The 36th Chamber of Shaolin

Ain't that a kick in the head?

(Spoilers)

This movie is the may be one of the most subtly influential Kung-Fu movies of all time. It's inspired both Tarantino and the Wu-Tang Clan and made the careers of its stars and director. Yet outside of the hardcore Kung-Fu film fan circles, it's largely unheard of in the west. And that is a crying shame because this bad boy has everything you'd expect and more out of the genre that is so often parodied. So what is Liu Chia-liang's The 36^th Chamber of Shaolin really about? Aside from Kung-Fu and bad dubbing, both of which is has in spades, quite a lot.

The film is a historical drama set around the Qing Dynasty (the last imperial Chinese Government) and its brutal treatment of the lower classes and stars Gordon Liu as Chinese folk hero Liu Yude. Liu is a student living under the foot of the brutal General Tien Ta, and eventually starts to aid a rebellion with his two friends. All's going well until their rebel cell is discovered and most of his family and all his friends are killed. Wounded and vengeful, Liu eventually makes his way to the foot of the Shaolin Temple, and resolves to learn Shaolin Kung-Fu. Its a classic story of an everyman hearing the call to action, except this one has a basis in Chinese folk history, as Liu eventually becomes known as San Te, a classic Chinese folk hero. Fighting ensues, Tien Ta gets head butted to death (yes, really) and San Te starts teaching revolutionaries Kung-Fu.

The first thing you should know about this movie is that you can really watch it two ways, each giving you a vastly different experience. The first is opting for the subtitled version, which gives a much more authentic experience and lets you analyse the film on its artistic merits. Or you can go for the dubbed version. No one actually utters the phrase “my Kung-Fu is better than yours” but they get really bloody close and its fantastic. But watching this film as ironic consumption means you will miss some genuinely quite impress sets and fight choreography, alongside a dramatisation of a real world place and time made by people who have a genuine investment in their history and want to tell it right. Part of the film's success may come from the fact that it was directed by a stunt choreographer. And as has proven time and time again from Buster Keaton to Chad Stahelski, stuntmen make the best action movies.

This film is worth watching twice, once subbed and once dubbed. Subbed for a epic tale of Kung-Fu and history told through armed and unarmed combat, dubbed so you can understand why Tarantino cast Gordon Liu in both Kill Bills and why the Wu-Tang Clan named their first album after it. Its reach is surprisingly far for something a lot of people haven't heard of and that is a genuine shame. But the film's recent addition to Netflix (along with its two sequels) should go quite some way to remedying that.