88 Films

[yoloswegmaster]

An image of Miami Vice (2006) has been posted on the bottom of their website, alongside Righting Wrongs.

[Finch]

Hopefully they can release the theatrical along with the DC, otherwise no thanks.

[Ribs]

As Mill Creek’s recent release was only the theatrical version and the previous UK release was only the theatrical version, I think it seems more likely the Director’s Cut is left off then the theatrical.

[4LOM]

Koch Films released a Mediabook with both cuts in Germany.

[therewillbeblus]

After all the extreme help in the non-MoC Eureka thread pertaining to HK kung-fu films, I'm curious what I should snag or skip from 88 Films? I see some promising releases coming up on the horizon (i.e. Human Lanterns, of which I've heard good things) but as far as current releases I'm less sure. I've combed through this thread and have sorted out a few basic opinions, but I know there are a number of Shaws Bros releases, not all of which have been commented on- Thanks in advance!

[Finch]

Miracles might be fun to watch (I haven't seen it myself) as it was one of Jackie's passion projects and is a remake of a Capra film, and the screen captures I've seen of it suggest a very lavish production. I've also not seen Snake in the Eagle's Shadow but the consensus seems to be it's among Jackie's better early efforts alongside Drunken Master. I do have Armor of God II which is a very good action film in the Indiana Jones mould. Eight Diagram Pole Fighter is one of the best weapons-based martial arts films (though personally, I found the acting a bit too operatic) but the Arrow US version is from a new 2k restoration (I'm holding on to my 88 Films copy for Kung Fu Bob's fantastic artwork).

If you can track down Killer Constable from other sites still, it's one of Shaw's most suspenseful and bleakest films.

[therewillbeblus]

Thanks! Legendary Weapons of China and Riki-Oh also seem to be consensus favorites?

[swo17]

Yes on Legendary Weapons, haven't seen the other. You also need to leave no stone unturned until finding a copy of Knock Off. Most Chans are also worth it though too many run together for me to give specific recommendations. Forbidden City Cop is also good

[yoloswegmaster]

Riki-Oh is perhaps one of the more bonkers and bat-shit crazy (and certainly one of most violent) films ever made. If you're into that sort of stuff, then I would also recommend the upcoming release of 'The Seventh Curse'. It's directed by Lam Ngai Kai, who also directed 'Riki-Oh', and it's just 81 minutes of the most batshit fantasy/action sequences you have ever seen.

[Matt]

Legendary Weapons and Eight Diagram Pole Fighter are both Lau Kar-leung classics and highly enjoyable and rewatchable. Human Lanterns, I think, is more notorious than good, more squirm-inducing than fun. I wouldn’t care to see it a second time. I feel about the same with Riki-Oh, though it’s maybe more fun on the first viewing from the sheer inventiveness of its violence.

[therewillbeblus]

You also need to leave no stone unturned until finding a copy of Knock Off

Oh that's a childhood favorite that I jumped on as soon as you mentioned that it was OOP last Fall and thankfully got it for a reasonable(ish) price. I even wrote it up after watching my copy a few pages back in this thread!

[feihong]

Haven't been following the whole 88 Films collection. Looking on their website, there are some more obscure Shaw Brothers titles and some Golden Harvest Jackie Chan titles. The biggest titles they have I think would have to be Come Drink with Me and The One-Armed Swordsman. Come Drink with Me just came out in a superior set from Arrow. I have both, the Arrow disc has better extras, and apparently they have really similar transfers, with the Arrow disc being just a tad sharper, with better color.

One-Armed Swordsman is a classic, worth seeing, but it looks like their version is sold out already? It is, however, very slow-looking for a wuxia film. These early Shaws don't have a handle on the action the way they do even just a few years later. By 1971 the films have much quicker and more exciting action. Come Drink with Me is an exception here, because King Hu's take on the swordplay genre is much closer do a Japanese chambara film, and in that sense, the emphasis is on rhythm and visual innovation––so I would say the combat in that film doesn't look or feel old in the way One-Armed Swordsman does. It has to be said as well that Jimmy Wang-Yu never makes the one-arm trick look believable, for whatever that's worth. Jimmy Wang-Yu is a strange film personality, a guy celebrated as being virile and adept, when I think practically anyone in the growing catalog of stunt performers which agglomerates around him at Shaw Brothers is more charismatic and believably capable. Shaw Brothers seems to realize this themselves shortly, and starts promoting people like David Chiang from stuntman to lead actor (he takes over as the One-Armed Swordsman in the third film), and developing genuinely sexy male stars, like Lo Lieh and Ti Lung. But One-Armed Swordsman is still worthwhile, with its' bleak pessimism, it's very violent tone (for the 60s), and the comic-book feel to the characterizations. It's also a great comparison piece with Tsui Hark's remake, The Blade. I think The Blade is one of Hark's best films, but when you see One-Armed Swordsman, the sources for so many ideas in The Blade come vividly clear.

Sun Chung is a director with a unique and fun visual sense, and Human Lanterns is a great demonstration of some of his individualized ways of approaching movies. Of his many films for Shaw Brothers, I tend to prefer The Deadly Breaking Sword to all others, though some runner-ups would be Big Bad Sis, The Kung Fu Master, The Lady Exterminator, Rendezvous with Death, and The Avenging Eagle. Still, Human Lanterns is exploitative fun. One of the things Sun Chung brings to his Shaw Brothers films is a very strong central narrative arc––something which many of his contemporaries at Shaw Brothers place less emphasis on (Chang Cheh, for instance, shows much less interest in story structure and rhythm––by comparison, Chang makes a lot of films with very repetitive story beats, while Sun Chung's stories seem vivd, and blessed with their own distinct rhythm and flow).

The Brave Archer is the first of a four-film cycle where Chang Cheh adapts the classic Jin Yong novel, "The Eagle-Shooting Heroes." This book is also the basis for Wong Kari-Wai's later Ashes of Time (and Jeff Lau's parody of the same year). This is a fun story, with huge scope, involving martial arts masters of the cardinal directions, nursing life-long grudges while the Tartars amass in the North to overwhelm them. A young orphan of destiny ends up mastering the martial arts of Evil East and Malicious West, of the Beggar clan of the South, etc., in order to re-unite these various martial artists and eventually resist the Tartars. There's elements of actual Chinese history in the stories, and flying knights errant doing cool stuff mixed in. The Brave Archer film cycle doesn't succeed in telling the story of the whole novel, but it comes closer than most attempts to do it. The films are exciting, with Chang Cheh's particular theatrical aplomb serving the melodramatic story well. This is, apart from Deadly Breaking Sword, Alexander Fu Sheng's best role for Shaw Brothers––it is easy to get behind and sympathize with him. I think this film is very worth it, full of colorful costume, fun (if very artificial) sets and settings, and a grand feeling to it.

I remember being surprised at how enjoyable The Oily Maniac turned out to be. Danny Lee (from The Killer and Dr. Lamb) is basically a superhero/avenging monster in this movie, who can melt into an oily puddle when the chips are down. The special effects are crude, and so they end up being kind of charming. Director Ho-Menga was a workhorse at Shaw Brothers, making lots of the early Cheng Pei-Pei wuxia films in the wake of King Hu's departure. He never developed a feel for fast-paced action or excitement, but he was always interested in sh*tty special effects (witness the dragon in Dragon Swamp, for instance), and in the 70s he turned his hand to grindhouse-style horror––where his slower pace proved more tolerable. Danny Lee does a great job in this title, coming off as romantic, righteously angry, and at the same time neurotic and horrified at what he's become. I think it's one of Ho-Menga's best films.

