In this movie, director Chih-Hung Kwei is remaking his frequent collaborator Chang Cheh’s The Invincible Fist and telling the tale of “Killer Constable” Leng Tian-Yin (Chen Kuan-tai). He’s been ordered by security chief of the Forbidden City Liu Jing Tian (Cho Tat-wah) — who has been commanded by Manchurian Empress Dowager Cixi — to bring back the five thieves that stole 2 million taels from the Royal Treasury dead or alive. When you’re called the Killer Constable, you never bring them back alive.

Trying to assemble his five best men, Leng learns that not even his brother, Cun Yi (Gam Sai-Yuk) wants to join him. He is tired of the brutal justice that his brother delivers. We witness this as Leng follows the thieves to a watermill and tortures one of them in front of his family. Yet you’re left to wonder if his rough style is warranted when one of his men, Peng Lai (Ai Fei), is rewarded for feeding the starving villagers by being staked and must be killed by Leng to ease his suffering. The thieves also hire Fan Jin-Peng (Jason Pai Piao), a killing master who murders elder constable Ma Zhong (Gam Biu) and injures Leng before being defeated.

Finally, after a battle with the leader of these thieves, Fang Feng-Jia (Ku Feng), and are helped by the intervention of Cun Yu. Leng is almost killed but is nursed back to health by Fang’s blind daughter Xiao Lan (Yau Chui-Ling). When Fang enters his home, instead of fighting, the Constable and he pretend to be friends in front of his daughter. In truth, it was Liu Jing Tian who stole the gold and sent Leng after him, as he knew that no one would survive. Another group of killers attack and Fang sacrifices himself to allow Leng to live, making him promise to care for his daughter. However, the Constable is driven with rage after his brother is killed, so he attacks Liu Jing Tian, killing many of his guards before wiping out the corrupt man. However, a trap also kills Leng, leaving Xiao Lan waiting for a father and protector who never arrives.

Kuei said that, “I simply wanted to depict how insignificant commoners are and how, under totalitarian rule, they turn out to be the victims.” While showing off the violence and combat that one expects from a Shaw Brothers movie, this also goes beyond to show the very real suffering that comes from that same brutality. As the only good person in the film is a blind woman — a scene repeated in The Killer as Ah Jong and Li Ying pretend to be old buddies for the benefit of the sightless Jennie — the moral is simple. The only pureness in this bloody universe can’t witness it.

Kuei was also inspired by another classic film: “I love Dr. Zhivago. In Killer Constable, I want to create a character like Zhivago. Despite his position in the high court, the protagonist is a righteous man. Yet in the corruption and poverty-stricken era at the end of the Qing dynasty, there is not much good he can do on his own. Hence he is deluded by society and lives his life foolishly.”

And yet in America, the most violent country in the world, all of this complexity struggles to be understood, as this played under the exploitation title Karate Exterminators.

Killer Constable was Chih-Hung Kwei’s only period wuxia film. He’d make his mark on many other genres, including women-in-prison (The Bamboo Dolls), modern crime (The Teahouse and its sequel Big Brother Cheng), women in trouble (The Bod Squad), comedy (Rat Catcher) and of course, his many horror films such as The Killer Snakes, Hex and Corpse Mania. In the 1990s, he moved to the United States where he opened a pizza shop. Yes, at one point in our reality, you could order a pizza made by the visionary director of The Boxer’s Omen.

His son, Ming Beaver Kwei, a producer of movies like My Lucky Star and The Meg, said of his father: “He’d bitch about his work every day, never quite satisfied how his work had turned out, or how it was being distributed. He was only ever happy when he knew for a day that a film had worked at the box office, then he’d start worrying again. He’d be so happy to know that his films were getting a second look today.”

Shimmy shimmy ya, indeed. If there’s one thing Hong Kong movies have in store, it’s always plenty of sequels. And yet, we welcome those here with open arms.

