Recommend Martial Arts Movies

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

I'd need to see a wider selection of his earlier work and be clear that it was actually him directing, he seems to only be a supervising director on Shaolin Temple (Wu Ma doing the real directing) and I think I heard similar about Five Shaolin Masters (Lau Kar-leung?), those two being my favorites in the boxed set. It helped that those films were less studio bound.

I generally enjoyed most of the Shaw horror films. Even though I might not like them at all, I'd be very interested to see the musicals that made their earliest hits, that stuff seems really inaccessible right now but I guess a lot of it should be on HK discs with English subtitles, I had a dvd catalogue that came with an HK dvd of Buddha's Palm that had all sorts of genres, a ton of romance films.
And speaking of Buddha's Palm, stuff like that and Holy Flame Of The Martial World, Battle Wizard etc... really should get some reissues because that's one of the best sides of their later output.

Looking through that booklet, there's a lot of unfamiliar films labelled action/adventure with martial arts stars. Most genres are there.

Several years ago I saw screens and gifs from Kenneth Anger's Inauguration Of The Pleasure Dome and I was going "is that from Boxer's Omen?"

I'd need to see a wider selection of his earlier work and be clear that it was actually him directing, he seems to only be a supervising director on Shaolin Temple (Wu Ma doing the real directing) and I think I heard similar about Five Shaolin Masters (Lau Kar-leung?), those two being my favorites in the boxed set.

Both of those seem more interested in the Shaolin stuff and less in the homoerotic male friendship relationships that Cheh seems obsessed with, so makes sense he'd be less directly involved.

Another good account

Angel Terminators 2 is the better film, but Angel Terminators 1 has this holy-shit-I-hope-no-one-was-seriously-injured stunt pic.twitter.com/dTpw7QrKMf

— ChristianV (@GenreFilmAddict) April 10, 2022

Also posted a crazy clip from Ricochet with John Lithgow (never heard of it before)

Ricochet is a tremendous underrated movie but

underrated? are we... sure about that

Yes we are. Top tier 90's action film.

It's a good week as both Dreadnaught and Knockabout were released, both have Yuen Biao and Leung Kar-Yan as a duo (and a similar plot point). This is my first time seeing Dreadnaught and it's quite varied, it feels like lots of different films from the era jammed into one. I still prefer Knockabout but Dreadnaught never drags as much. The dancing dragon scenes are a level above Jackie Chan's.

More cool announcements: Tiger Cage trilogy, Righting Wrongs and Flying Guillotine 2. Especially happy about Righting Wrongs.

On The Run too, a Yuen Biao thriller

Don't think I heard about this until today
https://variety.com/2022/film/actors/jimmy-wang-yu-dead-dies-one-armed-swordsman-1235228248/#!

Police Story 3 bluray coming.

Never heard of this one, on one of the best film accounts

Jing Tian commands the screen in Special Id’s best set-piece, a breakneck car chase-car brawl coordinated by stunt legend Bruce Law (aka remember The Raid 2’s car action; that was him). Just radiates that can’t-look-away superstar presence of peak Yeoh and Khan https://t.co/OXxmR1NxfF pic.twitter.com/nQnp3eTgM3

— ChristianV (@GenreFilmAddict) May 24, 2022

I'm kinda cynical about the last decade or so of Donnie Yen vehicles, especially the ones were he plays a cop, but let me know if it's worthwhile

Yes, Flashpoint and Dragon didn't do that much for me and I haven't seen the SPL films yet. I'm wary about any martial arts films after the mid 90s, the Raid films are the only ones I'm really enthusiastic about. I haven't seen Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon since around the time it came out but it has never been a favorite. A lot of the more acclaimed films look just competent but missing something. Sounds like rose tinted glasses because sometimes I really don't know what's missing. But then again I feel pretty meh about lots of 70s films after seeing so many but I still like them better. I just got Corey Yuen's Hero (1997) in the mail the other day and I'm very curious how it is.

If you're meh about '70s kung fu what's your platonic ideal? Early '90s?

I do think there's a consensus that Hong Kong cinema in general ain't what it used to be from the 70's to late 90's, and this is not just nostalgia, there's obvious material factors at play there.

I don't even disagree! For me it's that the genre trends shifted heavily to modern cops, guns and crime, so that really became dominant and I didn't like that as much - as well as the decline of Shaw Bros. in particular. That said, my favorite era is probably the late '60s to mid '70s.

the genre always kinda had limitations in that keeping things "full on Fu, no guns" meant keeping all of the movies to a confined time period, so I kind of enjoyed when the genre branched out to things like Police Story, where there was still fu but modernities as well.

but damned if my favorites aren't literally all Shaw Brothers Gordon Liu flicks lol

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin being my fav

I love wuxia first and fights second tbh

i want my fights to be like a good ballet. just as much fun watching someone acrobatically dodge punches without throwing one as it is him going full-on haymaker. probably why I like Liu so much.

looking for a way to stream "Special ID," I found it on free-with-ads Tubi, which appears to have a pretty deep catalog of martial arts movies, maybe more than Netflix, Prime, etc. ... are other free streaming services similar?

I mean I do like lots of 70s stuff, it's just that there's so much that's routine/pretty good but can't get enthusiastic about. I feel like a lot of kung fu comedies have a weak first act and redeem themselves by the end. Most of my favorite stuff is 80s to early 90s. Despite my strong fondness for period costume/countryside stuff I often somehow prefer the urban films.

I also don't care much for the gritty crime trend of the modern stuff, but... if that was in the early 90s there's a good chance I'd love it, there'd be tons of nice blue lighting at least. Like Crime Story with Jackie Chan.

And the scene is so much bigger than Hong Kong/Taiwan now.