The Five Venoms (1978)

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The Five Venoms (1978)

Chang Cheh’s seminal work caused a stir when it was first broadcast on late night TV in America. The cult film spawned merchandise, cartoons and cash-ins, thus becoming possibly the most widely seen Shaw Brothers movie in the studio’s history.

Frankly, the film is quite kitsch and campy, and far from Chang’s best work. Yet The Five Venoms relishes every second of its distinct quirkiness, and although slightly too abstract for any sort of mainstream appeal, the film’s standing as a cult favourite and kung fu movie classic is for the most part well deserved.

Credited for launching numerous careers (Wang Yu, …

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Profile: Yuen Woo-ping

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Profile: Yuen Woo-ping

Date of birth: January 1, 1945 (Guangzhou, China)

Other names: Yuen Wo Ping, Yuen Ho-ping, Peace Yuen, Yuan Ta-yean, Yuan Ta-ten, Yuen Dai-aan, Yuen Woo-pang, Yuan Ho-ping, Yuan Her-ping, Yuan He-ping, Ba Ye

Occupation: Director, producer, actor, action director, writer, production manager, stuntman

Biography: One of the greatest fight choreographers in kung fu cinema, Yuen Woo-ping is credited as a pioneer in the Hong Kong kung fu comedy genre. His prolific filmography has taken him from Hong Kong to Hollywood and encompasses work with a roll call of martial arts stars including Donnie Yen, Jet Li, Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan, as well …

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Dance of the Drunk Mantis (1979)

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Dance of the Drunk Mantis (1979)

Sublime kung fu comedy from the Yuen clan, devised as a sequel to Drunken Master with much of the original cast returning in similar roles. Apart from one glaring absence, Jackie Chan; although young Sunny Yuen slips nicely into the same naive persona, even if he lacks a leading man’s charisma.

He plays Foggy, a part-time pot-wash bumpkin and the adoptive son of drunken vagabond Sam the Seed (played by real-life Yuen clan patriarch Simon Yuen). Sam only discovers he has an adopted son following a chance visit to his long-suffering wife, who devises a plan to help with some father-son …

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Drunken Master (1978)

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Drunken Master (1978)

This is a really great movie, the kind of thing you would recommend to a distant cousin. Brought to us by the Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow team, Drunken Master is a slightly superior film and undoubtedly the quintessential kung fu comedy.

Credit due to all involved: Woo-ping’s stylish direction and choreography, Simon Yuen’s synonymous ageing beggar, Hwang Jang-lee’s dastardly evil adversary. Yet the real delight here is Jackie Chan, strikingly confident from his new found fame and looking better than ever.

Woo-ping retraces the early years of Chinese folk hero Wong Fei-hung, who is sent as a punishment by his father …

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The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978)

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The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978)

Lau Kar-leung’s famous kung fu film, based on monk San Te’s retribution (the Shaolin student credited for opening the temple’s gates to the secular world) plays like a standard revenge flick with some obligatory establishment-bashing thrown in for good measure. The key to the film’s legacy as one of the genre’s greatest treasures, then, lies in its insightful and earnest depiction of the Shaolin Temple as not only a vessel for superhuman kung fu training, but also as a place of solace, piety and emotional development. Here, Lau portrays the spiritual birthplace of martial arts as a character in the …

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Bruce Li in New Guinea (1978)

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Bruce Li in New Guinea (1978)

A title of confounding falsity, featuring an actor mimicking Bruce Lee and Taiwan doubling for Papua New Guinea, and neither party doing a particularly convincing job.

This Joseph Kong Bruceploitation arrives at the zany dog-end of the genre, and the story is forever clutching at straws.

Kong might well be the sub-genre’s Hitchcock, spinning such classic name-droppers as The Clones of Bruce Lee and Bruce’s Deadly Fingers. Although this film is clearly insane, Kong manages to convince a roster of familiar faces into raiding the Four Seas costume department for all the headbands and leopard print they can find. Great supporting actors …

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Black Belt Jones (1974)

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Black Belt Jones (1974)

Those who question the cinematic influence of Bruce Lee need only refer to what Messrs Clouse, Weintraub and Heller did after the instant success of Enter the Dragon in 1973. The team turn to Bruce Lee’s well-coiffed co-star Jim Kelly – a karate fighter of some merit – to helm this cheap blaxploitation effort, but the results are quite ghastly.

Kelly’s film career is a particularly unfortunate story. Even here he displays enough commendable chopping and sassy sex appeal to make it as a leading man, but his subsequent films following Enter the Dragon are never more than moronic. And here …

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The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977)

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The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977)

The first meeting of minds between the Airplane! and Naked Gun team, this rapid fire spoof is 90 minutes of pure parody with the American media the target. The news becomes a laughing stock, sexploitation is made to look silly and commercials are rioted – one about a charity helpline for the dead, another about the importance of zinc oxide. It’s a sequence of skits, hilarious in places, with a glorious centrepiece: a half-hour spoof of Enter the Dragon, titled ‘A Fistful of Yen’. Obviously a labour of love, the parody is simply glorious. The evil ‘Klhan’ uses his disposable …

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The Brave Lion (1974)

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The Brave Lion (1974)

Two Chinese POWs seek freedom and fortune by mixing up the locals at a lumber yard occupied by the Japanese during World War II. But the guards fail to consider the consequences of Barry Wai’s kung fu chops, who doesn’t take kindly to foreign oppression and plans a little uprising of his own. The film ends with 30 minutes of constant fighting which is an arduous process given the film’s distinct lack of imagination, but you would have lost the will to live by then anyway. And never trust a film set during the war where the majority of the …

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The Four Shaolin Challengers (1977)

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The Four Shaolin Challengers (1977)

This is your standard girl meets boy, boy loses girl, girl gets abducted by gold smugglers and forced into prostitution story. The boy summarily unites with his old buddies to rescue the girl and kill all the baddies. The boy in question in Larry Lee, playing someone with a lose connection to Wong Fei-hung, who teams up with fellow challengers Bruce Leung, Wong Yuen-san and Jason Pai who all seem to be having a great time despite the gravity of the situation. The ensemble of familiar faces give the film an endearing quality, but this is pulp kung fu filmmaking …

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