Not so The Flying Guillotines, which offers up one of Chen Kuan-Tai's worst central performances, and which moves at a snail's pace through its' court intrigue plots. The Flying Guillotines are supposed to be a secret squad of government executioners. Chen fools no one as the barely-awake leader of the group. The story just fails to progress for most of the run-time, and so it ends up being a very dull picture. Ho-Menga seems most preoccupied with the actual guillotine device, which by now is pretty familiar from the later Jimmy Wang-Yu film and from The Heroic Trio, at least. I should say, Chen Kuan-Tai stars in many better films, including Killer Constable, Blood Brothers, and even recently in films like the very unheralded recent masterpiece, The Final Master. I'm hoping to see Chen Kuan-Tai's performance The Hidden Sword, but that film seems to have been banned in China, and it's not clear if it will ever get a release. Chen Kuan-Tai was Shaws' first major recruit to have real martial-arts experience––he won a kung fu world championship in 1969. His fighting is much better than his contemporaries; he's quicker than David Chiang, and more accurate than Ti Lung. But he lacks their charisma, for sure, and he has in these early Shaw Brothers films a strange sort of slowness which makes him seem dimwitted. Chang Cheh recognized this and tended to cast him as good-natured idiots, like in Blood Brothers. But later on Chen developed a lot of skill as an actor. Nowadays he has a subtlety most of the contemporary Hong Kong stars he frequently appears next to seem to entirely lack. So he's made a substantial journey. I think by the end of the Shaw Brothers era he has already become the swifter actor he would demonstrate himself to be in his later career. Killer Constable is a role which demands a lot from him, and which he handles very adroitly. In the 80s he plays the traitorous villain in John Woo and Wu Ma's Just Heroes with a swiftness belied by these earlier films. At any rate, in The Flying Guillotines he is slow and dull in the central role, and for me this film never quite catches fire.

I remember Bewitched being very fun, full of gross special effects and crazy magic hex battles. The film is lightly sleazy and deliberately exotic, taking place largely in Thailand, if I remember right. There's a good section of the movie where you can see that region as it was in the mid-70s, due to the much-appreciated location-shooting. But I don't remember this being a very special film. I would say Black Magic, from the same era, has more interesting performances (by ace Shaw supporting actors Ku Feng and Tanny) and a more absorbing story.

The Vengeful Beauty is one of Ho-Menga's better wuxia films, nominally a follow-up to The Flying Guillotines. Actress Ping Chen is very committed to her role, and good in the action scenes. Following the mold of Cheng Pei-Pei in Come Drink with Me (Shih Szu in The Black Tavern and Lady of the Law also follows in Cheng's footsteps), Ping is a kind of humorless avenger of serious conviction, and while Ho Menga's films lack King Hu's sense of humor (which really leavens the tense plot of Come Drink with Me), this is still a fun, slightly gritty action movie. I think this is one of the more worthwhile titles in 88 Films' collection. Yueh Hua, the drunkard from Come Drink with Me, plays a major role here. He is, if I recall right, a traitorous villain––which turned out to be his stock in trade in later movies––especially in his long run of films for director Chor Yuen.

I have some out-of-print titles from 88 Films which are really good. Eight-Diagram Pole Fighter is, I believe the final Shaw Brothers film before they pivot completely into television. Of the out-of-print films I have, this is one which is being released by Arrow today, actually. This is, of the whole set of these films, the one I'd consider most essential. I also have Killer Constable and House of Traps.

Eight Diagram Pole Fighter is Lau Kar-Leung's last film as a director for Shaw Brothers proper (though when they try and re-start their movie production arm in the early aughts, he directs their flagship picture, the box-office flop, Drunken Monkey), and it's one of his best. In spite of what must to Western eyes seem like a very fractured story, it's one of the best Shaw Brothers films, period. It portrays a legend known to many or most throughout Chinese culture, of the sons of General Yang. General Yang and his sons (generals themselves in most tellings of the tale), fought to defend the Song Dynasty (sort of like China's version of Arthurian times, fabled and idealized in legend), in spite of being betrayed by a trusted advisor to their family. There are several Shaw Brothers films which address the story of the Yang family from different angles, including the much earlier, very excellent film 14 Amazons, which is a pageant/martial arts hybrid production––one of Shaws' largest-budget pictures, full of a cast of thousands––detailing General Yang's widow and her 13 daughters struggle to get vengeance for the massacre of General Yang and his sons (the 1973 Shaw film Heroes of Sung depicts a kind of tearfully-patriotic collapse of the Song Dynasty in vividly melodramatic terms, and is also a fun companion movie). These stories don't have much sense of historical accuracy, and Eight-Diagram Pole Fighter goes further afield than most. Complicating matters a lot is that co-star Alexander Fu-Sheng is in a fatal car accident halfway through the production, and has to be written out of the finale. Said finale, where Gordon Liu and Kara Hui fight their way over a pyramid of coffins full of Tartar spear-wielders, seems extra morbid and painful as a result of Fu-Sheng's death, but the film as a whole portrays the betrayal and massacre of the Yang family generals already as a form of apocalypse––and Lau Kar-Leung makes the surprising decision early on that the film will be suffused with trauma––even before Fu-Sheng's death. The idea here is that Gordon Liu and Alexander Fu-Sheng are the lone survivors of the Yang clan. Fu-Sheng returns home completely insane (and remains so, because the rest of his arc was never filmed). Gordon, meanwhile, ends up at a Shaolin temple, where he seeks refuge. Lau is obviously quoting his own earlier 36th Chamber films here, with a twist; the monks offer Gordon sanctuary, but––recognizing that his heart is bent towards revenge, refuse him training in their eight-diagram pole style. So Gordon sets up camp in the woods and trains on his own. Eventually he masters the style by spying on the monks and imitating, and by training himself separately. Finally, one of the Yang sisters reaches him––this is what the Tartars have been waiting for. They capture the sister and hold her ransom in order to lure this last Yang general out of hiding.

At this point, the film kicks up a notch. Everything beforehand is pretty fast-moving and hysterical, but now the film moves into a higher gear. Gordon duels the abbot in order to be able to leave the monastery and face the villains. He and the abbot fight in front of a buddhist altar, their eight-diagram pole style snuffing out candles and eventually drawing a yin-yang symbol in the dust on the floor. When the abbot sees the symbol, her understands that Gordon's wordliness is the necessary obverse of his own renunciation of the world, and this stops the fight. This scene is phenomenal, and includes not only magnificent fighting, great needle-drops from the De Wolfe catalog (lots of Shaw's musical themes come from this library), but also some of the best dialogue in a Shaw Brothers film, including Gordon's line explaining to the Abbot why he must rescue his sister, in spite of the oath he swore to Buddha: "when I see Buddha, I think of my family." Then the finale takes place on this pyramid of coffins. It is the apex of Lau Kar-Leung's choreography for the Shaws, a scene filled with visceral and innovative choreography, and with a surprisingly surreal and angry ending. The monks arrive to rescue Gordon and Kara, with their goal being to "defang the wolves (this is something they practice with their pole-fighting, using wooden wolf-models with metal teeth, in order to develop pole-fighting accuracy)." They start jamming their poles into the mouths of the tartar villains, vibrating the poles, and ripping out the villains' teeth. This reaches an apex of crazy which is kind of as far as Shaw Brothers ever went in that regard. The scene is gonzo and overwhelming, and kind of an alarming and yet fitting send-off for the Shaw Brothers' movie empire. So even though this one's going to be from Arrow now, and the 88 Films version is long gone, I'd recommend getting the Arrow disc.

