinds of weird magical fantasy-type action movies in the early 80s that are largely forgotten. At least John Carpenter noticed them at the time!

Did Zu: Warriors From The Magic Mountain start this trend, or is it just that that's the one most western fans saw and so ppl just assume?

Buddha's Palm came out the previous year but ZWFTMM feels a lot more modern and its dna carried on more. There's supposed to be lots of chinese fantasy films in the 40s or 50s that inspired ZWFTMM, but I'm sure they were very different. I've never seen a trace of them, I guess a lot of this stuff is lost?

The BFI did a Chinese Cinema retro some years ago and I was v pleasantly surprised to see a 30's Wong Fei-hung film in there (didn't actually see it tho - turned up on the wrong day!), so while I'm sure lots of it will be lost I also wouldn't discard the possibility that some of it isn't - whether anyone will ever reissue it in the West is a different matter...

Clan Of The White Lotus - Lo Lieh directs and plays the villain; the highlights for me were seeing Gordon Liu's tiger style, his collaborative fighting and Kara Wai teaching him how to fight like a woman (part of this includes sewing and looking after her baby); love it when they bend over backwards and swirl their arms.

Yeah, that's a great one. It's sorta a remake of Executioners from Shaolin with Chen Kuan-tai, and has Gordon Liu in it for like five minutes, which is also good

This was pretty interesting, lot's of suggestions and info to unpack.

https://purecinemapodcast.libsyn.com/kung-fu-cinema-with-quentin-tarantino

Operation Condor (extended cut) - I saw the regular cut of this many years ago and don't remember the half of it (the extra scenes don't even explain how much seemed new to me). I think it's one of Jackie Chan's most impressive films in many ways but both versions drag a bit, epsecially the desert scenes. The 3 women take quite a beating and there's a lot of stereotypes but most of the first half and the fan scenes at the end are really good.

Pretty sure I caught that in theaters, six years after the original release when it finally came to the US via Miramax (maybe). It was just OK, I remember, but def not as good as Supercop.

...holy crap, that was the woman from Matador?

Heart Of Dragon - Sammo Hung directs and in an interview he joked that maybe Rain Man was a ripoff of this film. Cop (Jackie Chan) looks after his mentally disabled brother (Sammo Hung) who keeps getting into trouble. For a touching family drama, the body count is pretty high, lots of criminals are straight up murdered.
I watched the extended version, there was a lot of soundtrack options and the Japanese music was the default version. It's by Kazuo Shiina (Moonriders), so it's a bit new wavey and Chan does some singing on it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcS41yNaDR4

I really liked it. Lots of Jackie's team gets to shine.

It was called First Mission in Japan, can't find the full soundtrack on youtube
https://www.discogs.com/Kazuo-Shiina-Jackie-Chan-The-First-Mission-Original-Soundtrack/master/1486382

For a touching family drama, the body count is pretty high, lots of criminals are straight up murdered.

lol

Oddly it might be just as violent as The Protector and Crime Story but with a different tone.

I take the insane tonal shifts in stuff like Heart Of The Dragon as an integral part of the greatness of Hong Kong cinema but the same thing still registers as a flaw when I'm watching a Hollywood film. Perhaps I should work at trying to remedy that.

Never much bothered me in hong kong films as it does in a lots of japanese cartoons/videogames where you're expected to shift from silly to super-super-serious in much more jarring ways I think.

Totally the opposite to me, with anime/videogames/manga I find it much easier and less jarring

Eastern Condors might be a good reference point for this.

I was watching some fighting game trailers the other day and the angsty earnestness and determined+EMOTIONAL+stylish thing really irritates me, maybe there's more of it now in martial arts cinema now but I can't really see much of that in 60s-90s martial arts films.

I wish more fighting games just tried to be like the big crossover games or Power Instinct.

Are you excited for Dan's return to SFV? I know I am!

I really like Dan but I never play any of these games I just watch footage occasionally. Oro seems like the most exciting comeback, always loved him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3d_KzGfo2lU
I always thought there must have been pressure on Chan because regardless of where he lives, he's still the most famous chinese actor, but these people know better than me and it is disappointing how he seems to think. Lots of people saying in the comments that his reputation in HK was already being destroyed by his affairs, the situation with his daughter (Chan has said that he had an illegitimate child because everyone else did), treatment of a nanny and other things.

