Fist, Palm, Knife, Sword, Pole, Spear!

[Holymanm]

The only truly important thread on the Internet? You know what to do... post about martial arts flicks here

[brian d]

if it’s easier, there’s a thread here: viewtopic.php?f=21&t=389 that started off as me looking for recommendations and turned into more of a discussion about wuxia films.

[thoxans]

but this thread has the cooler title! (no offense, bd, since i enjoy a thread title with an exclamation point as much as the next guy)

[brian d]

yeah i thought the exclamation point was a nice touch. glad you appreciated it too.

[Holymanm]

fixed...

but did not see that other thread! either one is fine. i just missed the title, and the pic of gordon liu introducing himself to that other fellow

[rischka]

finally! i'll have some things to add for 1979

[rischka]

chor yuen love

[rischka]

i watched another chor yuen, the proud twins, which was more like chang cheh's venom films yet totally fun



our hero, jiang xiao yu, is raised in the valley of villains and becomes a trickster, if not necessarily evil



blissfully unaware of his twin, yet destiny will bring them together (in an extremely complicated way)

[brian d]

did we ever do a wuxia! poll at the old scfz? now that i've seen a decent number i'd be interested in either voting on one or getting recommendations from one.

but yeah, chor yuen's films seem oddly complicated. (the ones i've seen or remember anyway.)

[brian d]

today i completed my wuxia! challenge for the year, just six months early. i finished it up with vengeance of the phoenix sisters (chen hung-min), which was the only black and white film that i watched for it, a very nice little film about three badass sisters getting revenge for the dudes who killed their parents fifteen years earlier. the swordfighting is a lot less polished than in the shaw brothers films, and i think that works to its benefit. it looks like rischka might be the only one who's seen it around these parts, might be worth checking out for the genre fans.

my favorites for the challenge were:

Vengeance of the Phoenix Sisters (Chen Hung-Min)
Dragon Inn (King Hu)
The Valiant Ones (King Hu)
Killer Constable (Kuei Chih-Hung)
Dirty Ho (Liu Chia-Liang)
Eight Diagram Pole Fighter (Liu Chia-Liang)

i never realized that there was so much gender-bending in wuxia! films, and i'm kinda curious about it. plenty of times that a character who would identify as female passes as male with no trouble as part of a revenge plot or to get to certain spaces, which of course speaks to the general prowess of the characters, only to shock everyone when they take on a female role again. but then king hu always gives us ostensibly female characters who don't make any attempt to pass and yet keep up fine with the other characters in terms of fighting skill and no one bats an eye.

thanks to everyone for recommending that i watch all of the king hu films (just two more to go to have seen all the subtitled ones that seem to be floating around). from what i saw, chang cheh is generally the most overrated of the directors and liu chia-liang the most uneven, with some great films and some real poor ones as well. and overall, i'm glad i watched these since i didn't really know much about the genre beforehand. much more enjoyable than gialli films, from two years ago, and this time i think i'm walking away with a greater appreciation for what i watched instead of feeling like it was a drag.

up next year: 52 films from the philippines. gonna start early because it might take me six months to get through a couple of laz diaz films.

and it might be time for a wuxia! poll soon, so be looking out for that.

[rischka]

yes i do remember the pheonix sisters!!

[Holymanm]

Legendary Weapons of China (Liu Chia-Liang, 1982)



what in the fuck is going on in this stupid-ass movie

3/5 (some great martial arts)

[rischka]

seriously great training sequences in clan of the white lotus. choreographed by liu chia-liang ofc

[Holymanm]

^ ". . . this special sequel to Executioners From Shaolin . . ."