Of those other out-of-print 88 Films discs, Killer Constable is an unusual film, where Chen Kuan-Tai plays a ruthless government enforcer developing a crisis of conscience. The film is bloodier than most Shaw Brothers films, and very well-made. House of Traps is maybe the final Venoms film from Chang Cheh, and it's one of their very best. The Venoms were a troupe of stuntmen, martial artists and acrobats Chang Cheh recruited, primarily I think from Taiwan (though there is the Korean member of the group who is featured in Chinatown Kid). None of them are stars really (though the troupe's ostensible leader, Philip Kwok, does a charismatic turn as Mad Dog in Hard Boiled years later)––which creates a certain tension in the films, like any of them might be killed off at any minute. It also means the drama in these movies feels staid and boring, and we end up just waiting for the action scenes to commence. House of Traps at least has a somewhat more interesting story, with a lot of intrigue, which culminates in the titular house of traps. The Venoms who play heroes and the Venoms who play villains fight it out in the traps. It's a lot more fun than it sounds.

I remember Shaolin Mantis as a very boring. I find David Chiang on the whole to be the most charismatic of film actors––sort of a personal hero for me––but this is one of his least-interesting roles. He also seems a little out of it, a little sweatier and redder in the face than was usual. I don't think he manages the martial arts scenes too well, and the drama is painfully slow.

There are a host of these which I have seen and which were so unremarkable that I remember very, very little about them, if anything. These include The Dragon Missile, Disciples of Shaolin, The Flag of Iron, and The Masked Avengers. I think I saw The Chinese Boxer, but...I have literally no memory of it. And I haven't seen Monkey Kung Fu (different from Lau Kar-Leung's masterpiece, Mad Monkey Kung Fu, which is also a Shaw Brothers film), Shaolin Wooden Men, The Spiritual Boxer, The Enchanting Ghost, The Bride from Hell, The Ghost Lovers, To Kill with Intrigue, or Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin.

That's all I've got on those films. I don't see any others that 88 Films has released, unless I've missed some of them?

[therewillbeblus]

I'm a bit speechless, thanks for that incredibly helpful rundown (and the array of unreleased recs in the margins that I'll explore on backchannels)! I'm struggling to find a lot of these OOP discs unfortunately, but I bought The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter, Legendary Weapons and pre-ordered Human Lanterns (and had already bought Arrow's Come Drink with Me- Hu is one of these directors whose work I've seen in full, though this is the film of his I remember least, so looking forward to a revisit).

I see The Deadly Breaking Sword is up on backchannels in HD apparently from a blu-ray source, but I can't find that for sale on the internet... is this misinformation, or is there an English-friendly blu out there?

[Maltic]

Nice writeup, feihung.

I guess you could even call 8 Diagram revisionist, certainly elegiac.

Gordon Liu ends up disillusioned and alone, although he isn't actually cruel like, say, Ethan Edwards.

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin would be Lau's Stagecoach, then.

[therewillbeblus]

Okay, The Deadly Breaking Sword was awesome, someone needs to release that asap.

Since Arrow is clearly prioritizing Shaws Bros titles both inside and outside of Shaws Bros box sets, is there reason to believe that they'll continue to usurp the rights to OOP 88 Films HK actioners?

[feihong]

I'm a bit speechless, thanks for that incredibly helpful rundown (and the array of unreleased recs in the margins that I'll explore on backchannels)! I'm struggling to find a lot of these OOP discs unfortunately, but I bought The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter, Legendary Weapons and pre-ordered Human Lanterns (and had already bought Arrow's Come Drink with Me- Hu is one of these directors whose work I've seen in full, though this is the film of his I remember least, so looking forward to a revisit).

I see The Deadly Breaking Sword is up on backchannels in HD apparently from a blu-ray source, but I can't find that for sale on the internet... is this misinformation, or is there an English-friendly blu out there?

I've seen that really excellent-looking HD transfer, but I haven't been able to find a blu ray of the film to buy. There's also a very good-quality HD version of Ten Tigers of Kwangtung out there, but I haven't seen a blu ray of that available anywhere, either. There might be discs from Koch Media in Germany, but new releases of theirs have gotten much harder for me to track since the pandemic started, for some reason.

Years ago German company Koch Media did a 4-film box set of Shaw Brothers movies in true HD, with gorgeous film grain and beautiful transfers of one of my favorite Shaw Bros. films, The Sentimental Swordsman, the excellent The Kung Fu Master, Eight-Diagram Pole Fighter and Five Fingers of Death. That HD version of Sentimental Swordsman is something I revisit a lot. I don't know why the new blu rays coming out exclude all the Chor Yuen films so completely. I hope Arrow or 88 Films will be able to release Sentimental Sworsman, The Magic Blade, or Clans of Intrigue at some point. Swordsman and Enchantress and Return of the Sentimental Swordsman are good ones, to, as are the two Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre pictures. Also, lest I undersell Jimmy Wang-Yu, the sequel, The One-Armed Swordsman Returns, is a much better film. And while I have complicated feelings about Golden Swallow, Shaw Bros' hit-piece on King Hu after he left them to make Dragon Inn, Jimmy Wang-Yu is better in it than in lots of his earlier movies, like Red Lotus Temple and the original One-Armed Swordsman, and way better than in his later movies, like Shanghai 13 and Island of Fire.

I guess you could even call 8 Diagram revisionist, certainly elegiac.

Gordon Liu ends up disillusioned and alone, although he isn't actually cruel like, say, Ethan Edwards.

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin would be Lau's Stagecoach, then.

Ha! That sounds right to me. I also think there's a strong metatextual element, when Gordon says the final line, telling his sister he won't return to the Yang Family manor: "Sister, the world is my home." It's almost like the Shaw Bros. themselves announcing their move to TVB, running out in rivulets to a broader world, diffuse now, without the familial comfort of the Shaws' cozy movie empire. It's also, I believe, the only shot in the film taken in the actual wilderness, in the already shrinking land Shaw used to own so much more of (where in the past we'd have scores of horsemen riding through a scene, or armies charging one another on expansive battlefields). In the Venoms movies and the Lau Kar Leung films you can really see the diminishing state of Shaws' resources––these films are pure backlot movies, except for that last, elegaic shot in Eight-Diagram Pole Fighter.

[therewillbeblus]

feihong, I realize this is not the correct thread to ask, but do you have a list of favorite kung fu/martial arts films? Perhaps such a question is unfairly lumping too many subgenres within HK cinema together, and maybe that larger umbrella is a more appropriate question, but this is a massive blind spot for me that I'm motivated to explore further, and while I've taken your recs into a document and ordered them randomly, there are just so many (yet I'm asking for more)! I'm definitely curious to hear more if you feel like sharing, wherever that might be most fitting - your categorical breakdown in the all-time list thread encouraged me to seek out some exciting and new-to-me animes, so I'm still on board your steering ship

I could also see this being a cool list project in the future, especially given the incoming flux of SB and general HK cinema of late and seemingly for the foreseeable future by several boutique labels.. It would be cool to bring about discussion rooted in a different kind of analysis in choreography/editing/comedy/effects/etc, and I'd be interested in reading some books on the genre(s?).... This temperament is certainly where I'm 'at' these days, with very long work days, extra recovery commitments, a general feeling of exhaustion and not particularly driven to deep writeups at the moment (or maybe I just need a vacation after the KK marathon)

[Maltic]

One could name a few from the pantheon directors

Chang Cheh (Golden Swallow, The Crippled Avengers)
King Hu (Dragon Inn, Raining in the Mountain)
Lau Kar-leung (Dirty Ho, The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter)
Yuen Woo-ping (Drunken Master, Iron Monkey)
Jackie (Police Story, Project A)
Sammo (Wheels on Meals, Spooky Encounters)
Corey Yuen (Righting Wrongs, Yes Madam)
Tsui Hark (Green Snake, The Blade)

No doubt feihong has seen lots more than I have though

The best generalist books are probably Bordwell's Planet Hong Kong and Stephen Teo's Hong Kong Cinema

[Orlac]

My favourite HK/Taiwanese martial arts films - in chronological order

The New One-Armed Swordsman (Chang Cheh)
A Touch of Zen (King Hu)
Fist of Fury (Lo Wei)
Master of the Flying Guillotine (Jimmy Wang Yu)
Drunken Master (Yuen Woo-ping)
Heroes of the East (Lau Kar-leung)
Encounter of the Spooky Kind (Sammo Hung)
Swordsman (King Hu/Tsui Hark/Ann Hui/Ching Siu-tung/Raymond Lee)
Iron Monkey (Yuen Woo-ping)
Hero (Zhang Yimou)

[dwk]

Dragons Forever UHD is coming on 8/23. 88 Films is also releasing it on regular Blu-ray in the US on the same date.

