Kung Fu movies. (1 Viewer)

[Sanjay Joseph]

I'm trying to start a DVD collection of great Kung Fu and martial arts movies. Any suggestions on what I should get? So far, my favorite movie is Fist of Legend by Jet Li. Of course, anything with Bruce Lee is nice.

 

[john mcfadden]

Make sure you track down the Tai seng version of Fist of legend ...If its the Dimention version (aka disney) you got robbed of 15 min at least plus the original languge track with subtitles is the only way to go for this one !!

Best ever in my opinion are as follows

Five Deadly venoms (aka 5 Venoms , Mortal Kombat, 5 masks of Venom)

The Street Fighter - Sonny Chiba IS THE MAN !! ( Currently available in Public domain do your self a favor if you see a set of all four Streetfighter flicks-WIDESCREEN- BUY IT !!) The Streetfighter, Return of the streetfighter,Streetfighters last revenge, and Sister Streetfighter

Look for anything and (..almost) everything with the SHAW BROTHERS logo (SB) this ensures you nothing but total kung fu theater bliss (by kung fu theater i mean that a local station that i grew up (in philly) with used to show 2 kung fu movies every saturday at 2 pm --damn i feel old

By what i mean with (..almost) not every flick the shaw brothers cranked out was a gem

I would suggest the following books

Sex and zen and a bullet to the head
Hong kong Babalon
Videohound's Dragon asian Action & cult flicks--THIS BOOK IS A BIBLE !! 905 pages of info--


Old school favorites

Dirty Ho, Fist of the white lotus , Prodigal Son , Young Master , Dance of death, Come, drink with me, Half a loaf of kung fu , Shaolin woodenmen, 13 bronsemen, Buddist fist,Master of the flying guillotine, Ricki-oh :The story of ricki, Drunken Master 2 (MAKE SURE TO GET THE ORIGINAL VERSION -TAI SENG- ) Fong sai yuk 2 (Jet LI)--subtitled !!!

well thats my 2 yen at least ...happy hunting ..trust me it's worth it..........

 

[Chris_Morris]

The Tai Seng version has a dubbed track too, although in Mandarin. It is very hard to find a release with the Cantonese track :frowning:

Sanjay, chech out the HTF Asian Cinema on DVD thread. There are alot of great recommendations there. For starters:

Jet Li:
Once Upon A Time In China 1-3
Fong Sai Yuk 1&2
My Father is a Hero
High Risk
Kung Fu Cult Hero
The One
Kiss of the Dragon

Bruce Lee (these are the only movies that actually star Bruce, any others use a look-a-like):
Enter the Dragon
The Big Boss
Fist of Fury
Way of the Dragon
Game of Death

I'll try to post other choices later.

Chris

 

[JonZ]

"by kung fu theater i mean that a local station that i grew up (in philly) with used to show 2 kung fu movies every saturday at 2 pm --damn i feel old"

The station was WTAF Black Belt Theater

I was heartbroken when our cable company dropped that station in 86.

My all time favorite is Avenging Eagle wth Ti Lung and Fu Sheng. Its available in a crappy P&S version witha proper Celestial remaster due in a few months.

If you go code free youll be in heaven. You cant go wrong with the Celestial releases of the Shaw Bros classics.

Heres a site wth lots of reviews....
http://www.kungfucinema.com/movies/reviews_a.htm

and HKFlix.coms Shaw catalogue...

http://www.hkflix.com/xq/asp/qtype.a.../qx/titles.htm

 

[Justin_D]

I'll give this a bit of a bump being I'm a fan of good, not cheesy, martial arts movies myself. My recommendation is one that not many people have seen being that it was released before Jackie Chan started doing films in America. It's called Legend of the Drunken Master, but its the sequal, so I don't know its official name. Its not exactly easy to get yoru hands on, but its a great film. It is dubbed over Chinese, but Jackie Chan actually does :::ghasp!::: a good acting job! Also, the drunken boxing he does is nothing short of breathtaking. I would recommend it to anyone.

Just my $0.02

 

[Chris_Morris]

Official name is Drunken Master II. Very good movie, but hard to find (not so much the retitled version which is cut). NicheFlix has it for rental (China, Region 0 NTSC) and NetFlix has it too (where I saw it).

In it, Jackie plays a younger Wong Fei Hung, the legendary Chinese hero made famous by Kwan Tak Hing and more recently by Jet Li in OUATIC. If you've ever seen Iron Monkey, the little boy character is Wong Fei Hung, and Donnie Yen plays his father (The actual literal name of the movie is "The Young Wong Fei Hung")

More choices (some of these are hard to find, or you need a code free player):

Legend of a Fighter (the prequel to Fist of Fury and Fist of Legend)
Iron Monkey (note that the US release has been edited and most of the music replaced)
Hero (Jet Li)
Last Hero in China (Jet Li)
Magnificent Butcher (Sammo Hung, also has Kwan Tak Hing playing Wong Fei Hung for one of the last times, available in the Wal-Mart $5.50 bin from Fox)
Fist of Fury (Donnie Yen made-for-Chinese-TV movie)
Tai Chi II (Yuen Biao)
Tai Chi Master (Jet Li)
Wing Chung (Michelle Yeoh)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
No Retreat, No Surrender (Bruce back from the dead to teach a wimp to fight, with lots of cheese, gotta love it, also Jean Claude's first movie)
Art of Action: Martial Arts in Movies (great docu. covers the Chinese and Hong Kong martial arts film scene from its start in the Peking Opera to modern times)


Chris