Recommend Martial Arts Movies

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

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

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

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

Doublepack of Warriors Two/Prodigal Son coming

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's cool that Ken Russell's son was the co-founder of Eastern Heroes. But I'm not totally sure what it was, seems to be a VHS era label, a shop and a magazine?

Maya Fukuda. Don't know if she's been in any martial arts films but profile says she's an actress

お仕事を終えて帰国された川本さん @kawa0060 のお稽古参加させて頂きました🦾
久しぶりにお会いできて嬉しかったです♪
テーマをもっての練習とっても勉強になる💭トレーニングも基礎も立ち回りも集中して出来て最高に楽しかったです
雑だし反省点ばかりだけど、もっともっと頑張る😤🔥#アクション pic.twitter.com/aarHnRLmPv

— 福田茉耶（ふくだまや）11/28（日）K'SスタジオグラビアントップチームGTT撮影会ゲスト出演 (@mchan1201) November 6, 2021

how is the Cinematic Vengeance box Robert? it looks very tempting

I just got it mailed a few days ago and haven't watched anything yet and I've got piles of other stuff which I keep adding to. I'll probably watch at least one this week.

Skinny Tiger Fatty Dragon was just announced too

海外の棒術チャンピオン。ちなみに16歳。 pic.twitter.com/EFMrlW7XJa

— 岩井洋一(柔術新聞&ジャズギター) (@busujiujitsu) August 30, 2021

I got the Shawscope box today. Thankfully this is one of those times where the packaging is so nice that I feel I'm getting my money's worth out of it. A lot of collectors items are ripoffs but I really like this.

Started with Chinatown Kid. It feels atypical for Chang Cheh but there are fatal stomach injuries later on.

I didn't have high expectations for One Armed Boxer but it's quite audacious and hard hitting for the time. Wang Yu put a lot of energy into the films he directed himself, it seems. It's so impatient with the hero's recovery that it just has a quick photo montage. I like this a lot better than One Armed Swordsman. The main bad guy is such a little bitch for hiding behind imported fighters. The tibetan monk losing his mind at offense from the sharp toothed japanese man is funny.

Loved One Armed Boxer, the pan-asian gallery of evil martial artists is a hoot.

One Armed Boxer 1 & 2 are the absolute best, don't at me

Didn't know there was a second one. Can't stop thinking about stories about Wang Yu as a person, I'd like to know more, maybe I'll get it in the commentaries. Seems a lot of people don't rate him as a martial artist but he really goes for the over the top fun

second one has multiple titles involving the Flying Guillotine, it's even battier and more direct than the first one imo

Master Of The Flying Guillotine, I didn't know it's a sequel but yeah it's batty. Seemed a much lower budget but maybe it was just a shitty picture copy I had

it might be, never thought of that. set pieces are better than the first tho, the fights on top of the stakes in the ground and the final face off with the guillotine lad are brilliant

Dreadnaught and Knockabout announced for april. Always wanted to see the former and the latter is a favorite

Watched Chinese Boxer and Boxer From Shantung. Interesting how I just recently watched One Armed Boxer and Chinatown Kid because they really are just remakes of the directors' (Jimmy Wang Yu and Chang Cheh) earlier films. Like Snake In The Eagle's Shadow and Drunken Master.

Just saw Boxer from Shantung, as well (just started on the Shawscope set). Very badass. A dude beat a dude to death with the corpse of another dude that he just beat to death.

So much stuff coming (and I've noticed more of them are A/B regions)... Hero (Yuen Biao), Martial Club, Seventh Curse, Killer Meteors, Half A Loaf Of Kung Fu, Human Lanterns, Shaolin Mantis, Odd Couple, Monkey Kung Fu

Done this test again and I got 43 of 101, but I own a few I've yet to watch
https://www.listchallenges.com/list-of-hong-kong-legends-films-released-on-dvd

Only 14 for me! :(

a whopping 8 :/

Just watched Black Cat bluray (more or less a remake of La Femme Nikita), Jade Leung is completely new to me, I liked it enough that I want to see the sequel (it's abut killing Boris Yeltsin), don't know if it's likely to come out or if it's not considered strong enough. Hope this isn't the only Leung film we'll get over here on disc. She's in New Kung Fu Cult Master this year, trailers smothered in cgi of course, so I'm not that eager.

This is a good twitter account (he just got a youtube channel too), shows good lesser known fight clips and compares pictures of different home releases, a lot of disappointment that bluray releases often don't preserve the colors the 80s/90s films were doing, like the heavy blue lighting you often saw

I keep forgetting about this Daigo Umehara Flash Kick in this Filipino gem of a film ¨Lethal Panther 2(1993)¨ This whole scene is ridiculous. pic.twitter.com/qJMyYX6gPH

— ѕнσgυη ѕυρяємє (@TimesSqKungFu) March 10, 2022

Cynthia Khan in "In the Line of Duty III(1988)" This is on some final round flow with that music and homeboy expression kills me at the 7 sec mark. pic.twitter.com/HDg1WKPw7G

— ѕнσgυη ѕυρяємє (@TimesSqKungFu) December 16, 2020

That dude's youtube videos have an amazing level of technical geekiness.