So Miramax's rights to HK titles keep expiring...

[Finch]

Thrilled that it's happening for real!

[feihong]

Chang Cheh (Golden Swallow, The Crippled Avengers)
King Hu (Dragon Inn, Raining in the Mountain)
Lau Kar-leung (Dirty Ho, The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter)
Yuen Woo-ping (Drunken Master, Iron Monkey)
Jackie (Police Story, Project A)
Sammo (Wheels on Meals, Spooky Encounters)
Corey Yuen (Righting Wrongs, Yes Madam)
Tsui Hark (Green Snake, The Blade)

The best generalist books are probably Bordwell's Planet Hong Kong and Stephen Teo's Hong Kong Cinema

That's an awesome list of filmmakers and films. The book that was definitely most influential for me in the genre was Sex and Zen and a Bullet in the Head: The Essential Guide to Hong Kong's Mindbending Films, by Stefan Hammond and Mike Wilkins. Hammond and Wilkins even give an audio commentary on one or two of the first Celestial Shaw Brothers DVDs that were released––I think they talk on the disc for Hong Kong Nocturne, for some reason?

I love that you have Swordsman I on your list, Orlac. That's a film I love, too. I often wish the same cast had gone on to do Swordsman II, honestly. Their dynamic made the whole story make sense in a way that Jet Li and Michelle Reis and the others in part 2 never succeeded in communicating (though Brigitte Lin is, of course, pretty unimpeachable).


Therewillbeblues, I've never tried to order or rank favorite martial arts films. Funnily enough, when I compose top tens and twenties and thirties of my favorite films, few of these movies even enter the list––which maybe speaks to an implicit bias on my part. But I can list some favorites which would be totaly un-ranked...for me, these movies have always poured forth like a river, continually bursting its' banks. One discovery leads to 10 more, and seeing one film means seeing 20 different performers whose other films are then called to memory. So my list is pretty hard to corral. It has to be only the ones that have made the deepest impression on me, the ones I've been drawn to see again and again. There's bound to be some heavy bias here, though. Watch later in this post for when I dismiss the Venoms movies almost out of hand, for instance. My favorites are much more narrative-driven. And watch as I navigate this whole list as if Bruce Lee didn't even exist. Those just aren't favorites of mine. Ditto most more recent martial arts movies, from Fearless to Ip Man to The Grandmasters to Dragon to House of Flying Daggers to The Warlords to Rise of the Legend. But to begin the list with a more recent film...

The Final Master: Xu Haofeng's recent film has a lot of detractors, but for me the mix of city politics, ethical compromise, and intense martial arts combat reached a unique artistic height in this film. I don't know another martial arts film in which the ending battle––a nearly 13-minute extended combat, where the titular Wing Chun master fights all the master martial artists in the city––is conducted from a point of such deep moral compromise––it's more dramatic because our hero is trying to dig himself out of a deeper whole of shame and regret rarely conferred upon the hero of one of these movies. Also, people used to love Yuen Wo-Ping's hard and forceful choreography––the fights in this movie are grittier and throw down just as hard as any of them. It's also one of the most gorgeous period pieces of recent memory. The heroes in these movies are so often set up as uncomplicated, righteous avengers––which makes this movie's exploration of moral compromise in the teaching of martial arts, as well as an exploration of a frustrating level of corruption in the insular martial arts world (which we generally believe to be meritocratic), pretty unprecedented and affecting.

Follow-Up: Xu Haofeng's previous film, Judge Archer, is a very interesting film, about a guy who almost accidentally assumes the identity of a wandering judge, famous as a peacemaker in the martial arts world––and then he has to live up to role brokering peace in a complex power-grab, where some of the combatants have reason to want Judge Archer not to arrive intact to mediate. It's a film with stronger indie vibes––it's not as complex a story, or as rich a period piece as The Final Master, but it does prove that Xu Haofeng is a filmmaker willing to upend what's already been done to death in Martial Arts films and make something where the plot and themes are as complex as the choreography.

The Blade: Usually my go-to for favorite Hong Kong movie, The Blade is Tsui Hark's remake of The One-Armed Swordsman, made at a time when Tsui was burning with humiliation and frustration at being rejected from his bid to direct the American Godzilla movie (ultimately made by Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin). Tsui has always been a director able to take his personal feelings and transmutate them into a rich story, full of complex themes, and in the Blade Tsui frustration at losing a moviemaking opportunity turns into rage at a world filled with authority figures and bullies. One Armed Swordsman ended with the hero hanging up his broken blade and renouncing the martial life. Then a narrator intoned something to the effect of, "but as long as men grasp swords, there can be no peace in this world." Tsui takes this single line, hung insincerely at the end of the original film, and expands it into a whole martial world where violence is traded as currency. It's the premise of The Blade that might makes more might in response, and his vision of On, the orphan who loses his arm defending his adoptive father's daughter learning a one-armed martial arts style from half a burnt sword manual, using his father's broken blade, is always mediated and furtively sobered through this concept of an exchange. The Blade brought a kind of French New Wave sensibility to martial arts movies, with Tsui laboring to create a mis en scene available to chance and random detail. The result is a gritty, fateful legend, taking place in a physical space where anything might happen next. Tsui predominantly 3-color palette for the film complements his thematic concept that, so long as the cycle of violence continues, there are only so many avenues these characters can take. So many unusual things emerge in this film as well; the narrator, rather than a principal character in the action, is a figure continually warring against her place in the background. Her read of the conflict is for the most part childish, but by the end I found myself sharing her outlook; overwhelmed by the violence, she ends up smoking dope, wasting her life away, and living with her memories of the vivid struggles of her youth (this whole storyline was improvised on the shoot, when the actress threatened to walk off the picture if her role wasn't made more interesting). The film stars Zhao wen Zhuo––probably my favorite film martial artist, in that he's a great martial artist on-screen, but he can actually act, as well. This is Zhao's time to shine, and his climactic duel with Xin Xin Xiong––purportedly improvised by the two actors sequence-by-sequence is one of the best duels in martial arts film.

Follow-Up: Tsui Hark's Seven Swords is a movie where he takes some of the exuberant filmmaking and innovative weapon combat of The Blade and puts it to use in the making of a more traditionally heroic story. An earlier Tsui-Hark-produced film which features delirious, gritty action of this kind is his remake, Dragon Gate Inn––which I think still remains a bitingly sharp and intense film. As a Zhao wen Zhuo fan, I'm afraid the peaks are fare less broad and frequent than the valleys. His best films apart from this one are Once Upon a Time in China 5, Fong Sai Yuk, Green Snake, Mahjong Dragon, and True Legend (True Legend is marred by the recurring fad for 3-D, but Zhao is good in it). One last Tsui Hark film full of fun martial arts (besides the Once Upon a Time in China movies, which are also great) is his early film, We Are Going to Eat You, a kind of leftist martial arts/cannibal film. If you like that early transitional period in Tsui Hark's career, from leftist director to commercial populist, an interesting follow up is Tun-Fei Mou's Little Heroes, a kung fu picture with a bunch of kids fighting a bunch of adults. Tun-Fei Mou, later director of The Men Behind the Sun and other geek show pictures, is apparently a considerable influence on young Tsui Hark, encouraging him to suppress his leftist leanings and make entertainment for the masses. Little Heroes is the movie Tun-Fei Mou is making right at the same time Tsui makes his own pivot, with Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain. I just think it's an interesting comparison.

