Best Kung Fu Movies That Are Worth Your Time « Taste of Cinema. For decades, serious film snobs looked down on kung fu movies as cultural trash, a kind of mindless detritus imported from the Pacific Rim to clutter grindhouse movie theaters and fill out the programming line- up on late night TV. This was an odd position to take—if ever there was a genre that embodied the highest ideals of pure cinema, the inimitable marriage of form, movement and sound that can only be found in film, kung fu movies are it. It’s a cinema style madly in love with the human form, with complex and athletic physical performance. In a way, it replaced the Hollywood musical in the West by switching dance numbers and songs with painstakingly constructed exchanges of blows and blood, all inspired by a Chinese martial tradition going back over a thousand years. It’s hard to say exactly why or how Chinese martial arts films made the transition from strict wuxia—or “martial hero” and swordsman–stories to the brand of movie making that plays up fisticuffs and bare- handed combat, often practiced by virtual nobodies in the social order.

Bruce Lee was probably most responsible for popularizing the form, though Five Fingers of Death (a title included on this list) typically gets the credit for being the first—or, at any rate, the first successful—hand- to- hand based Chinese martial arts film. In the case of directors such as Chang Cheh, wuxia simply evolved into something…different, documenting the adventures of desperate men seeking out the wisdom of reclusive masters in order to satisfy vendettas, while employing rare, sometimes completely fictional fighting styles and weapons. Lau Kar- leung often took the same path in his stories, with a bias toward authentic martial history and the teachings of Shaolin, while Yuen Woo- Ping, the internationally acclaimed choreographer for films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the Matrix trilogy and Kill Bill movies, as well as a very prolific filmmaker in his own right, injected a hefty dose of slapstick humor into the genre, helping to launch the careers of performers such as Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung. As the years went on and the genre became more cemented, greater sophistication in film technique allowed for more visual daring in how fight scenes were staged, and more recently it seems that terrific kung fu movies don’t even have to come from China—the Thai- produced Ong Bak 2 and Indonesian The Raid: Redemption also have a place on this list, alongside some of the most impressive offspring of Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest. Most of the films presented here are confirmed classics, while others may still have a while to go before they’re recognized as being among the best of the genre.

1. · · ENTER THE WU-TANG Wu-Tang and old school kung fu flicks. Classic kung fu movie samples and quotes that inspired the RZA and the Clan. Each sample is set.
2. The adventures of a Shaolin Monk as he wanders the American West armed only with his skill in Kung Fu.
3. Watch full Pocahontas online full HD. Cartoon movies Pocahontas online for free in HD. In 1607, the Susan Constant sails to the New World from London, carrying English s.
4. We salute some of the finest work of The Shaw Brothers, as we look back at The 36th Chamber films.
5. · A frequent addition to $5.99 Kung Fu movie box sets, “Swordsman with an Umbrella” gives you exactly that: A swordsman out for revenge, who totes around.

What most readers can agree on, I think, is that every movie discussed in this article promises great fun, no matter how many times you watch them. The Invincible Armour. General Chow goes on the run after he’s accused of murdering the Ming sympathizer he works for, obsessed with finding the real killer and bringing him to justice. Getting in his way is a bounty hunter hired by the Emperor’s minister whose ambitious plotting caused the murder. He discovers that the killer was trained by an expert in Eagle Claw kung fu who also happens to be the minister’s brother, but that’s not the only skill the man possesses—the brothers were also trained in a rare style of Iron Armor kung fu (I’m using the American spelling here, instead of the UK spelling favored in most English prints), one that makes the body invulnerable to nearly any blow, and the underhanded minister is the vastly superior practitioner.

Drunken Master. Kung Fu Movies This is arguably Jackie Chan’s best movie and truly exemplary of his unique ability to combine Bruce Lee martial acumen with three. For decades, serious film snobs looked down on kung fu movies as cultural trash, a kind of mindless detritus imported from the Pacific Rim to clutter grindhouse movie.

In order to defeat him, General Chow must learn the Iron Finger technique, the only one known to effectively counteract the style. This fairly simple and straightforward tale illustrates everything that makes old- school kung fu movies so much fun—the story is mostly an excuse to keep the action moving, as a young martial arts expert squares off against an older, seemingly unbeatable master, with John Liu’s high- kicking skill in the role of General Chow making him a blast to watch. It can’t be said to blaze any new trails (the plot actually seems very similar to that of Executioners From Shaolin in a lot of ways, with the minister being a carbon copy of abbot Pai Mei), but it is unfailingly entertaining and packed with the kind of thrills that kung fu movie fans yearn for. Also, look for a brief appearance by frequent Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung collaborator Yuen Biao as a hired fighter. Crippled Avengers aka Return of the Five Deadly Venoms.

Chang Cheh’s preference for outlandish concepts in his kung fu movies comes close to its greatest fruition in this movie, a brutally violent yet deeply silly story that begins when a man’s son has his arms cut off. Rather than bemoan fate, he rigs his son with prosthetic iron extendo- arms and teaches him Tiger style kung fu. Years later, they’re the terror of their town, foul- tempered and itching for a fight, which leads to several men being mutilated in various ways: one has his legs severed, one is blinded,Another has his voice burned out and his ears ruptured, and a last is reduced to the mentality of a child by having his head squeezed in a vice. The brain- damaged man retains his knowledge of kung fu, but the others must seek out an instructor that will allow them to be great fighters despite their disabilities. The legless man gets iron legs that give him enormous kicking power, and the blind and deaf men learn ways to compensate for their missing senses.

Together, they track down the father and iron- armed son in order to take their revenge. This is the kind of film that cemented Chang Cheh’s reputation as a tripped- out auteur, full of the kind of violent sadism, weird martial arts, strange weapons and protracted final fights that set his work apart from that of many others. There’s always been some debate about just how much he really contributed to his films in later years, allegedly leaving much of the work to his assistant directors, but the off- the- wall tone of his films through the Seventies and into the Eighties seems too consistent to not be the end product of a singular, exultant guiding vision. He’s taking the basic concept of One- Armed Swordsman and applying it to almost every character in the movie, with touches of Zatoichi and The Six Million Dollar Man. It stars most of the “Venom Mob” actors, who bring much of their famous skill to bear in the action scenes.

Despite the film’s alternate title, Crippled Avengers has no relation to Five Deadly Venoms apart from the same director and leading actors. Invincible Pole Fighter aka Eight- Diagram Pole Fighter. Gordon Liu (or Chia Hui- Liu is you prefer the non- Westernized version) plays one of the two last surviving sons of a military family massacred at Golden Beach by the army of the Liao Dynasty, led by General Pun Mei. Grief- stricken, he runs off to a Buddhist monastery, but the monks find him too angry and consumed with thoughts of revenge to admit him. The other brother, played by Alexander Fu Sheng, returns to his mother and sisters at the family home, driven mad by the loss of his father and brothers.

Liu, while not officially accepted as a monk by the monastery, spends time training there, trying to assuage his tempestuous spirit while developing a staff- fighting style called the Eight- Diagram Pole Technique. After one of his sisters is captured by men from the army responsible for his loss, he leaves the monastery with the intention of engaging them, as act that will put all of the peace of mind he’s gained at risk. Invincible Pole Fighter is different from many kung fu films in that there is no absolute moral victory at the end. Watch The Bell Boy Online Fandango there. Really, a dark and brooding tone hangs over the whole production, brought on possibly by the fact that co- star Fu Sheng died during filming.