I watched that... five years ago... guess I can check the summary for it again quickly before watching this one

[rischka]

honestly the plot is almost the same so you don't really need to lol. i'm gonna watch return to the 36th chamber and i don't really think i need to either



ha! gordon liu is basically playing a conman pretending to be gordon liu from the first movie

[nrh]

yuen woo-ping's miracle fighters is pretty wild. plot is pretty simple - court martial arts instructor is sentenced to death for breaking marriage laws, he escapes with the prince who dies along the way. years later the vengeful court sorcerer comes looking for him, mistakes the orphan kid he picked up in the woods as the dead prince, and now grown orphan kid has to battle sorcerer with the help of two bickering elderly magicians.

but the whole thing is basically excuse for some very mean knockaround comedy and some amazing analog effects, often melies style in camera tricks done with dummies, wires, trick sets, and acrobatics. the whole thing climaxes with a wild showdown to be top sorcerer in the realm of the demons that kind of has to be seen to be believed.

somewhat overextended even at just 90 minutes, and you need to have a tolerance for this kind of abrasive sometimes mean hk comedy, but there is some totally amazing work here.

[Holymanm]

i'm gonna watch return to the 36th chamber and i don't really think i need to either



ha! gordon liu is basically playing a conman pretending to be gordon liu from the first movie

Yeah the third one in the "series" is decent too! And again pretty different, as I recall

[Holymanm]

Almost every Hong Kong movie on Amazon Prime is only available in English Audio... and it makes me want to jump kick them in the face

[therouxxx]

Almost every Hong Kong movie on Amazon Prime is only available in English Audio... and it makes me want to jump kick them in the face

The more popular ones are. There's a ton of deeper cut Chor Yuen and Chang Cheh in chinese audio though

[Holymanm]

Huh... I added about 70 movies to my watchlist - checked over 25, and every single one only had English audio! including some Chor/Cheh! But now I see a couple of theirs that have Cantonese; will have to sort through.

[therouxxx]

Here's a list of the ones I've found so far https://boxd.it/2VAom

[Holymanm]

:0 most helpful, 多謝!!

[rischka]

snake in the eagle's shadow has a cat so obviously it was good i may make another tier on the wuxia poll by the time i am finished

[Holymanm]

i may make another tier on the wuxia poll by the time i am finished

that's the spirit

so far i've only been watching juvenile stephen chow movies, and strange B-movies. mostly from them showing up on prime or shitflix and watching them without thinking too much. need to get in some more classics! (which i sort of expected from legendary weapons of china, but .....)

[rischka]

need a better copy of this chor yuen he might be my fave shaw bros director. his sets are like a fairy tale and he likes to shoot with stuff in the foreground

(i don't know the technical terms don't make fun of me)

[Lencho of the Apes]

every single one only had English audio!

There are lots of other good reasons not to subscribe to am*z*n pr**e. Every Asian film(incl wuxia) that I've ever watched from m*vi*s1*3*yz had original audio + subs -- dubbed versions are usually indicated in the thumbnails. [/soapbox]

[Holymanm]

I just have access to someone's Prime account, and it has a built-in app on my TV, so it's easier to use it than downloading + putting on portable drive + attaching to box attached to my TV, as I usually do. At least for stuff that's on Prime already - and it actually does have a ridiculously extensive collection (way more so than sh**flix), the only problem being that the interface is so awful - and the front page so atrociously geared toward modern B movies (why????) - that you'd never even guess what's really on it. But yeah, for HKKF, it offends me...

m*vi*s1*3*yz

Never heard of it :0

[Lencho of the Apes]

Never heard of it

See my Year Poll Watchlist for links. It's a reboot of the infamous p*tl*cker, that got shut down so many times.

[Holymanm]

Hero (Corey Yuen, 1997)



hells yes!!! is yuen biao easily the most underappreciated kung fu star ever to bless the screen? (see the first two words of this paragraph!)

what a blast. wildly careening from kung fu to melodrama to limb-slicin' to ugly british ambassadors to gunplay to takeshi "handsome" kaneshiro to the best alleyway axe fight this side of oldboy. and did i mention yuen biao! weaker second half. superb first half. lots of guns in the second half. pretty sure breaking bad stole that whole automated gun trick denouement from this...
3.5/5

[Holymanm]

Monkey Kung Fu (John Law Ma, 1979)*







just absurd. ridiculous. some say an entire town in a particularly austere region of southwest germany once saw this film at a festival screening and lost their collective cognitive knackers! great turns from the two leads. fight choreography in the upper echelon of this stuff!
4/5

* NOT to be confused with "Mad Monkey Kung Fu", also... from... 1979 -__-