The Leg Fighters (1980)
Also known as INVINCIBLE KUNG FU LEGS this movie is a low budget kung fu comedy dedicated to superkicker extraordinaire, Dorian Tan Tao-liang. Superkickers were often trained in Korean taekwondo and brought in as the final bosses in Jackie Chan’s movies, but this flick is ...

1980 • Taiwan • Directed by Lee Tso-Nam

Tan, a Northern Chinese kung fu expert, kills a man using his lethal boot work in self defence. He's then hired to train a bratty princess and her servant in kung fu. While, the brother of the man Tan killed is out for revenge and he'll get him at any cost.

The Prodigal Son (1981) 
One of Sammo’s most celebrated pictures, PS is a posh ode to wing chun, the much-despised “sissy kung fu” developed by a Buddhist nun (and made famous by Bruce Lee and Ip Man). Yuen Biao stars alongside Sammo in a movie that stands alongside 36th CHAMBER as one of the gre...

1981 • Hong Kong • Directed by Sammo Hung

In 1978, actor/director Sammo Hung gave Hong Kong audiences the Wing Chun crash course of Warriors Two, while his next directorial effort, 1979’s Knockabout, gave Yuen Biao the chance to shine as its lead star. But it would be in 1981 that he would combi...

Knockabout (1979) 
What did the kids want to see in the late ‘70s? Comedy kung fu, and Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan delivered. This flick is Sammo Hung’s showcase for he and Jackie’s “Little Brother” Yuen Biao, a wiry, snaggletoothed kid with bad skin who is also one of the most acrobatic, flexible...

1979 • Hong Kong • Directed by Sammo Hung

Having established himself as Hong Kong’s premier action choreographer throughout the 1970s, Sammo Hung ended the decade by directing a non-stop assault of kung fu classics for Golden Harvest, starting with the brutal Iron-Fisted Monk. But it would be h...

1986 • Hong Kong • Directed by Sammo Hung

All aboard for the all-star action-packed adventure of a lifetime as martial arts maestro Sammo Hung (Heart of Dragon) brings East and West crashing spectacularly together in Millionaires’ Express!

Sammo himself plays Ching Fong-tin, a former outlaw wit...

Lady Whirlwind (1972) 
A tiny tornado of high kicks and hard fists, Angela Mao was the most famous female action star of the ‘70s. Teamed up with action choreographer (and frequent onscreen bad guy, Sammo Hung) she was a box office behemoth, turning out hit after hit and owning the silver screen ...

1972 • Hong Kong • Directed by Huang Feng

When director Huang Feng (The Shaolin Plot) jumped ship from Shaw Brothers to their upstart rivals Golden Harvest, he swiftly launched the career of a Taiwanese ingenue barely out of Beijing opera school named Angela Mao, who despite her fresh-faced femi...

Boxer’s Omen (1983) 
Shaw Bros Studio was totally lost by ’83 so they turned over the keys to their bad boy director, Kuei Chih-hung, who delivered some wild n’krunky black magic movies like BO. A mind-melting gallery of grotesquerie, it’s also the last movie Kuei ever made for Shaw after a life-...

1983 • Hong Kong • Directed by Kuei Chih-Hung

After suffering an injury in the ring, embattled boxer Zhen Wei enlists the aid of his brother, Zhen Xiong, to avenge him and find the key to an omen which may release their family from an ancient curse. Black wizards, Taoist monks, rampaging monster...

Boxer From Shantung (1972) 
Martial arts movies are divided into “Before Chang Cheh” and “After Chang Cheh.” The first director to put angry young men, stripped to the waist and covered in gore onscreen, his heroes died fighting the power. He celebrated heroic nihilism, masculine anger, and slipp...

1972 • Hong Kong • Directed by Cheh Chang, Hsueh-Li Pao

By 1972, Chang Cheh was already Shaw Brothers’ most prolific and well-known director with a plethora of box office hits (including the One-Armed Swordsman franchise) to his name and renowned for discovering the hottest young talents to star...

Crippled Avengers (1978) 
As the ‘70s turned into the ‘80s, Shaw Bros Studios kept trying to figure out what the kids wanted and so directors like Chang Cheh pushed kung fu movies into wilder territory, and it doesn’t get any weirder than this one. This is kung fu movies at their most gothic, gor...

1978 • Hong Kong • Directed by Cheh Chang

After achieving instant icon status as the stars of The Five Venoms, the Venom Mob collaborated with director Chang Cheh once again in their most unhinged and spectacular effort yet, Crippled Avengers, which also saw the return to Shaw Brothers of kung f...

36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978) 
Lau Kar-leung started as Chang Cheh’s action choreographer but he eventually went his own way and became one of the greatest action directors of all time. A walking library of martial arts styles, Lau celebrated the soul of kung fu in movie after movie, especially ...

1978 • Hong Kong • Directed by Lau Kar-leung

The anti-Ching patriots, under the guidance of Ho Kuang-han, have secretly set up their base in Canton, disguised as school masters. During a brutal Manchu attack, Lui manages to escape, and devotes himself to learning the martial arts in order to see...

King Boxer (1972) 
The movie that changed the world, KING BOXER was a programmer from Shaw Bros Studios directed by Korean transplant, Chung Chang-Hwa, that did so-so box office. Then Warner Bros picked it up, retitled it as FIVE FINGERS OF DEATH, and it became the first kung fu movie to hit big ...

1972 • Hong Kong • Directed by Chang-hwa Jeong

Already firmly established as the most successful film studio in Hong Kong, Shaw Brothers’ worldwide commercial breakthrough would not come from one of their lavish epics, but instead from King Boxer, a lean, mean and bloody B-movie by a Korean dire...

Martial Arts of Shaolin (1986) 
The last movie Shaw Bros Studios ever shot, this one pairs their ace director, Lau Kar-leung, with a new sensation from Mainland China, Jet Li, and the results are epic. A masterpiece of mutually assured martial arts destruction.

1986 • Hong Kong • Directed by Lau Kar-leung

In ancient China, Zhi Ming trains at the legendary Northern Shaolin temple to avenge the death of his father at the hands of a nefarious magistrate.

1977 • Hong Kong • Directed by Meng-Hua Ho

When Hollywood announced a big-budget remake of King Kong, Shaw Brothers followed suit with perhaps the most unhinged giant monster movie ever made: Mighty Peking Man. Fresh off directing the smash hit Black Magic horror series for Shaw, director Ho Men...