Directed by Lau Kar-leung, this is the spiritual second film in a trilogy. Unlike the first and last movie in said triad, Gordon Liu does not play San Te, but instead an imposter monk Chu Jen-chieh, who just so happens to look like the master of the 36th chamber.

After using his likeness to the famed warrior to help his friends — a scheme that doesn’t last all that long — Jen-chieh runs to the temple, where he’s soon kicked out. Only when he meets San Te is he given the opportunity to build scaffolds all around the temple and renovate the entire complex.

From high above the school, Jen-Chieh is able to watch all of the forms of the monks. Finally, when asked to dismantle his work, he rebels and runs through the chambers with ease. That’s because he changed his work to practice each of the forms, which was exactly the plan of the smiling San Te.

In spite of himself, our hero has become an expert at kung fu. Another lesson from San Te. Jen-Chieh saves his village and continues his training.

Also known as Iron Chain Assassin and Iron Chain Fighter, this Chor Yuen-directed revenge movie about Teng Piao (Ti Lung), who has been released from jail after 15 years for a crime he didn’t commit. He wants revenge on the person who sent him behind bars, Black Leopard and his seven killers, and teams with Shang Lin (Li Ching), a widow who lost her husband to the same killer, to find him.

A modern Shaw Brothers film — set in the early 20th century, but there are even guns — this has a true bad ass hero in Teng Piao, a man in a black hat who has taken the chain that kept him stuck in his cell all these years and now uses it as a weapon. He has no idea who the Black Leopard is, other than he has a tattoo on his chest of a jungle cat. There’s also a knife thrower named Mr. Du (Liu Yung) who may or may not be on the side of our hero and Zhou Bai (Jason Piao Pai), the boss of the town who may be one of the seven killers along with his six brothers.

This feels close to a hardboiled detective story as much as a martial arts movie. I’d love to see more with this style; there are some that feel this has too much exposition and not enough combat, but I enjoyed every moment.

Directed by Yuen Chor and Tun-Fei Mou, this Shaw Brothers movie has two, well, Haunted Tales.

The first, “The Ghost,” was originally a movie called Hellish Soul that was shut down and reshot a few years later (thanks Silver Emulsion!). The second, “The Prize Winner,” also started as a full-length movie before it was turned into a short and added to this movie.

“The Ghost” has newlyweds played by Ling Yun and Ching Li moving into a new oceanfront home but learning that no one around them is normal. Everyone sleeps throughout the day, even the livestock, and then the visions start. Then there’s a car crash. Then a ghost comes back. There’s also an eyeball in the closet. But this part is a traditional ghost story and shot as such. It’s really good. But where the movie really shines…

“The Prize Winner” has janitor Ah Cheng (Chan Shen) taking a spirit board away from some children in the building. He learns that it is haunted by a fox spirit that promises him all the riches that he can handle as long as he doesn’t gamble, have casual sex and murder people. Of course, he does all of those things and this story has numerous funny sex moments followed up by a totally gross ending that blew my mind out of my skull. Turns out that Hong Kong Ouija boards are gigantic and have a planchette that spins around it, which goes round and round until the man is transformed into hamburger. Also: A neighbor has an entire apartment filled with strange dolls.

The two stories don’t really work together but I could care less. I was pleased by both of them and the juxtaposition nature of this movie just makes me wish that there were more exactly like it but also happy because it is such a unique film all to itself.

You can watch this on YouTube.

The Bat looks like Gene Simmons and that’s exactly why I chose to watch this. He’s some kind of martial arts supervillain who assaults and murders women and then sends back their body parts one at a time to their husbands. He’s also so strong that he kills twenty-six martial artists before he gets stopped. However, five years later, the killings begin again, despite the original Bat being chained up in a cave, surrounded by the dead bodies of his victims kind of like a Far East Frank Zito.

Oh yeah and the bad guy can fly.

And his real name is Red Baron.

