Chop Socky Cinema is your go-to corner for all things martial arts on screen—from high-flying kung fu classics to modern bone-crunching brawlers. We dive into the legends, the hidden gems, and the genre-defining moments that shaped martial arts cinema.
Battles on (and below) bridges! Awesome swordplay in familiar Shaw Brothers’ sets! Nunchuck stabbings! And the fabulous Chen Ping kicking all sorts of ass as The Bloody Hibiscus! The Vengeful Beauty, director Ho Meng-hua’s follow-up after the smashing success of The Flying Guillotine, might ...
In which the Shaw Brothers go gonzo for pulp fiction, combining a magical spider whose webs capture foes and then melt their faces right off their skulls! Alongside some limited martial arts mayhem, The Web of Death is an entertaining fantastical journey as choreographers Tang Chia and Yuen Cheung-yan ...
“In this world of guns and knives, Tang Lung is the one who walks the lonely road.” Mixed with a solid sense of comedy that Jackie Chan would later use in his films, Bruce Lee’s The Way of the Dragon is a non-stop barrage of unarmed fighting as he plays Tang Lung who has traveled from China to Rome to ...
Meteor. Butterfly. Sword. For myself, any interest that I had in Hong Kong cinema began here. Killer Clans is a martial arts masterpiece which remains stunning in its use of the shawscope lens, proving to be both spacious and gorgeous to revisit on 1080p, and, storywise, absolutely obliterates souls with its ...
What do Pam Grier, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin’s Gordon Liu, Dave Bautista, and legendary fight choreographer Corey Yuen have in common with the Wu-Tang Clan’s beatmaker the RZA? This film, my Chop Socky Brothers and Sisters, this badass film right here. The Man With The Iron Fists ... ...
Unbeknownst to the Shaw Brothers and acclaimed director Lau Kar-leung (The 36th Chamber of Shaolin), The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter would be Alexander Fu Sheng’s final performance. Fu Sheng was one of Hong Kong's finest performers in the martial arts genre and his kung-fu films for the Shaw Brothers ...
Don’t let those colored backgrounds fool you one bit. The cast - or half of it - might stand stoically as the credits roll in the beginning of Life Gamble, but this wuxia feels a bit odd after that. This film’s action is slow to boil, saving the best bits - which involve a parade of flags flying high against the brilliant ...
An even better way to lose your head! That’s right, not content to let other production companies have all the fun with the flying guillotine routine, the Shaw Brothers put forth a copycat effort with yet another flying instrument of ...
Well, that’s one way to lose your head! While no one knows what the weapon at the center of this classic film can tell you what it looked like, The Flying Guillotine offers one possible and completely unforgettable design that continues to cause knees to knock. It’s little wonder that the company spent ...
Ever wanted to watch someone fight with a bird cage before? If so, Monkey Kung Fu is the action spectacle for you! Flawed but absolutely gonzo with its wall-to-wall action sequences which involves chairs, bowls, a bed, and all sorts of interesting props, the film is energetic and absolutely off its rocker as two prisoners ...
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