Recommend Martial Arts Movies

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.