King Hu Films: My favorites are Raining in the Mountain and The Fate of Lee Khan. Most people seem to like Raining, and the playfulness and the mazelike quality of the film have always dazzled me. The Fate of Lee Khan gets dismissed a lot, but I think the film is an example of an experimental 2-act narrative structure, where Act I displays high spirits at the inn, with the waitresses demonstrating their wit and skill in hijinks, and then Act II changes tone and tightens the noose as Lee Khan arrives, and the film turns into a sort of inquisition. I don't know how much Hu was trying to say with the movie––reading King Hu in His Own Words suggests that Hu usually embarked from just the simplest of themes, and spent most of his time visually intensifying them, rather than developing them into more complex or thoughtful ideas. But I'm always struck by the way I develop some sympathy for Lee Khan as he meets his end, hounded on all sides. The brutal intelligence chief seems so baffled at the end that these people would want him dead so badly. It's interesting.

Follow-Up: There is no great transfer of The Valiant Ones, but it's worth seeing all the same. Welcome to the way we all used to watch Hong Kong movies back in the day! Sh*tty, low-grade VHS transfers. Blech.

Jackie Chan Films: I'm not the biggest fan of Jackie's movies, but I can't dismiss them out of hand. My favorites are the Project A movies (there are two), Wheels on Meals, and maybe Miracles. I like Police Story I and III, but the Police Story movies are always complicated for me by their strain of unavoidable (unintentional???) misogyny. The women get so brutalized in these films––mostly Maggie Cheung (though Brigitte Lin in the first movie and Charlie Yoeh in the 4th both get torn up in disturbing ways). Sure, Jackie gets hit, too, but Jackie gets up and keeps going. I don't know. There's just such a dismissal of the Maggie Cheung character. On top of the outright abuse, she is just so routinely humiliated in film after film. Police Story II is a film I just can't watch, for that reason. Just the verbal fights she and Jackie have in that movie are genuinely suffocating to see. Jackie always comes off as meek when he's fighting a bunch of big guys, but when he's arguing with Maggie in Police Story II, violence just seems to boil out of him. I have a hard time liking those films quite so much.

Follow-Up: Jackie is in a pretty good heroic bloodshed movie called Island of Fire, and he plays support in a very demented movie called Fantasy Mission Force. Those are interesting curios in Chan's career. This might be an unpopular opinion, but I remember liking Chan's acting very much in The Forbidden Kingdom, and his fight with Jet Li was pretty good there. Jet's portrayal of the Monkey King was really interesting, also––much more animalistic and dangerous than other portrayals (Yueh Hua is shrill and exasperating in the role, and I do like Russel Wong in that Hallmark miniseries with Bai Ling).

Pedicab Driver: Sammo Hung career in martial arts films is more varied and peripatetic than Jackie's, but he is the only one of the Seven Little Fortunes, I think, to impress his own personality on his films as an auteur. Unlike Jackie or Cory Yuen, Sammo's films are animated by some of his convictions and beliefs. He is a working-class guy, and his films bleed with sympathy for working-class people––no movie moreso than Pedicab Driver. This is a period piece about these poor, put-upon drivers, and their whole shantytown milieu. There are extraordinary action scenes, including a pedicab-and-car chase, a great fight between Sammo and Billy Chow, and a legendary staff battle between Sammo and Lau Kar-Leung (another of those duel scenes Sammo claims was not choreographed ahead of time, as per Lau's demand––"Hey Sammo, let's fight!" he purportedly said, first thing when he got on set). The working-class sympathies of the film are very refreshing in a genre which is often about the select few––the teacher's prized student, the errant prince, the noble knight, etc.

Follow-Up: Other great Sammo action movies, like Millionaire's Express and Eastern Condors. Every Sammo movie is different from the last. Honestly, I find his choreography a mixed-bag––sometimes the action seems to go too fast to follow. But he's done some of the greatest fights ever. Sammo's recent films as a journeyman actor/action director again have been good, too; his 2 fights with Donnie Yen in Sha Po Lang are amazing, and the action in Ip Man 2, which I believe he choreographs, and contributes some awesome fights to as well.

Chang Cheh Films: For me the Chang Cheh movies reach extreme lows of repetitive material, but he made so damn many pictures that a bunch of them turned out to be good. Chang has various stages in his career: the first is his period with star Jimmy Wang-Yu, from which Return of the One-Armed Swordsman is probably the movie which holds up the best. I have never found Jimmy Wang-Yu to be a convincing tough-guy––it's a little like buying Mickey Rooney as a tough-guy, to my mind––but he is the originator of so many elements of the heroic male figure in these martial arts movies. The second leg of Chang's career is hitched to his next star discoveries––the "golden pair" of David Chiang and Ti Lung. This is, to my mind, the height of Chang's career. These two stars are so different, and yet so very complementary to one another's unique aura. David Chiang is wiry, small, but suave. He has a winning smile he can just project on people and make them feel important (I was once asked to choose a "flirting icon"––someone whose style of flirtation I most valued and wanted to emulate––I realized it was David Chiang. He isn't the most seductive person in the world, but the way he looks at people and makes them feel not just present, but essential, the way he grins and makes you feel like you belong here...that's something I've always tried to emulate. In a way, he's sort of a personal hero). Ti Lung, meanwhile, is muscular, stubborn, hot-headed, and just basically hot. They play antagonists, grudging friends, blood brothers, grudging rivals, even lovers––though Chang was always quick to refute the thread of homoeroticism which ran ever-so-clearly through his movies.

The key movies from this period for me are Have Sword, Will Travel, The Duel, Water Margin, The Savage Five, The Heroic Ones, The Deadly Duo, and the three which stand out most for me from this period, Vengeance, Four Riders, and The Angry Guest. Four Riders is very unusual for Chang's filmography––a film about disgruntled Korean war vets who take on military corruption in a fatalistic confrontation in a gymnasium. The Angry Guest is a very choppy, unfinished-seeming movie, with bizarre location shooting in Japan, with Chang Cheh himself playing the most racist version of a Japanese man I've seen since Mickey Rooney, and...well...it's also a sequel to the Thailand-set Duel of Fists? Duel of Fists isn't too good a movie, and then this sequel begins with Ti Lung's girlfriend getting mysteriously kidnapped by a Japanese mogul. David Chiang and Ti Lung, playing long-lost brothers here, unite to rescue her in contemporary Tokyo. It's a hard movie to describe. I think the "brotherhood" of David Chiang and Ti Lung is measured best in this film. Then there is Vengeance, a really unique and weird movie, which puts the lie to Chang's apparent "distress" whenever people brought up the homoeroticism of Chang's movies. In this one, David Chiang arrives in town to avenge the death of his peking opera compatriot, Ti Lung. As the movie goes on, Chiang is reunited with his former girlfriend, but I think it's pretty clear that, superficially gracious to her, he is using her to get close to the villains responsible for Ti Lung's character's death. Chiang kills hundreds of people in this film, trying to scratch this itch; could he really want vengeance of this magnitude simply for a buddy he used to spend some time with? Dispelling any doubt, Chiang dons an all-white suit (which Bruce Lee homages in Fists of Fury, Chow Yun-Fat does too in The Killer, but which I think enters into the HK cinema bloodstream by way of Seijun Suzuki's 1964 film, Our Blood Will Not Forgive––that film features Akira Kobayashi seeking vengeance against his yakuza brotherhood wearing an all-white suit, which becomes progressively covered in blood) and goes to meet his end, killing seemingly thousands in his lust for Vengeance. When he dies at the end of the film, We see a quick shot of his girlfriend waiting for him at a gazebo somewhere––but that shot is usurped and supplanted by a lengthy slow-motion scene of David Chiang doing backflips and being steadied by Ti Lung. It's clear that in his final moments, the person Chiang's character pictures is Ti Lung, not the girlfriend. The white suit, spattered with blood, doesn't just represent the color of funeral clothes in Chinese society, but also the wedding dress of western society––and Chiang's character wearing almost exclusively western clothing in the film shouldn't, I think, be seen as an accident in that case. Because he can no longer consummate his love for his real lover, Chiang has become the bride of death; his unending slaughter a glorious monument to the love he could never abandon or betray. I think Vengeance is one of the greater martial arts movies of this somewhat more innocent era.

