Yojimbo led to A Fistful of Dollars which led here. I’ve been watching so many Sun Chung movies over the last week and this one may have been one of my favorites.

Since, well, forever, the Mong clan and the Chows have fought over who owns Ho Si. The Chows want to unite the city, while Mong Fan (Ku Feng) wants them all dead. He hires the greatest martial arts teacher in the world, Wong Yang (Ti Lung), to train his family, but the fighter refuses, knowing that only selfishness will come from his teachings. Mong Fan angrily sets up Wong, having a farmer attack him, who soon falls onto a spike and dies. The town then turns against the hero.

Wong goes on the run, hoping to prove that he is innocent. Yet Mong Fan claims that if he teaches his men, he will clear his name. As this happens, Chow Ping (Wang Yu) sneaks into the training area and starts to learn all he can, yet he is captured and about to be killed when Wong saves him. As he takes him back home, Wong starts to train him until he’s attacked by Mong’s men and nearly killed.

Nursed back to health by Chao Cheh (Therea Chu), he teaches Chow his most perfect style, the Shaolin Pole. Now that he has a student who is nearly his equal, it’s time to clear his name as well as the Chows, who have been accused of killing monks.

While this has the two clans at war aspect of the aforementioned movies that inspired it, it has a more noble hero and one who chooses a side and remains on the side of good. As always, Ti Lung is incredible, but if you’ve been watching Shaw Brothers movies, you already know that.

The 88 Films blu ray release of The Kung Fu Instructor has a gorgeous cover by 17th and Oak. You can get it from MVD.

Directed by Lau Kar-leung, The Shadow Boxer is also known as The Spiritual Boxer Part II.

Master Chen Wu (Chia-Yung Liu) and his apprentice Fan Chun Yuen (Yue Wong) are undertakers who have the rough job of getting the dead back in their graves. They must bring nine corpses from back to their home graves, an effort that Master Chen accomplishes by turning the dead bodies into jiangshi or, as more commonly known, hopping vampires. He does that by attaching spells to their foreheads which reanimate them, which allows the spiritual undertakers to avoid carrying coffins and just have the dead walk — or jump — home on their own.

Arriving before Mr. Vampire and Encounters of the Spooky Kind, this is one of the first appearances of these creatures, monsters that would soon show up in so many horror — and non-horror — movies.

One of the undead, Zhang Jie (Gordon Liu), just won’t listen. That’s because he may not be dead. They’re also hosts to Ah Fei (Cecilia Wong), who arrives just in time for things to start going wrong.

Fan Chun Yuen can only do martial arts when his master is chanting spells at him, so it’s a good thing that Zhang Jie is along. And it’s also great for the viewer, as Gordon Liu is always a welcome fighter in any film.

Also: Don’t be concerned that this is a sequel. It is one in name only and both movies have Yue Wong in them.

The 88 Films blu ray release of The Shadow Boxing has a limited edition slipcase with brand-new artwork by Mark Bell and four collectable artcards. You also get a trailer and a still gallery. Of all the 88 Films Shaw Brothers releases, this has the greatest looking cover art. I’m honored to have it as part of my collection.

Get this from MVD.

The Chi Sha Clan is made up of numerous killers and criminals who all know martial arts. No one knows who their leader is and efforts to stop them have been — up to know — futile. The Imperial Court charges Yang Zhen-Yu (Walter Tso Tat-Wah) with stopping them for good. To do that, he sends Fan Tao (Teng Wei Hao) to go undercover and become a member of the clan in the hopes that he can destroy it from within.

Directed by Sun Chung and written by Ni Kuang, this was a little seen Shaw Brothers film — until now. It doesn’t have the star power of other releases and has a lot of characters that don’t seem all that distinguishable, so maybe that’s why. It has a lot in common with Five Deadly Venoms but doesn’t have the wildness of that movie.

It does, however, have what all Shaw Brothers movies do. Great fights, horrific villains and no small amount of blood being spilled on all sides of the battle. I do love Sun Chung, however, and recommend that if you like his work here, you should track down Avenging Eagle, The Devil’s Mirror and Human Lanterns.

The 88 Films blu ray release of this movie has a slipcase with art by Sean Longmore and four collector’s art cards. I’m really excited that 88 Films has been releasing all of these Shaw Brothers films in the U.S., allowing me to have high quality copies of movies that were either once lost or that I’ve otherwise only seen on battered VHS tapes.