Love that "nice parking" bit, before Seinfeld, or was that already something people used to joke about?

One thing I read about Sammo Hung though, is that he got a huge backlash from a HK public that would have preferred he had a open secret affair than the divorce he had.

Interesting video

I assumed (maybe wishful thinking) that he was clearly pressured into his pro-govt stances but that video mostly makes the argument that his turn was deliberate and willful

Was surprised to find out Tsui Hark was always pro-reunification. I knew he was a young leftie, but had assumed he'd be close enough to China to be a bit more critical.

Chan once gave a stupid essentialist answer, like "democracy can't work in China because the chinese are too chaotic".

I think Hark's views did become more much more tempered over time but apparently he and his friends had a very idealized view of communist china when they were young.

Question is: which HK film people are openly critical?

And I wonder about Chan calling america "most corrupt country in the world" and discouraging his fans from watching his american films. Sounds weirdly calculated to me.
He once said that his american films weren't good because he was unable to communicate with everyone properly but I doubt they're his worst films.

Depends which ones we're talking about. I don't think you could pay me to watch Skiptrace.

I think it's fair to say the American movie industry didn't "get" Chan and that even his best US stuff is marred by too much plot, not enough stunts. His early erotic cinema roles are probably worse tho.

Question is: which HK film people are openly critical?

Anthony Wong and Chow Yun Fat (who has also recently given away his fortune, so a good egg all around).

Isn't Anthony Wong known for being generally outspoken and was in Hard Boiled but still dismissive of John Woo generally? My Spooky Encounters book said his career suffered for things like that but he's never been out of work and he hardly seems relegated to low budgets when you see his cv.

I don't know much about Wong tbh, apart from that I used to belong to a forum where everyone referred to him as Anthony MOTHERFUCKING Wong.

Dragon Lord (extended cut) - This version also has different takes, I've never seen the normal version but this was far too long and it didn't really get good until the second half. Odd that it ends with a big rugby match instead of a fight.

Dragons Forever (extended japanese version) - It was only 2017 the first time I saw this, this time I'm more struck by how preposterous the last court scene is, stretching even the allowances of this style of comedy and maybe that scene of Biao trying to kill Jackie's girlfriend too; but it's still a really good film. Again, I love Yuen Wah and his fast cigar puffing. I like the way Benny Urquidez smiles when he's working, as if he just loves being a drug criminal.
I'm glad this version incorporates the extra Yuen Biao scenes.

Bonus features has more interviews than I have time for but there's a different Benny Urquidez interview from the one on the Wheels On Meals bluray, his mother was a wrestler, his father a boxer and his brother was also in martial arts, he says that he still has all the same capabilities as his 25 year old self and he felt that he helped break the standard pacing of fights in martial arts films. If he weren't so nice he might have seemed very full of himself.

Throw Down - This is very stylishly shot and I've never seen anything quite like it, but I found the eccentricity a bit too affected. It's partly a homage to Kurosawa's Sanshiro Sugata (which I've never seen). It's from 2004 and the characters play Virtua Fighter 4 and SNK vs Capcom.

Have you seen To's crime stuff? Perhaps an easier point of entry. A martial arts director he ain't, despite that being the subject.

I haven't. He's got 71 director credits, which is surprising to me, considering the style of the film I saw.

Shit, really? Get a hold of the Election films, Drug War, Breaking News and Exiled, and see if you want to go down the rabbit hole after that.

I'll take note but I'm starting to come to terms with the idea that I have more things I want to investigate than I have time for and I try to watch one film per week to cope with all my other interests. I've also realized that the main purpose of human interaction is to create cool things and recommend them to each other and get out of each other's way as soon as possible.

fair enough... i tend to ingest too many movies or video games or comic books and I get that it's impossible to maintain all those hobbies all the time

I've nearly came to the end of my current disc pile so I will be ordering another pile soon and it will mostly be new releases because there is a lot of good stuff coming out.

