The 36th Chamber of Shaolin

[Alison Jane Girl Boss Jane Find all posts View Profile Close Alison Jane]

Formerly my favorite kung fu flick, rewatching it again. This film made a HUGE impression on me and had a lot to do with me mustering up the courage to start taking karate. This is like the ultimate training movie and Gordon Liu is AWESOME in it. I like the sequel (Return, never seen Disciples...) but the first one just blew me away. Hopefully it will again the third time around.

I remember my son watching it with me and he loved it too. When he started karate and found things difficult I would often remind him of this film and how hard the character in it worked to become great. He seemed to get it.

[Mike T Guest Find all posts View Profile Close Mike T]

You know...it's been maybe twenty years since I watched this! And even then, it was the pan & scanned English dubbed tape. Funny thing is, I've had all the Shaolin Chamber films on DVD out of Hong Kong for some years now, but never ever revisited them (I guess I'm just waiting for IVL's re-issue of the first one on BD)! Fact is stranger than fiction...

[Alison Jane Girl Boss Jane Find all posts View Profile Close Alison Jane]

Watch it.

[Mike T Guest Find all posts View Profile Close Mike T]

I'll get around to it sometime. All those arduously long training sequences usually bore me to tears. Thank God for the FF button! :p

[Alison Jane Girl Boss Jane Find all posts View Profile Close Alison Jane]

Seriously? They're amazing!

[Mike T Guest Find all posts View Profile Close Mike T]

Yeah, seriously. The training sequences became such a cliche of the genre, from watching this stuff for so long, that they tend to grind a film to a halt for me.

You can break a lot of martial arts films that focus on hand-to-hand combat down to the most basic of formulaic template: guy/girl gets a whipping/has someone close to them killed, they seek out a kung fu master for revenge, said kung fu master initially won't teach them until some negligible aspect of their character connects with the master, long boring training sequences follow and guy/girl ends up getting revenge against their enemy/enemies using the skills they've learnt in the end.

And there you have it, just about every kung fu film of the last fifty years summed up in one (long) sentence. ;)

[Nolando Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Nolando]

Love the training sequences in this movie - I would scan past the opening story setup just to get to the goods... And I got it on BD for, I think, $8.