I really recommend Black Cat, quite worried that we won't be getting much more early Jade Leung films, but apparently she's one of the few action actresses from the 90s who is still doing it

I’ve seen almost 400 kung-fu and wuxia movies over the past three years, so when I say I’ve never seen a fight like this before, it’s not hyperbole
(Drunken Dragon/Exciting Dragon - dir. Chiu Chung-Hing, 1985) pic.twitter.com/PRuv0eN6K6

— ChristianV (@GenreFilmAddict) March 18, 2022

awesome.

holy shit, wonder what the rest of the movie is like

Been loving Chi Kuan-Chen, just amazing to watch him move
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/66/ff/c3/66ffc3d9cdccdf8b73373acc694db28e.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d1/34/2b/d1342b6f2093bc7979fe71e534cd1a70.png
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/7b/d7/43/7bd743494861f1510079299a69636275.jpg

Finished Shawscope One (not every single feature though). My favorites were probably Five Shaolin Masters and Shaolin Temple, a good deal of that is my discovery of Chi Kuan-Chun (I mispelled above), he's just so spectacular looking.

I'm not qualified to say but I wouldn't have included Mighty Peking Man or Five Venoms. I guess the former was included for variety and it's one of their biggest spectacles, I'm still amazed that this is my second bluray of this and none of the experts mention the leopard has its mouth sewn shut. I'm very curious about what non-martial arts films might be in the following sets. Confessions Of A Chinese Courtesan?
I generally don't care for Venoms era Chang Cheh films, I find the costumes and wigs quite ugly and the fights just don't shine like when he was working with better collaborators. Crippled Avengers has a bit more novelty. I've heard the Venoms era is a bigger deal outside asia (due to Wu-Tang Clan referencing them?) I'm not thrilled that the next Shawscope set seems to have 4 Venoms era films but I have at least liked Five Element Ninjas and Masked Avengers.

Executioners From Shaolin was quite rousing but I thought the ending voice-over assuring audiences that the bad guy was definitely dead, undermined it slightly.

Heroes Of The East was fun. I thought it was a big mistake to keep the wife mostly out the second half, I missed her it sucks that she didn't have that many more fighting appearances in films. Yasuaki Kurata's crab style is very well pulled off for something that dangerously silly on a final boss. The commentary by Jonathan Clements is really fantastic, glad to see him doing this more (I got interested in him through his writing about Chinese and Japanese speculative fiction), he done one on the third Daimajin film too.
All the Tony Rayns documentaries are appreciated too. And Cho Young-Jung talking about all those Chung Chang-Wha films I may never see.

Dirty Ho: I've never seen this much feigned politeness during fights, it takes up half the film! Also one of the most deliberately artifical/dance-like martial arts films I've seen. The 7 agonies scene is baffling and funny.

Absolutely love Dirty Ho for that choreography. So great. I'm guessing there have been other movies that used kung-fu as a physical metaphor for politics, but that must be the best one I've seen. The relationship between the two leads is really funny and kind of endearing in the end, even if ultimately fully elitist.

Chi Kuan-chun is excellent - I'm guessing he kinda got overshadowed by Alexander Fu Sheng in their collaborations? He was great every time I saw him.

Peking Man is a historical curiosity, and they did the restoration already with theatrical rerelease, I'm guessing that's why they threw it in. Far from the studio's best work.

I love all the Venoms stuff more or less, Magnificent Ruffians and Kid with the Golden Arms will be good in Set 2. Wonder if they'll throw in House of Traps or save that for another set.
And yeah everyone knows the Venoms largely because of Wu-Tang Clan, but also many of those movies were also shown often on TV during the '80s for a lot of us, particularly in NY.

Still hoping the set goes on sale, but I might just bite anyway at some point, me and my brother love pretty much all these movies. And I wouldn't be surprised if this went OOP within a couple years.

I hope the next volume doesn't come out til the end of the year, I still haven't watched much of the Joseph Kuo box set.

House Of Traps was another one of the early bluray releases by 88 Films that might be out of print, so I'm guessing it could be a candidate. I see that the american version of 8 Diagram Pole Fighter has a Clements commentary, so lucky youse.

I guess Fu Sheng was maybe considered more charismatic but I've never especially dug him. I like how the translation of the Elegant Trails mini-doc described his face as "chonky".

Hapkido has been confirmed by Eureka. I appreciate this because I haven't seen any Angela Mao yet.

Mighty Peking Man pretty bad as a kaiju film too. Fully support non martial arts films in these Shaw sets in theory but the reality of it can be a let down...

Shawscope box is down to £100 in the Arrow sale at the mo'

https://www.arrowfilms.com/easter-sale-2022.list

Heroes of the East and Dirty Ho were easily my favourites because of the overt leap to comedy.

I really enjoyed Mighty Peking Man but that's hardly surprising. Weirdest part for me was it using the same musical cues as the early 70s British TV show Timeslip.

The Heroic Trio is playing at my local theatre tomorrow. It looks like my new favourite movie ever.

Music cues in Shaw Bros films are an interesting topic, what with using libraries instead of original composers. It's underdiscussed how something like Five Shaolin Masters gains a whole different vibe from having an Italian giallo-style soundtrack instead of the American orchestral stuff they tend to go for more.

Fully support non martial arts films in these Shaw sets in theory but the reality of it can be a let down...

― Daniel_Rf, Friday, April 15, 2022 10:50 AM (eight hours ago)

I think Boxer's Omen and Seeding Of A Ghost are terrific. The latter is genuinely nasty but apparently they had a few late 70s films that were just as heavy.

Read a bit in the Shawscope booklet that Chang Cheh didn't like his late 70s films

Seconded on Boxer's Omen, just wild shit!

I could see Cheh feeling that way - there's definitely a feeling of lower budget, more by-the-numbers production for a lot of them. I generally prefer those late '70s movies myself though