Is New Fists Of Fury and Shaolin Wooden Men worthwhile? Because I feel like I could have skipped some of the other early Jackie Chan films.

I've been wondering if there's a BDSM themed martial arts film. Seems unlikely because so many martial arts actors have a really clean cut image. People sometimes joke that Jackie Chan likes getting beaten and humiliated in his films more than other action heroes.

Dragon/Wuxia - Donnie Yen fights Kara Wai and Jimmy Wang Yu. There's a lot of good stuff in this and I liked the detective character but there's a bit of special effects overkill. Why didn't the detective recieve any blowback from anyone for injuring Donnie's shoulder?

isn't that basically the plot of A HIstory of Violence? I saw that in the theater

Yeah, that movie surprised me, better than I expected. Did love those appearances by the old heads.

A lot of it was just like A History Of Violence but there's a One Armed Swordsman callback which is also maybe important or maybe just thrown in there. I don't recall there being a detective with a large part in A History Of Violence.

In the extras Donnie said the cows were literally people wearing dead cows from the butcher.

I keep having to remind myself just how long Donnie Yen has been in the game (since at least 1984), his first roles were starring roles in Yuen Woo Ping films but I haven't seen any of his 80s films. Similarly had to remind myself that Jet Li is old but I have seen Shaolin Temple from 1982.

Fearless Hyena - Jackie Chan's first directed film and I didnt really dig it much. The fighting is fine/good but almost everything about it seems like worn out tropes.

Young Master and Lucky Stars box set (3 films) announced.

I think I've seen two Lucky Stars films but I've never been sure what it was really about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_Stars

I've only seen My Lucky Stars, but the sexual politics, esp. the excruciatingly extended gang rape "comedy" bit, were completely ruinous imo, no way to enjoy the action after striking such a deeply sour note. And from what I've read the sequel goes back to the exact same well

I'm sure I've at least seen the third one and a lot of it was the gang of guys perving over Rosamund Kwan and it was uncomfortable.

It's weird, on forums I go to concerned with models/actresses I see tv/films clips from all over the world with the exact same sense of humor as 70s british comedy (Carry On, Window Cleaner, etc), 70s italian sex comedies and Lucky Stars.
Russia, Nigeria and Thailand are still making comedy EXACTLY the same but Hong Kong sex comedies seem to have moved on a bit at least.

tbh I probably could have shrugged off more subtle examples of mid-80s sexism or even misogyny, but the bit just felt like it went on *forever*, making you feel more and more bummed and complicit in it as it dragged on

It was similarly a series of scenes in the third film that escalated. And I bloody hate coy cheekiness.

Time And Tide and One Armed Boxer coming from Eureka

Yup, preordered those. I have very fond memories of Time and Tide, someone on the Criterion forums said the first hour is almost like a Wong Kar Wai film.

Possibly not the greatest showcase of martial arts, though certainly an action movie.

One of Hark's American films with Van Damme and Rodman came out too, is it possibly worth a look? Right now I don't fancy it.

The Master (Tsui Hark, Jet Li, Yuen Wah) is pretty good. It's about chinese and mexican immigrants in america, lots of language barrier/culture clash comedy. The fall off the skyscraper at the end is pretty spectacular.
Bonus interviews include Yuen Wah and John Kreng talking about near death experiences (I still want to know how many people have died making HK action films, everyone seems to nearly die).
Crystal Kwok became a director but still only has one film but it sounded interesting, she is chinese american, exactly what she plays in The Master.

Encounters Of The Spooky Kind coming on bluray!

good news to hear, i may actually pick it up this time

You just got a multiregion player?

If you haven't seen this yet please do
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LISgv3LcenQ

Maybe if it comes to streaming...

Just finished the Lucky Stars trilogy set. As far as I could tell it was always about a group of small time criminals who work with the police. They all act like sex criminals too, there's a scene in the second film which is meant to be a joke but looks like a scene from Repulsion. Jackie Chan and Yuen Biao are secondary characters and work in some stunts, some of them really amazing (car jumping scene is preposterous). The extended version of the third film included a ton of stuff I didn't remember. Sex crime comedy aside, they're all good and I think the second film might be the best of them. Third film has Michelle Yeoh's first fight scene.