The latter stage of Chang's career is taken up with his discovery of the Venoms, and their endless stream of movies. After that are a series of less-consequential films, like Shanghai 13, Attack of the Goddess of Joy, and Ninja in Ancient China. These aren't great movies. Of the Venoms period, my favorite film is Legend of the Fox, a Jin Yong adaptation (I think), filled with mysticism and fun.

Follow-ups: Every period of Chang's career boasts some special movies. Chinatown Kid, Trilogy of Swordsmanship, Golden Swallow, Brave Archer, Life Gamble, The Men from the Monastery, Shaolin Temple, The Daredevils...lots of good pictures.

The Sentimental Swordsman: Chor Yuen did a long, steady stream of adaptations of Gu Long novels for Shaw Brothers, and he did them with a visual aplomb no one else thought to employ in that era. Chor Yuen's sometimes called the "Hong Kong Mario Bava," probably because of his use of color gels in lighting, his sumptuous costuming, and his elegant, dollying shots. There's also an underlying cheapness and opportunistic exoticism both filmmaker's share in common, in even some of their best movies. There's always some sh*tty set, some cardboard boulder to distract you a little bit. I find it all adds to the charm. It has to be said, though, that Chor Yuen's films are incredibly repetitive (Chor Yuen eventually quits Shaw Brothers because he feels that frustration, too). That's what makes The Sentimental Swordsman extra interesting for me. It's the tale of a lovelorn, honor-bound master of the fighting fan and flying daggers, played by Ti Lung. His life saved by his friend, we learn of the life-changing ways in which he's repaid this debt, but giving the friend his ancestral manor house, and handing over his bride-to-be. This wasn't easily accomplished, however, and to effectively spurn his devoted bride, the swordsman had to method-act his way into alcoholism. So now he roams the countryside, drowning his sorrows in drink, coughing convulsively and getting the DTs––but he's still a master martial artist, a suave gentleman of the highest breeding––polite, careful, and deadly. The Peach Blossom Bandit––the enemy Ti Lung has never been able to subdue, is running wild through the martial arts community, and the sentimental swordsman gets once again embroiled in the hunt for this elusive madman. The romanticism of the picture is very baroque. It's easy to figure out who the Peach Blossom Bandit has to be pretty early on, but the film is still full of interesting visual innovations. And Ti Lung's performance as the drunkard swordsman is lots of fun. The martial arts aren't always that interesting––Chor Yuen movies are full of people doing ornamental flips and repeating the same strike-and-parry exchanges again and again––but the ultimate killing blows are always comic-booky and innovative. The sentimental swordsman's final move in this first movie is just pure [chef's kiss]. Total bliss.

Follow-ups: If you like the Chor Yuen brand, some especially pleasing variants come early on in his career, in movies like Killer Clans (a Gu Long novel clearly adapted from The Godfather), Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan (where Betty Lo Tih cuts people's throats and tears their arms off with her long, sharpened fingernails), and Duel for Gold (a movie which offers Ivy Ling Po a grittier role than normal, and which is kind of like a wuxia version of Treasure of the Sierra Madre). Quintessential Chor Yuen films are Magic Blade and Clans of Intrigue. Later Chor Yuen films are not only repetitive, but seem very tired––and it seems like Chor Yuen is tired, himself. He appears on-screen as the villain in Police Story I, which is the most manic he's seemed in years.

GWG Films: The Girls with Guns martial arts films are virtually all great––or terrible, depending on your point of view. The genre begins with the early Michelle Yoeh films for D&B. The best of these is Yes, Madam!, with Yoeh and Cynthia Rothrock. There is a great comic performance in this film by Tsui Hark, and the action is exciting throughout. Cynthia Rothrock goes on to star in Blonde Fury, one of these movies with the most amazing set-pieces. She Shoots Straight is an exceptional film in the genre, essentially a remake of the Shaw Brothers classic The 14 Amazons, where Joyce Godenzi and Carina Lau stand in for most of the 14. My favorite films of the genre are the Moon Lee/Yukari Oshima pictures––all of which are fabulous. Even when the movie is sh*t, Moon and Yukari are there for it. They are a little like the teaming of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in the Hammer films; the minute they see each other, sparks start to fly. Moon is actually in HK movies almost 10 years before teaming up with Yukari in their gwg films––she appears in Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain and the original Mr. Vampire. And Yukari had a career in Japan before her HK sojourn, and continued to act in HK and Japanese films up until about 2011, it seems. The pair first appear as antagonists in Angel––one of the best of these movies, and from there, the films include (not sure I have all of them) Angel Terminators 2, Devil Hunters, Killer Angels, Dreaming the Reality, Mission of Justice, Beauty Investigator, and Kickboxer's Tears. They also appear together in Yes, Madam! '92: A Serious Shock, where Moon for once plays the villain, and Yukari one of the heroes. That is a weird film, where Moon kills Lawrence Ng's character by jamming a fork down his throat. But all of these movies are trashy fun. There are some adjacent movies which don't feature both of the pair, which are also good, like Princess Madam, and the Kara Hui-starring Inspector Wears Skirts. Another exponent of the genre who is great value is Cynthia Khan, who appears in the really excellent In the Line of Duty III and IV (she's in others, but these are the best ones). Cynthia also appears in a non-kung fu role which mocks her kung fu films, and which is, to my mind, one of the best Hong Kong films, period. That's a movie called It's Now or Never, a John Waters-style comedy where Cynthia is always threatening people with her "eagle-claw stance," only to be beaten up by other girl gang members. Sibelle Hu is a figure who also bobs and weaves through all these films. She was a Taiwanese star in the mold of Brigitte Lin in her early career, but getting into the Girls with Guns genre changed her career forever. She appears in lots of the Moon/Yukari movies. In Devil Hunters, the film climaxes with an enormous explosion, in which Moon and Sibelle and another actor ended up engulfed in flames and all suffered serious enough burns that the film couldn't be finished. It just ends with the explosion and a thanks to the actors written on the screen over a freeze-frame of them all being engulfed in flames. Sibelle seems to have caught the worst of the blast. There's some permanent scarring visible on one of her hands in the later films. In a HK/Japanese coproduction film she made for Sonny Chiba, she shows off the scar and tells another character "there are scars all over my entire body." Maybe something just to add color to the script, but maybe...? Who knows? Afterwards, though, the kind of roles she plays alter abruptly. In Devil Hunters and before it, she plays prissy, perfectly-composed, by-the-book law enforcement figures. No hair is out of place, her skin looks perfect. After the explosion, she plays alcoholic slobs, compulsive gamblers, foul-mouthed loose-canons. It's a literally night-and-day transformation, which still perplexes me. A fun film in this genre Sibelle appears in without the other girls is Crystal Hunt, where she and Donnie Yen ham it up and do cool fights. Carrie Ng appears there, as well. Not really a martial arts film per se, but I always loved Carrie in Naked Killer––a movie whose reputation has sunk with the years. And Moon isn't just the only bright spot in the original Mr. Vampire; Chin Siu Ho and Lam Ching Ying do fantastic, acrobatic martial arts throughout that movie. I'd call that first Mr. Vampire a martial arts movie for sure. It's almost a musical.