You can get it from MVD.

Deváté srdce is about a student named Martin who has volunteered to seek out the cure for Princess Adriana, who has been knocked down and out by a mysterious illness. But the truth is that it’s no sickness. Instead, the magician Andlobrandini has enchanted her as part of his plan which involves creating a magic potion to return his youth from the blood of nine children’s hearts.

Directed by Juraj Herz, who wrote the story with Josef Hanzlík, everything in this feels handmade, down to the poster by surrealist painter, writer and ceramicist Eva Švankmajerová. This was shot at the same time as Herz’s Beauty and the Beast in an attempt to save on costs and is a fairy tale created in modern times that in no way feels unlike the tales we were told at bedtime.

By literally capturing the young hearts of the young men who have come to save Adrianna, Andlobrandini  seeks to take their vitality and become hale and hearty anew. Unlike them, Martin has no love for the princess. Instead, the Grand Duke (Premysi Koci) allows him to take on this mission instead of sending him and the street circus people he has fallen in with to jail, most especially Toncka (Anna Malova), the daughter of a puppeteer.

Joined by the Grand Duke’s jester (František Filipovský) and wearing a cloak of invisibility, the two men go across the River Styx to the Grand Duke’s former alchemist’s — yes, Andlobrandini — dark and foreboding castle, a place filled with corpses, innumerable candles, a swinging sun and danger around every turn. It’s gorgeous and perhaps the greatest love within this film is for the art of moviemaking itself.

The Ninth Heart is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2. It has extras including commentary by Kat Ellinger, author of Daughters Of Darkness; the featurette The Uncanny Valley Of The Dolls – The History and Liminality of Dolls, Puppets and Mannequins and the video essay The Curious Case Of Juraj Herz and the Švankmajers.

You can order this set from Severin.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.

Ah Wai runs a martial arts school, a job that his girlfriend Amy thinks is a waste of time. She should talk to his friends, which includes her little brother and two other pals who seem to do nothing until one day, they all go diving and find gold. Ah Wai is sensible, unlike everyone else, and says that it has to belong to smugglers. They return it and plan on coming back in three days and if it’s still there, they will keep it.

One of the friends, Ah Keung, goes back before everyone else and takes the gold. He pawns one piece of it, which connects him to the smugglers, who show up and shoot Ah Chow with a speargun and then shove a SCUBA hose straight up the La Maison du Chocolat highway. They go to Ah Wai’s school and threaten to kill everyone unless they get the gold back. This leads to a battle in a quarry where Ah Chow gets dragged by a van and dies.

If that’s not the worst thing, well, how about the fact that the bad guys hire Phillip Ko. He finds out that Ah Wai is working on a movie and attacks the man he’s about to fight on screen. Imagine the cast and crew’s surprise when a real fight happens. The killer barely escapes and then shows up to kill Amy’s little brother and then throw a flaming blanket at her face. Yes, really. This leaves Ah Keung to get hung in a shower and the killing machine to have one last battle against our hero. And if this all ends like a gritty take on a Shaw Brothers movie, well, that’s what director Kuei Chih-Hung will do. Yes, the same man who made The Boxer’s Omen, making a down and dirty low budget martial arts crime movie.

This was a total shocker and I loved every moment. That final apartment fight is so destructive and then the film says, “What if we break your heart?”

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.

Ching Hing-lung (Jackie Chan) lives with his grandfather, kung fu master Ching Pang-fei (James Tien), who has trained him despite Ching Hing-lung loving to gamble and being pretty lazy. When he finally finds a job, it’s using his martial arts skills to train con men. He names his school after his grandfather, which attracts the evil attentions of Yen (Yam Sai-kun), who soon murders the elder. However, he soon meets The Eight-Legged Unicorn (Chan Wai-lau) who teaches him an entirely new series of martial arts skills and if you’ve seen any of Jackie’s The Drunken Master era movies. you understand that this will be a painful, if not funny, series of training moments.

Released in Japan as Crazy Monkey — and as Revenge of the Dragon in the U.S. — this is said to have inspired the Dragon Ball series of manga. Want to be confused? In Germany, this is called Der Superfighter III with the sequel, Fearless Hyena Part II, being Der Superfighter II. So what movie is Der Superfighter? Project A.

This was released by 21st Century.

You can watch this on Tubi.