Richard Ng interview was interesting. Acted in the UK before any hong kong credits and even went back and made appearances in The Bill, Red Dwarf and River City (!!!). He said that Jackie Chan moved away from comedy for a time because Golden Harvest told him the japanese audience didn't get the comedy. John Sham (guy with glasses and wild hair) was in real life just like the protester he plays in the first film and he got on blacklists for his activism.

Richard Norton talked a lot about the rock bands he had been a bodyguard for and what exercises he taught them. I just looked up his credits and didn't know he was one of the Imperators in Fury Road.

Kinda tempted to watch commentaries, I like the trivia a bit too much

Young Master - I really like the long fight at the end, somebody in bonus features said this and Drunken Master 2 had the longest fights he knew of (I think he said about 18 minutes), I'd like to see someone try for longer. In this new release there are 3 versions of the film (but yet another exists), Jackie Chan originally wanted to release his 3 hour version of it and I'm really glad he didn't because it's a bit long as it is, so there was a lot of footage to make different versions from.

One Armed Boxer - Had a blast with this! Just a lot of pulpy comic book energy to it - the pan-Asian league of super villains, the silly special effects, the funky soundtrack featuring a repeated outright lifting of "Theme From Shaft". The camerawork is unusually dynamic for its time, and director/star Jimmy Wang Yu is invested in delivering the goods; the majority of the film is comprised of fights, and the recovery is dealt with not even through a montage but just by way of some still photographs. I understand the reservations concerning ppl who watch Asian films for their "zaniness", but sometimes awesome madness is awesome madness no matter where it comes from.

Haven't got that one yet but there's a whole slew of new stuff coming from 88Films, including Shaw films I've never heard of (Flag Of Iron, Disciples Of Shaolin) and some branching out in genres (Stephen Chow's Forbidden City Cop) and Chinese Boxer, Story Of Ricky and Robotrix. I've never been interested in Erotic Ghost Story but I've seen people insist recently that its nutty and genuinely good in parts, so I might.

are there any steven chow movies on a par with king fu hustle in terms of mass appeal?

Is Shaolin Soccer too obvious?

I thought he directed all his comedies but quite a bunch of them aren't

Shaolin Soccer is my fav. it starts smaller and then ramps up the absurdity more and more throughout until the ridiculous end, whereas KFH kinda of starts at 11 and then goes until the needle is off the page (not a knock - that's a feature not a bug)

Always enjoyed the pants on the face bit, seems like a parody of the humiliation heroes endure in martial arts films before they bounce back

Arrow just announced they're doing Shaw Brothers films and Eureka annunced Duel To The Death.

Of all these new blurays, Bride With The White Hair has the most new bonus features, hours of interviews. A lot of emphasis on Ronny Yu trying to make an epic on low budget with international appeal, oddly enough the sex/nudity was considered very daring at the time for star actors. It was the first dolby HK film and he had to fight to get HK cinemas to adapt to this and he got a superstar costume designer.

Lots of sleeve notes about Brigitte Lin, her early romance films pretty much unknown overseas but a big part of her reputation was built on them. Retired at 40 and has no interest in returning. Sad.

I've never seen any of the Swordsman trilogy but the notes got me excited for them. Please box set please.

Also didn't know Ronny Yu directed The 51st State

Lots of sleeve notes about Brigitte Lin, her early romance films pretty much unknown overseas but a big part of her reputation was built on them. Retired at 40 and has no interest in returning. Sad.

Nah man, good for her! Not like the careers of any other modern HK stars produced their best work after that age.

She did have the philosophy of quitting while she was on top. Maggie Cheung said she only acts when something attractive comes along. But it's been said that HK actresses tend to retire when they get married. Rosamund Kwan and Joey Wong retired in the 00s.

I've heard this was true of korean actresses too (anyone know???). Lee Yeong-ae stopped acting after Lady Vengeance but she came back, somebody said she retired but maybe it was just a break for her children?

