For some martial arts motion pictures, among the best testaments to their high quality is the sheer variety of instances they have been copied. Shamelessly replicating the formulation of profitable movies was a standard pattern in the martial arts film style, particularly when it got here to old-school kung fu motion pictures.
There is no higher proof of that strategy than Bruceploitation, which was a scenario the place copying Bruce Lee’s type went to date that the technique wound up growing its personal subgenre. However whereas Bruce Lee’s motion pictures are actually essentially the most notable instance, they have been hardly the one sufferer of this explicit technique.
Actually, there have been fairly just a few nice martial arts motion pictures that grew to become the beginning factors of latest tendencies that took maintain within the Seventies and Eighties.
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The One-Armed Swordsman
One of the vital essential constructing blocks for the long-standing definition of what constitutes a martial arts film got here in 1967 when Jimmy Wang Yu starred in Chang Cheh’s The One-Armed Swordsman. The Shaw Brothers wuxia traditional sees Wang Yu step into the position of an knowledgeable swordfighter who loses his arm, relearns learn how to combat, and goes on a killing spree to save lots of his former martial arts grasp.
The One-Armed Swordsman was influential in additional methods than simply the impact it had on how martial arts motion pictures utilized male protagonists and coaching sequences; many have been way more direct, introducing their very personal one-armed heroes in movies reminiscent of The One-Armed Swordswoman.
Apparently, Jimmy Wang Yu himself was an enormous a part of this motion. He starred in an extended listing of films as a one-armed martial artist, and just one was a respectable sequel to The One-Armed Swordsman. Most, like The One-Armed Swordsman Towards 9 Killers and The One-Armed Swordsman Meets Zatoichi, have been purely knock-offs and reimaginings of the unique concept.
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Fist Of Fury
Practically each Bruce Lee film has been copied in some type no less than as soon as, however none has obtained that remedy greater than the actor’s second kung fu movie, Fist of Fury. The 1972 kung fu gem tells the story of Chen Zhen, a younger martial artist who comes dwelling to seek out his grasp lifeless, presumably killed by members of a rival Japanese college, who act as an oppressive pressure within the film.
Technically, Fist of Fury was a knock-off itself. The story clearly took inspiration from Jimmy Wang Yu’s 1970 Shaw Brothers hit, The Chinese language Boxer. However whereas The Chinese language Boxer was the basis of that pattern, it was Fist of Fury particularly that so many motion pictures have been attempting to emulate.
Fist of Fury’s patriotic Chinese language vs. Japanese theme, mixed with Bruce Lee’s portrayal of the insurgent hero, has led to a lot of remakes, sequels, and knock-offs, from Fist of Fury Half II to Jackie Chan’s New Fist of Fury.
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The Flying Guillotine
The One-Armed Swordsman wasn’t the final Shaw Brothers movie to be the topic of quite a few rip-offs. In 1975, Shaw Brothers made The Flying Guillotine, a film that starred Chen Kuan-tai as an murderer who performs executions for the emperor with “the flying guillotine,” a weapon designed to take away individuals’s heads from afar, through a sequence and a basket with bladed edges, wielded like a lasso.
The weapon, which was supposedly based mostly on an actual system from China’s Ming Dynasty, served as the idea for some wild motion sequences the place characters would lose their ends in a trend that was each spectacular and absurd on the identical time.
The Flying Guillotine was a smash hit for Shaw Brothers, prompting rival studio Golden Harvest to reply with Grasp of the Flying Guillotine. The outcome was a cycle of dueling “flying guillotine” motion pictures from Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest, together with Flying Guillotine, Deadly Flying Guillotine, and The Vengeful Magnificence.
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Drunken Grasp
The discharge of Drunken Grasp had a domino impact in 1978, launching Jackie Chan to stardom and setting the stage for a brand new wave of martial arts motion pictures impressed by its central premise, which was a martial artist combating with drunken boxing type kung fu.
Much like Drunken Grasp, many of those movies would see younger heroes be taught drunken boxing from aged ne’er’do’effectively alcoholics, who would become secret martial arts masters.
Yuen Siu-tien, who performed the mentor to Chan’s character in Drunken Grasp, returned to reprise his position in a number of non secular sequels, together with Dance of the Drunk Mantis and The Story of Drunken Grasp. Drunken boxing remained related for years through releases reminiscent of Shaolin Drunkard, 5 Superfighters, Shaolin Drunken Monkey, and extra.
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5 Lethal Venoms
Drunken Grasp was really one in every of two motion pictures to kick off a martial arts phenomenon in 1978, with the opposite being Shaw Brothers’ 5 Lethal Venoms. 5 Lethal Venoms informed the story of six martial arts specialists, all educated by the identical grasp and 5 having their very own distinct types, with the sixth figuring out a bit of every.
The story follows the sixth pupil, who has to seek out the opposite 5 and determine which of them have taken the trail of evil and which of them he can rely on to defeat the others. 5 Lethal Venoms emerged as a cult favourite, leading to Shaw Brothers reusing 5 of the six primary actors for a long-running sequence of martial arts motion pictures. They made so many motion pictures collectively that they even had their very own nickname: “The Venom Mob.“
They did not all share the identical story as 5 Lethal Venoms, however had some issues in frequent, such because the 5 actors normally taking part in the primary characters, with no less than one or two taking up a villain position. And like 5 Lethal Venoms, they took full benefit of the Venom Mob’s particular person skillsets so as to add some variety to the martial arts choreography.
The Venom Mob consisted of Lu Feng, Chiang Sheng, Lo Mang, Phillip Kwok, and Solar Chien. Usually, any movie that features no less than two of the 5 martial arts stars in main roles is considered a “Venom film.”
Finally, the idea grew past the 5 actors, with different studios utilizing an analogous ensemble format and banking on the identify by way of movies reminiscent of The 9 Venoms and 5 Venoms Assault.
