One of the nice bonuses of 2007’s Quentin Tarantino / Robert Rodriguez tribute to low-rent cinema, Grindhouse, was a flurry of DVD releases of exploitation movies.  One notable set was a batch of “Welcome to the Grindhouse” double feature DVDs by BCI / Eclipse, which offered similarly themed genre pictures along with a “grindhouse experience” of titles and trailers.  

Along with horror and women-in-prison flicks, “Welcome to the Grindhouse” offers up some old chop socky films, and what better than the public-domain exploits of badass extraordinaire Shinichi “Sonny” Chiba and his Japan Action Club, featuring the lovely, talented and deadly Etsuko “Sue” Shiomi.  One such title features the 1976 films Dragon Princess (Hissatsu onna kenshi) and Karate Warriors (Kozure satsujin ken) (Another release features Chiba and Shiomi in The Bodyguard and Sister Street Fighter.)

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Here it is – the film that launched the kung fu movie craze in the United States.  Before even the rise of Bruce Lee, King Boxer (Tian xia di yi quan, 1972), also known as Five Fingers of Death, was a surprise hit on the drive-in and grindhouse circuit. 

In June 2007, Dragon Dynasty released a superbly presented DVD as part of its growing Shaw Brothers collection.  The result is a classic example of chop socky history and an excellent kung fu flick in its own right.  Its relatively complex plot combines popular themes of honor, betrayal, revenge and the handing out of righteous beat-downs.

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Jet Li’s Fearless is a historical epic without the epic, based on a true story of which little is actually used, and is, supposedly, Jet Li’s last martial arts film (so just what does he call The Forbidden Kingdom?).

The movie tells the life story of Huo Yuanjia, a Chinese cultural hero. At the turn of the century Yuanjia is a little boy, the son of a wushu (martial arts) master. He desperately wants to learn wushu, but his father insists he do boring things instead, like learning to read and write. Luckily Yuanjia’s best friend, Jinsun, is a brainy kid who can forge Yuanjia’s lessons. But Yuanjia is disturbed when he sees his father hold back a killing blow in a match, resulting in his losing the fight. When Yuanjia’s father dies, he is finally free to practice wushu. He swears he will never lose a match to anyone.

The film jumps ahead several years; Yuanjia is now an adult, a widower with a spoiled daughter. He lives with his mother and, true to his childhood vow, is a famous local marital artist who has never lost a match. But his success has made him arrogant and unlikeable. He is heavily in debt due to his frequent lavish victory celebrations and is generally disliked for his rude manners. At a perceived slight from rival wushu master Chin, Yuanjia crashes Chin’s birthday party and, in the ensuing battle, kills him. In retaliation Chin’s nephew murders Yuanjia’s mother and daughter. Distraught, Yuanjia flees his home town. He travels aimlessly, eventually ending up in a remote valley where he is nursed back to the health by kindly villagers. Under their care Yuanjia slowly lets go of his anger and learns to live in peace.

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Anyway you cut it, Heroes of the East is a fine example of classic martial-arts filmmaking. The name Lau Kar Leung may not immediately ring a bell with younger fans of the genre, but if you’ve seen Jackie Chan’s Drunken Master 2 (aka Legend of the Drunken Master), his performance as the tough-as-nails Fu Wen-Chi is nigh-unforgettable, and on more than one level.

The character portrayed by Jackie Chan, Wong Fei-Hung, is well-known to martial arts film enthusiasts as the subject of over 100 films stretching back to the beginnings of China’s movie industry. Lau Kar Leung, a well-respected martial artist in his own right, studied under one of the real-life Wong Fei Hung’s students, making him a living link to this legendary figure. To say that he’s as good a director as he is a martial-artist is a high compliment, and after viewing Heroes of the East I’d say it’s a distinction he rightly earns.

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More than 40 years after its original release, The One-Armed Swordsman remains a classic martial arts film. Its pageantry, performances, drama and unstoppable action exemplify everything audiences love about Shaw Brothers films, and rightly made stars of its director, Cheh Chang, and its smoldering star, Jimmy Wang Yu.

While we’re on the subject of noted genre pictures I’ve never seen, I have a shameful confession: one of them was the 1967 Shaw Brothers classic The One-Armed Swordsman. I’ve long been a big fan of Jimmy Wang Yu, but somehow never got around to seeing the film that catapulted him to stardom. Fortunately, a typically excellent Dragon Dynasty DVD released in summer of 2007 provided the opportunity to correct the situation. Read the rest of this entry »