Follow-ups: In this group, the outlying movies are the most interesting follow-up. Cynthia Khan in It's Now or Never, Moon Lee in Mr. Vampire, Yukari Oshima in Outlaw Brothers, Sibelle Hu in Crystal Hunt.


Lau Kar-Leung Movies: I've talked a lot on this thread and the Shawscope thread about Lau Kar-Leung and I don't want to revisit any of that; suffice to say, Eight-Diagram Pole Fighter, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, Heroes of the East and Challenge of the Masters are some of his great movies, but two more Shaw Bros film deserve mention: Martial Club (another film with a 1080p version swimming around the internet, but with no blu ray release I can find) and Mad Monkey Kung Fu. Martial Club is another "young Wong Fei-Hong" movie, like Challenge of the Masters. It's about competing martial arts schools, as in the Pao competition in Challenge of the Masters, but this time, it's vaguely about lion dancing (I mixed those up in my initial discussion of Challenge of the Masters in the Shawscope Thread). Martial Club is a lot more about the school-against-school strife than it is about Fei Hong learning kung fu in an unorthodox way. In this one, Fei Hong is learning kung fu already, and he just decides to get serious midway through the film, when it becomes clear that the other option is to get rooked and maybe injured by the villains, and to let his father down (in this version, Fei Hong has a friend who's the inheritor of another martial arts school, who falls down that hole, prompting Fei Hong to wise up). Fei Hong becomes a leader, and an exemplar of skill and martial philosophy for his generation, ultimately fighting a ringer the villains bring in, who turns out to be only interested in the fighting and the techniques, not in the villains' ultimate victory. Their ending fight, in an ever-narrowing alleyway, is one of the highlights of the film, but the villains' siege on an opera house is an unusually big and rowdy kung fu scene for a Shaw Brothers movie, and very exciting.

Mad Monkey Kung Fu is a Lau Kar-Leung film I see repeatedly dumped on online, but it's one of my favorites of his films. Unlike most of Lau's movies, this one demonstrates some of the darker side of Lau's imagination, which animates Eight Diagram Pole Fighter as well. And it's a film, like The Final Master, in which the kung fu master is deeply morally compromised, and must fight at the end, not only to punish the wicked villains, but to reclaim his own humanity. But the heroes of the film, in embracing the monkey style, end up doing something altogether more complex, with more grey shading to it, because Lau makes it clear that the monkey style opens the door to a dangerous embrace of excess. The master played by Lau Kar-Leung is weak for alcohol, leading to his downfall. His student, burning with righteous anger at the end of the film, leaps for the villain's right-hand seductress at the end of the film, to ensure she meets the same fate as her partner in crime. But Lau catches his monkey disciple in mid-air and admonishes him to restrain himself. The bloodlust of the monkey style must be mitigated by a sense of mercy, hard as that may be to summon and not to overlook. This film does, I'm afraid, kill off a defenseless monkey character––which makes it hard to watch, in my view. But what saves the film for me is that this is perpetrated in service of Lau's surprisingly bleak presentation of the world of Mad Monkey Kung Fu––the people in this film are raised and encouraged to be cruel sadists, and the death of the monkey symbolizes that very effectively.

Follow–Up: One more Lau Kar Leung movie deserves mention, even though it isn't strictly a martial arts movie, and that's Tiger on Beat, a cop film with Chow Yun-Fat and Conan Lee from the mid-80s. This is a lewd, zany comedy, which ends up partly an heroic bloodshed film by the end. And then there's the dueling chainsaws between Conan Lee and Gordon Liu in the finale. There's no other movie like this one––a shame, really, that Lau wasn't tapped to create more pictures in this genre. As it is, he essentially choreographs the gun action with the same innovation and sense of dynamic space and camerawork he brought to his Shaw Brothers Kung Fu films.


Sun Chung films: Sun Chung has more interest in storylines than his peers, like Chang Cheh. You said you'd seen Deadly Breaking Sword, so I suppose I have no more to say on that film, but Big Bad Sis and Rendezvous with Death are other great films of his. Avenging Eagle is a little lower down for me, but still a pretty good one.

Follow-Ups: Sun Chung isn't a direct peer of Chang Cheh, really; he's part of a later coterie of directors that join Shaw Brothers and inject some new energy into the movies––though perhaps it was always a case of too little, too late. But I like other films by these later Shaw filmmakers, and the list I'd include here would be Soul of the Sword, Bloody Parrot and Portrait in Crystal, and Demon of the Lute. But for Sun Chung himself, you could almost classify these filmmakers as "psychedelic Shaw Bros." There's a lot of soft-focus and weird effects in these movies. I'd also put Chor Yuen's Spirit of the Sword in there, as well.


I have lots of blind spots, especially in the 70s kung fu genre stuff. I hate, for instance, all the Joseph Kuo films I've seen, and a lot of those independent movies I've seen, like Showdown at the Cotton Mill. Classic films like Escort Over Tiger Hills and Vengeance of the Phoenix Sisters have proven disappointing to me. The Angela Mao films are a weird grey area for me. I like Angela Mao herself, but these movies are so mind-numbingly repetitive and sleep-inducing. I have literally fallen asleep watching The Himalayan something like 4 times––I've never gotten through the movie. But of those films, I suppose I like Broken Oath and Angry River the most. Mao is a great performer––I love her look of resolve in so many pictures, and her lively, hoydenish performance in The Fate of Lee Khan. But I think, apart from The Fate of Lee Khan, and her thankless role in Enter the Dragon, Mao isn't really in a lot of movies that stand the test of time. And yet, she has a great presence, and she's always good––even in thankless roles, the likes of Back-Alley Princess. Anyway, on to martial arts movies outside of Hong Kong, Taiwan and China.

Sonny Chiba films: Sonny Chiba is fun to watch screaming at his foes and tearing their testicles off. His karate films of the 70s through the mid-80s are really entertaining, especially the trilogy of Street Fighter movies, and then all of the spin-offs of that series, featuring Chiba's proteges at the Japan Action Training Center, where Chiba taught people like Sue Shiomi and Hiroyuki Sanada to be prime movie stuntpeople. The Sister Street Fighter movies with Sue Shiomi are fun. Chiba's in a good picture called The Bodyguard––which is quoted in Pulp Fiction by Tarantino. Two later Sue Shiomi movies are good: Fifth Level Fist and Steps of Maki: The Young Aristocrats. The best of this insane bunch is the Hiroyuki Sanada picture, Roaring Fire (aka Hero! Tekken). In the first few minutes of this film, Hiroyuki Sanada is gunned down by gangsters in Hong Kong. Then we cut to...Sanada again! Now, he's dressed as a cowboy, in Texas, speaking some phonetic English. Turns out, Sanada is one of a pair of identical twins, one of whom is now dead. Then it turns out that the man who raised Sanada in Texas isn't the father Sanada thought he was, but a kidnapper, who kidnapped Sanada from his wealthy parents as a baby! Now Sanada has to go to Japan to claim his birthright, and unite with the blind sister he never knew he had (Sue Shiomi––I half expected her character to turn out not to be blind, but they kept this going the whole film). Midway into the picture, it becomes clear that the plot this is based on is Hamlet. This is revealed by a ventriloquist's dummy, operated by Sonny Chiba, who plays an Interpol Agent known as "Mr. Magic." Sanada befriends a black sumo wrestler! He's chased by ninjas on bicycles! He and Sue Shiomi are subjected to poison gas in a scenario the black-leather and swastika-clad villainess refers to as an "Auschwitz Honeymoon!" This film is beyond tasteless, and director Norifumi Suzuki is very comfortable in that lane. It's one of those Star Wars Special-level "has to be seen to be believed" sort of films. But Sanada is exceptional in it, leaping all over the place, doing cool combat and great stunts. He's much better than Chiba himself.

