Original Title: Wu du 五毒
Year: 1978
Country: Hong Kong
Language: Mandarin
Genre: Action, Mystery
Director: Chang Cheh 张彻
Screenwriters: Chang Cheh 张彻, Ni Kuang 倪匡
Music: Chen Yung-Yu 陈永煜
Cinematography: Kung Mu-To 龚慕铎, Tao Hui-Chi 曹惠琪
Editor: Chiang Hsing-Lung 姜兴隆
Cast:
Chiang Sheng 江生
Philip Kwok 郭追
Sun Chien 孙建
Wei Pai 韦白
Lu Feng 鹿峰
Lo Meng 罗莽
Wang Lung-Wei 王龙威
Sun Shu-Pei 孙树培
Liu Huang-Hsi 刘晃世
Ku Feng 谷峰
Wang Ching-Ho 王清河
Shen Lao 沈劳
Dick Wei 狄威
Rating: 7.3/10
Original Title: Shao Lin San Shi Liu Fang 少林三十六房
Year: 1978
Country: Hong Kong
Language: Mandarin
Genre: Action, Adventure
Director: Liu Chia-Liang 刘家良
Screenwriter: Ni Kuang 倪匡
Music: Chen Yung-Yu 陈永煜
Cinematography: Arthur Wong 黄岳泰
Editors: Chiang Hsing-Lung 姜兴隆, Li Yen-Hai 李炎海
Cast:
Gordon Liu 刘家辉
Lo Lieh 罗烈
Wilson Tang 唐伟成
John Cheung 张午郎
Hu Yung-Ta 胡荣达
Lee Hoi-Sang 李海生
Henry Yu 于洋
Norman Chu 徐少强
Wu Hang-Sheng 吴杭生
Wong Yue 汪禹
Wei Hung 韦弘
Chen Szu-Chia 陈思佳
Wang Ching-Ho 王清河
Hon Kwok-Choi 韩国材
Hua Lun 华伦
Liu Chia-Yung 刘家荣
Yuen Siu-Tien 袁小田
Rating: 7.4/10
Two Hong Kong martial arts flicks made in 1978. Both produced by the Shaw Brothers Studio and penned by Ni Kuang, the eminent wuxia screenwriter. Chang Cheh’s FIVE DEADLY VENOMS and Liu Chia-Liang’s THE 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN are among the best crops of the studio’s copious productions and exalted by genre fans worldwide. The former constitutes an inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s KILL BILL diptych whereas the latter receives a homage paid by legendary USA East Coast Hip-Hop Collective Wu-Tang Clan, whose debut album is named “Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)” released in 1992.
Distinct from the poetic “wuxia” habitus and choreographic wizardry imagineered by King Hu, another doyen in the genre filmmaking, Chang and Liu’s films primarily rely on real kung fu practitioners to keep audiences transfixed. The six disciples in FIVE DEADLY VENOMS are all members of Chang’s stock company. Each acquires a unique style of martial art emulating a poisonous creature (Centipede, Snake, Scorpion, Lizard and Toad), except the youngest one, who is acquainted with all five styles, but a jack of all trades and master of none.
Liu Chia-Liang is a famous martial artist in Hong Kong and works as a choreographer in many a Chang Cheh’s picture. Gordon Liu, the star of THE 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN, is his “god brother” and an expert in “Hung Ga Kuen”, a southern Chinese martial art belonging to the southern Shaolin styles.
Both films open with sequences that exhibit the stunning prowess of their distinctive martial arts. FIVE DEADLY VENOMS has an expository prologue, followed by the main narrative where Yang (Chiang Sheng), the youngest and last disciple of the infamous Five Venoms Clan, endeavors to fulfill his master’s dying wish to seek out his five senior brothers and purge the clan of the evil ones. Before soon, 4 of the 5 are revealed, 2 good vs. 2 evil, with only Scorpion’s identity undisclosed as an unknown quantity. In Chang’s dichotomous construct of fraternal affinity and backhanded avarice, the most venomous ones, surprisingly enough, are not the said evil disciples, but the corrupt government officials and functionaries, while ordinary folks are often predisposed to venality and authority’s browbeating.
The same anti-Establishment tenor can also be found in THE 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN. On a whole, it is a pedestrian revenge story about the historical figure Monk San De (Gordon Liu), although in the film he represents a fictionalized version. Persecuted by General Tien Ta (Lo Lieh) of the Manchu government, San De winds up in Shaolin Temple barely alive. Sworn vengeance for his family and fellow Han rebels, San De shows preternatural martial arts facility and finishes the training of Shaolin’s 34 chambers within a mere six-year span (he only fails at the 35th chamber which is the highest one, representing enlightenment and wisdom). San De broaches a retrospectively fateful proposition to initiate a 36th chamber, where he can recruit lay people and teach them Shaolin kung-fu, which would later court total destruction to the secluded monastery by the government in the name of anti-Qing activities. Such stories would become a motherlode for legions of Shaolin wuxia fictions and films. In fact, the film spawns two sequels RETURN TO THE 36TH CHAMBER (1980) and DISCIPLES OF THE 36TH CHAMBER (1985), actualized by almost the same team.
However, San De’s righteous tit for tat crops up only in the last 20 minutes, and is expedited to reach the finish line (a similar underside could also be ascribed to FIVE DEADLY VENOMS, though to a lesser extent) without much thrill and suspense as San De has become invincible at that point. The meat of Liu’s film is about San De’s serialized training process, and it duly serves up an ebullient banquet on the allure of Chinese martial arts, frequently purveying koans in tandem with the Herculean physical trainings (a mixture of real kung fu skills and inventive cinematic tricks). Gordon Liu is a beady-eyed, diligent disciple endowed with a strenuous perseverance and a tonic physique. He has great potentiality to take the baton from Bruce Lee as the next kung-fu star, but seems wanting in Lee’s glint eye of resolute and cocky confidence. THE 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN is his star-making role and a veritable stepping stone to induce Hong Kong cinema’s kung fu mania and fame.
In comparison, FIVE DEADLY VENOMS is funnier and bloodier (it is very amusing to espy Chang’s cartoonish way of showing how a character pegs out, an effective method to offset the blood and gore), and without the participation of the fairer sex (in this regard, THE 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN is none the better, it has only one subordinate female character), Chang’s homosocial milieu is also evidently homoerotic. Kit out in distinct color schemes and often barely clad, Lizard (Patrick Kwok) and Toad (Lo Meng) are like two sworn brothers whose closeness is far deeper than the usual quotient. Chang also wides audience’s horizon for the ingenious display of torture rigs (a golden armor with ten thousand needles) and murderous ploys (offed by a long needle thrusted from nostril to brain). Although the finale is somehow bathetic as the victory is too undemanding for the good guys, the film still is a dazzling knockout and Chang Cheh’s simple narratology and straightforward aesthetics are irrefutably approachable and captivating.
referential entries: Patrick Tam’s THE SWORD (1980, 6.9/10); Robert Clouse’s ENTER THE DRAGON (1973, 7.1/10); King Hu’s LEGEND OF THE MOUNTAIN (1979, 7.9/10).
Cinema Omnivore 