When it's tied to marriage and probably looks, hard to feel okay about it. Didn't silent actresses retire early too? Mary Pickford said she didn't want to spoil her public image.

I know Bong Joon-ho made Mother as a vehicle for Kim Hye-ja, who plays a lot of maternal roles in South Korean film and TV, so there is a space in that country for older female actors, though the transition from starlet/idol to those roles I'm sure is tricky (in the West too!).

If Brigitte Lin retired due to ageism/getting married I agree that's sad but I guess I've always seen the story spun as "she retired at the height of her fame and hasn't returned despite numerous requests", so unless there's some other info I'm sticking with that.

In the sleeve notes for Bride With White Hair she said she got that advice early on and seemed to always keep it in mind. She said she barely slept in the 70s because she was always filming, I guess that probably contributed.

I knew Moon Lee became a dancer but some guy claiming to be her ex-husband has a super creepy blog about her.

She did the classic starlet "marry a billionaire and retire forever" move, but it actually worked out for her, unlike Michelle Yeoh or Scarlet Johansson.

Yeoh and Johansson never meant to retire did they?

Just on reading about Lin today there has been rumors for years about she and her husband cheating on each other and possibly divorcing but also denying this.

Scarlet probably didn't mean to retire... I thought Yeoh did though

so has anybody checked out the, uh....(can't believe it's called this)....Hi-YAH! channel on Amazon?

i only signed up to watch Flash Point for free but it's 2.99 a month. haven't seen what else is on there yet.

So was The Karateeee CHOP! Channel already taken or

wtf is with the audio quality on this, everybody's speaking voice sounds like John Wetton on a King Crimson album

reverb all over the place

I was having a lot of misgivings about it but I taken the plunge on the Shawscope and Cinematic Vengeance boxed sets. I'll just try and pace myself on it and hope there's lots of shirtless men.

I do worry about how collectory this stuff is becoming. Some of the 88 Films releases seem overly fancy. A slipcase almost always seems like a waste to me, do we really need posters, cards and booklets with thick paper? Most of the time all of these images and content could have been fit into a booklet with thinner paper inside the bluray cases.
I always ask this question about book publishers doing expensive collectors editions, is all this necessary to keep these releases coming?

On the bright side, only a few years ago I was complaining about how little old martial arts films were getting released/watched and now 3 film labels are righting that situation and bringing it to a new audience.

https://arrowfilms.com/product-detail/shawscope-volume-one-limited-edition-blu-ray/FCD2076

https://eurekavideo.co.uk/movie/cinematic-vengeance-limited-edition-box-set-2000-copies/

Thank you for supporting the cause! I can't bring myself to drop that much money on 'em...

A couple of weeks ago I was convinced I couldn't be bothered, but the promise of twisting muscles and getting used to the idea that I can spread the viewing over months or years to suit my moods, then I felt better about it. I've let some books sit for 15 years so why not let some films wait a few years?

I do worry about how collectory this stuff is becoming.

Think it's been pretty collectory from the get-go. I don't care about posters, cards, etc either - just junk that I feel a slight guilt in throwing away - but there's clearly a subset of fans that do.

I think a certain amount of collector bait in the packaging is wise, in the form of design uniformity. But Robotrix and Erotic Ghost Story getting their prices bumped up by this extra stuff feels like a bad sign.

Thread regulars should check out this twitter account: https://twitter.com/FortunesFits

so I started watching Killer Clans and was enjoying it but had to pause, and came here to search if anybody else had posted about it, and I find my post from 5 years ago when I watched it. which I completely forgot.

My brother sent me this chainsaw fight from Tiger On The Beat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ3nUEIKdqA

That was fun. Gordon Liu! (makes sense, it's a Lau Kar Leung movie)

Legendary Weapons Of China bluray coming. Glad I held out on this.

Saw that one years ago, love it

This article by Grady Hendrix is quite a history lesson: https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/the-deuce-notebook-chess-boxing-mad-monkeys-and-the-kung-fu-apocalypse

I'm looking forward to These Fists Break Bricks: How Kung Fu Movies Swept America and Changed the World, by Hendrix and Chris Poggiali ... 432 pages, tons of illustrations, out September 15.