Ong-Bak: Tony Jaa is a wonderful performer, inspired by Jackie Chan, but his career has been wayward and bizarre––in complete contrast to Chan's. I think you only ever need to see one Tony Jaa film, and that's the original Ong-Bak, where he demonstrates enormous prowess and stunt innovation. Tom Yun Goong, or The Protector, is also a really innovative film, but I can't get past the story beat where the villain has killed the elephant in the end. That is a bridge too far for me. Jaa has been good in films like SPL 2: A Time for Consequences, and he's actually performing cool martial arts in Triple Threat––but most of these later movies are really bad films, and they don't actually showcase his talent the way the first Ong-Bak movie does.

Follow-ups: The Jeeja Yanin films Chocolate and Raging Phoenix are, to me, really cool movies. They used to be marketed as spin-offs of the Jaa pictures, or perhaps Jaa produced them? Whatever. Jeeja Yanin is awesome, and these movies both seem basically full movies with stories and everything, so they're worth it. The scene in Chocolate where she fights all these guys on the outside edge of a 3-or-4-story apartment complex is a stunt masterpiece.

Merantau: I like Uko Iwais, but I don't appreciate most of these geek-show movies he's been thrown into, like Headshot and The Night Comes for Us. Nor do I care much about The Raid or its' sequel, though everyone seems to love those movies. The one that impressed me was Merantau, where we really get to see his Silat skills in practice.

Drive: There's a movie called Drive before the Ryan Gosling one, starring Mark Dacascos, Kadeem Hardison, and Brittany Murphy. Dacascos is one of those movie martial artists who never got his due, I think. Drive is the movie that proves it. The film is fun and funny and full of thrilling fights––especially a motel-room-battle where a bunch of guys attack Dacascos with tasers. Dacascos proves he's a match for any of these movie martial artists, but the film is so little-known that it's chance to boost Dacascos' career never really arrived.

Die Bad: Ryoo Seung-Wan's debut movie features rough Taekwondo streetfights in each of its' four segments. It's essentially four short films the director made, stitched together with shared characters into a storyline. It's a very brutal film, but also one about the pervasive effects of violence. This is one of these great Korean New Wave movies which has just slipped through the cracks, like Memento Mori. No blu rays for these pictures, but one for Friend? What kind of world are we living in?

I don't know. Would you consider chambara films martial arts cinema? If so I'd recommend some films by

Hideo Gosha: Goyokin, Bandit Vs. Samurai Squadron, and The Hunter in the Dark are, I think, the best of Gosha's chambara films. The combat's exciting, the drama's exciting, the visuals are intense––in spite of the ruddy, grungy-looking HD transfers of Bandit vs. Samurai Squadron and Hunter in the Dark Criterion has on their streaming service. I've seen Bandit Vs. Samurai Squadron on 35mm, and it looks gorgeous. There is a 1080p version of Goyokin floating out there in the wilderness. That version is the best I've ever seen Goyokin look––better than the 35mm print I saw of that film. These are all kind of latter-day samurai movies, with a pessimistic outlook, a sort of de-romanticized view of the samurai (Tenchu presents this view as well, but isn't, for my money, as exciting a chambara––it is a great movie, but as a chambara? not fun.) and their pursuit of privilege. There's also current events which factor into these period pieces; Goyokin seems directly informed by the My Lai Massacre right before it, with slow-motion scenes of villagers being wiped out by a militant samurai clan. The films all benefit from the expanded level of gore brought to these movies by Kurosawa's big trick at the end of Sanjuro. In these films, everyone is spurting sprays of arterial blood, and more. The initial fight in Bandit vs. Samurai Squadron has people tearing through shoji screens as they are cut from stem to stern, and even features a water barrel which seems to explode behind a villain when the hero cuts him through his midsection. The grittiness and even lewdness of these films is so appreciated after decades of Kurosawa and Kobayashi samurai movies; when Magobei, the hero of Goyokin's hands are too cold to hold a sword, his wife Shino presses his hands between her breasts, thawing them so he can go out and kill her brother in a duel. The films are messier and more unconvinced by the legacy of the samurai in all its' grotesque particulars than previous films (not that Kurosawa or Kobayashi aren't critical of the samurai––Gosha just pursues that critique to scatalogical levels, which I appreciate).

Once Upon a Time in China: I feel like I could do another post entirely on Tsui Hark movies, or even just on the Once Upon a Time in China films––the first of which is a huge favorite of mine. There is so much complexity in the scenarios and events of these movies. I can't get into all of it, but I love the way Hark handles Wong Fei Hong himself a bit like Superman in the Richard Donner film. What do you do if your hero is too good to be hurt? The answer for Hark is to bring the morality of the confrontations to the foreground, so that Wong's handling of each conflict is determined by the goals he needs to accomplish. Witness, for example, how long in the first film Wong puts off confronting the Cantonese gangs that help the American slavers (are these characters the reason this film has never had a serious U.S. release?), how long he waits before breaking the law to get results. The challenge for Wong is to maintain equilibrium, in front of increasing threats and iniquities. That's why the moment that drives him to kill at the end of the movie is presaged by his inability to save Iron Robe Yim from a hail of bullets. I don't know. Every time I see these movies, I'm more impressed by their complexity. I wanted to write in the Tsui Hark thread to defend some of his later movies no one seems to like, but I think I'll save that for another day. So for now, this part will just be a stand-in for something more I'd like to write later on. I also didn't talk about Swordsman I and II, or Ching Siu-Tung's other fun fantasy martial arts classic, The Heroic Trio (I'm leaving out A Chinese Ghost Story because it's not really a martial arts film, as far as I'm concerned).

Sorry this is so protracted! It's my rough martial arts movie cosmology, just as I constantly experience it: totally disorganized, with different subgenres and experiences clashing for supremacy in my thoughts at any given moment. They're the pools I've waded into and spend some time swimming within? I don't have the best analogy. I don't know if this streamlines your martial arts movie exploration or just complicates it completely? But that's it. Hope this is an okay format for this. I think it might be the best I can do!

[dwk]

feihong, appropriate to this thread, 88 Films is releasing Martial Club in July.

[feihong]

feihong, appropriate to this thread, 88 Films is releasing Martial Club in July.

Sweet, that's all we need to make it official, right? Glad to hear Martial Club is coming!

[Maltic]

Pedicab Driver: Sammo Hung career in martial arts films is more varied and peripatetic than Jackie's, but he is the only one of the Seven Little Fortunes, I think, to impress his own personality on his films as an auteur. Unlike Jackie or Cory Yuen, Sammo's films are animated by some of his convictions and beliefs. He is a working-class guy, and his films bleed with sympathy for working-class people––no movie moreso than Pedicab Driver. This is a period piece about these poor, put-upon drivers, and their whole shantytown milieu. There are extraordinary action scenes, including a pedicab-and-car chase, a great fight between Sammo and Billy Chow, and a legendary staff battle between Sammo and Lau Kar-Leung (another of those duel scenes Sammo claims was not choreographed ahead of time, as per Lau's demand––"Hey Sammo, let's fight!" he purportedly said, first thing when he got on set). The working-class sympathies of the film are very refreshing in a genre which is often about the select few––the teacher's prized student, the errant prince, the noble knight, etc.

Well, antique smuggling is a recurring theme in Jackie's films.

I think Dave Kehr once called him a "disappointed conformist," although these days he seems to be just happily conformist.