Lau Kar-leung, arguably the greatest martial arts filmmaker and choreographer in motion picture history, passed away on June 25, 2013 after a 20-year battle with cancer.
For fans of Kung Fu movies and international action cinema, the sense of loss is difficult to quantify. As a young film student, it was only through the discovery of Lau Kar-leung’s incredible filmography that the world of martial arts cinema opened itself up to me as an artistic entity beyond the vague notion that punching and kicking people was cool. Not content to make merely exciting action movies, the director used the cinematic medium to explore and redefine the significance of real Kung Fu, flying in the face of artistic trends that used martial arts as an excuse to illustrate the impossible. Lau Kar-leung’s films espoused a martial arts formalism that explored what Kung Fu was actually capable of, often without the aid of special effects trickery, and preached the philosophy of the martial art whilst simultaneously acting as spectacular entertainments.
Lau Kar-leung began his career in the 1950s, working as an extra and stuntperson on the long-running Wong Fei-Hung franchise, before expanding his career to include martial art choreography on established classics like One-Armed Swordsman, Golden Swallow, The Blood Brothers and Master of the Flying Guillotine. Lau Kar-leung graduated from choreography to directing with 1975’s The Spirital Boxer, and went on to direct, choreograph, star in and occasionally write timeless Kung Fu landmarks like Executioners from Shaolin, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, Legendary Weapons of China, and his most famous movie, at least on the international stage, The Legend of the Drunken Master, starring Jackie Chan.
To study the films of Lau Kar-leung is to study the greatest examples of the martial arts genre, and since few of his movies are commonly known outside of Kung Fu aficionados and international cinema connoisseurs, I’ve compiled a short of list of the filmmaker’s greatest accomplishments. If you want to see the best Kung Fu movies ever made, this is where you begin.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
The Top 10 Lau Kar-leung Movies
CraveOnline honors the life and career of director/fight choreographer Lau Kar-leung (1934-2013) with a list of his greatest martial arts movies.
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One-Armed Swordsman (1967)
Lau Kar-leung co-choreographed the fight scenes in this brutal but beautiful martial arts classic, about a mutilated Kung Fu student (Jimmy Wang Yu) who must overcome his handicap to defend his school from enemies with a fiendish new weapon.
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Boxer from Shantung (1972)
Kuan Tai Chen stars in this Kung Fu Scarface about a martial artist working his way through the ranks of the criminal underworld, risking his soul in the process. Lau Kar-leung choreographed the action, which includes a spectacular final fight between Kuan Tai Chen and seemingly every martial artist in China.
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Master of the Flying Guillotine (1975)
One of the most fanciful martial arts classics, this sequel to 1972's One-Armed Boxer once again stars Jimmy Wang Yu (who had two arms in real life), and pits him against a blind master of "the flying guillotine," whose disciples Wang Yu dispatched in the previous film. Popular in America, and a direct influence on various fighting games with super-powered characters including an obvious early version of Street Fighter II's Dhalsim. Lau Kar-leung once again contributed awe-inspiring choreography.
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Executioners from Shaolin (1977)
Lau Kar-leung had directed movies before Executioners from Shaolin, this epic tale of revenge was his first masterpiece. After martial arts master Pai Mei (Lo Lieh) massacres the Shaolin Temple, a family of Kung Fu masters trains their son (Wong Yue) in both Tiger and Crane disciplines to bring the villain to justice. A strange film - Wong Yue doesn't just combine his mother and father's fighting styles, but also their wardrobes - that features some of the cleverest fight sequences around.
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36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978)
Another tale of revenge, subverted, Lau Kar-leung's 36th Chamber of Shaolin stars Gordon Liu as a student who joins the Shaolin Temple to become a Kung Fu master and take back the land from the corrupt Manchu. Liu spends most of the film in spectacular training sequences before teaching the monks a valuable lesson about the perils of isolationism.
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Dirty Ho (1979)
A more fanciful action-thriller, Dirty Ho (snicker all you want) stars Gordon Liu as a Manchurian prince who goes undercover to find out which is brothers wants to assassinate him. Wang Yue stars as the title character, a street urchin Liu uses as a pawn in a greater political scheme. Fabulous fight scenes include fighting without fighting, as Liu skillfully tricks his enemies into thinking a hapless musician is a Kung Fu master to avoid discovery.
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Return to the 36th Chamber (1980)
A truly bizarre sequel, Return to the 36th Chamber stars Liu as an entirely different character, a con artist who travels to the Shaolin Temple in disgrace, only to learn martial arts from Gordon Liu's character from the original 36th Chamber, now played by a different actor (!). It all ends with one of the most inventive action sequences in history, as Liu defends a dye factory from an army of thugs using - get this - "Scaffolding Kung Fu."
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My Young Auntie (1981)
Lau Kar-leung's classic Kung Fu comedy stars Kara Hui as a young martial arts master who marries her elderly master, who dies and leaves her the "senior" member of the family, to the chagrin of her new nephews. Kara Hui won Best Actress at the very first Hong Kong Film Awards for her spry performances, which finds her duelling bad guys at a costume ball, dressed as Marie Antoinette.
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Legendary Weapons of China (1982)
Lau Kar-leung's greatest picture is a treatise on "real" martial arts, and stars the director himself as a master who rejects "magical" martial arts as mere trickery, placing him in the crosshairs of an assassin played by Gordon Liu. Lau Kar-leung exposes all the cinematic falsehoods in Kung Fu movies, and closes with one of the greatest fights ever filmed - between the director and his own real-life brother, Lau Kar-wing - using eighteen incredible weapons in succession.
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The Legend of the Drunken Master (1994)
Lau Kar-leung's most popular film - at least in America - stars Jackie Chan as a martial arts master who resorts to alcoholism to loosen up his fighting style. Chan is at his acrobatic best, the comedy is some of the funniest in Kung Fu history, and the action sequences are unforgettably choreographed.
