Recommend Martial Arts Movies

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)