^Great article, thanks!

I didn't realize that Yuen Biao plays two of the corpses in Encounters Of The Spooky Kind.

Duel To The Death is rad - hadn't heard much about it before so went in with low expectations but I'd rate it above a lot of more canonized efforts from the era. Lots of insanity involving special effect enhanced ninjas, but also perhaps the most convincing anti-violence wuxia I've seen? Interesting that even though it is much more charitable towards the Japanese than most HK efforts, stuff like Fist Of Fury still had Japanese actors but this is an all Hong Kong cast.

Totally, Duel to the Death rules. A little overlooked, for sure

With the more features, commentaries and writing I've went through, it's clear by at least the late 80s how much they were trying to satisfy japanese audiences and businesses and more japanese actors were coming in who wanted to be in HK films. Think of the HK adaptations of manga in the 90s too.

I thought this revive would be about the video in the North Korea thread

Didn't realize that even at the height of their powers, Bruce and Jackie still used doubles for certain moves, like tricky gymnastics.

Like Young Master and Dragon Lord with Hwang In-shik, Snake In The Eagle's Shadow also has a korean villain: Hwang Jang-lee. Always loved his look in this film.

I've been racking my brain trying to think of martial arts films without heroes and I can't think of any.

Doublepack of Warriors Two/Prodigal Son coming

In a recent commentary I was fascinated by how Cantonese swearing onscreen is more controversial than any amount of sex or violence in HK. Despite how commonly used the curse words are, they can shoot up a rating like nothing else.

Robotrix - I had never heard of this before the 88Films bluray was announced but I seem to be forever finding out about hong kong films that have a big reputation that have never come to my attention before. Now it's fully uncut, the dvd version from almost a decade ago was still heavily censored and the current american amazon prime version is also heavily cut and the film is pretty nasty in places but all this long history of censorship still surprises me. It's as much action comedy as it is a Category III shocker. There's a great scene of a guy using a suitcase to rip another man's head off!

I do wish the two robot girls killed the bad guy at the end because surely it's their film (similar disappointment with Erotic Ghost Story), and wish Aoyama had kept all her memories. There's a lot to be said about Cat III films being alternately progressive and regressive but I guess action heroines were pretty normal in HK films and it maybe didn't seem as big a deal to have supporting male actors save the day.

Hard to explain why this film has occupied my mind so much, I'm sure many would consider it disposable but somehow the sexy action heroine genre means so much more to me now than it did when I was 13. That type of comics, games and anime rarely has any substance or quality, the heroines are usually faceless; this is hardly a deep movie but seeing two glamour models who can act, have some character and can do decent fights (admittedly with lots of doubles) is a rare pleasure. And maybe part of the pleasure is just imagining potential films like this (can Nicolas Winding Refn please do a psychedelic sword and sorcery film with Christina Hendricks rescuing Timothee Chalamet?). Really happy to discover Chikako Aoyama, interesting film cv, as well as trashy genre films she's been in an Oshima film and some other art house films.

The HK Girls With Guns genre really needs to take off on bluray because I've never seen any of them and they look really cool and there's plenty of them. The quarry fight scene reminded of clips I've seen of japanese superheroine gang films and I might need them too.

Really hope there's much more Cat III films coming but the commentary guys say even today, a bunch of them wouldn't get past censors.

I guess action heroines were pretty normal in HK films and it maybe didn't seem as big a deal to have supporting male actors save the day.

Which other films does this happen in? I just assumed all the Yeoh, Rockrock, Khan, Moon Lee etc... starring films would have them winning the final fights.

My Young Auntie and Lady is the Boss both featured this (thanks LKL)

I can't recall if in Lady Is The Boss if the story just moves away from Kara or if she is subdued and can't fight the last one. Still haven't seen My Young Auntie.

There's a lot of really intriguing Cat III films discussed in the commentaries, I wonder if they'd be hesitant to release something at all if they couldn't get it uncut. There's some actresses who flat out deny they were in some of these films when they obviously were.

I didn't buy the Riki-Oh bluray because I don't know how much more I could get from the initial spectacle. There's a whopping 4 commentaries.