And he has a cave lair filled with traps, like exploding boxes and a pond filled with poison.

Look, this isn’t the best movie you’ve ever seen, but it does have a KISS-looking evil wizard martial artist in an insane cape that can leap hundreds of feet in the air sucking the blood from women and killing men in combat.

If you can’t find a reason to enjoy that, there really is no hope for you.

Chan Sau Ying (Ni Tien) is going to die from tuberculosis and even then her husband Chun Yu (Wong Yung) can’t stop abusing her. Her new servant Leung Yi Wah (Chan Sze Ka) takes pity on her and they work together to drown Chun Yu in a pond, but then Sau Ying watches as her husband rises from the swamp and seeks revenge.

Kuei Chih-Hung was making his version of Diabolique here but that movie didn’t end with a naked woman having blood slowly spit all over her and her entire nude body covered by painted spells.

Ghosts that spit green vomit, animal guts falling like rain and a grime and rain filled swamp location make this movie just feel messy and gross, which quite often is how I like it. Sure, it moves slow in parts — it is forty years old, after all — and some of the acting leans toward silly humor when the movie seems deadly serious, but when the last ten minutes give you the sleaziest exorcism you’ve even seen, there are no complaints.

If you’re wondering why people are fans of this movie — and it may seem slow yet full of gorgeous filmmaking — stick around. The last 15 minutes are exactly what you’re looking for.

You can download this from the Internet Archive.

Heaven and Hell has it all. Director Chang Cheh. Nearly all of the Venom Mob. Angels and humans falling in love. A battle between heaven and hell. The martial arts you demand and also the weirdness you hope is coming too as the Venoms escape a hell that looks like a combination of Hong Kong and Mario Bava but somehow more neon and all the fog in the world.

Yi-Min Li ‘s character gets kicked out of Heaven for helping David Chiang and Maggie Li fall in love and sent down to Earth as a Hong Kong cab driver who is killed when he can’t stop connecting lonely hearts like Alexander Fu Sheng and Jenny Tseng. He then gets sent to gambler’s hell, a place where he should not be, and the demons just sigh as if to let us know that there is no worse job than working in the punishing world of fire.

The Buddha of Mercy shows up and helps him assemble three of the four Venoms, who all share exactly how they ended up in Hell, and then they fight their way out in battles that are impossibly perfect and have a sheer joy of punches and kicks despite being in the eternal despair of souls. They must face the men that killed them on Earth, now demons, and make their way to be reincarnated.

This movie started shooting in 1975 and saw stops and starts along the way, as well as the money running out. There are also musical numbers. I can only imagine that serious martial arts fans hate this as they wanted fight scenes and instead, they got an exploration of the many levels of the afterworld.

Basically if Alejandro Jodorowsky got hired by Shaw Brothers, this would have been the film he made.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Carny was on the CBS Late Movie on May 19, 1986 and June 16 and August 5, 1987.

Robert Kaylor made the documentaries Derby and Max-Out before this film, which he wrote with his wife Phoebe, Thomas Baum (The Sender) and Robbie Robertson. Yes, from The Band. He also plays Patch, the fixer for the Great American Carnival. This makes more sense than you would think, as when he was 14 and 15, Robertson worked summer jobs in the traveling carny circuit, which also inspired The Band’s song “Life is a Carnival.”

Patch’s best friend is Frankie (Gary Busey), who is also The Mighty Bozo, a clown who sits in a dunk tank and tries to get people mad enough to play his game. Then, in the middle of their perfect small life, Donna (Jodie Foster) meets and falls for Frankie and joins the carny.

She soon learns the ways of the carnival, even if Patch doesn’t want her in their world. She finally fits in when her work on the midway thanks to the training of Gerta (Meg Foster). But you know how young love goes, because soon enough, she ends up in bed with Patch, which adds drama to the carnival.

Luckily, everyone comes together after the local mob attacks the carnival and leaves their oldest member On-Your-Mark (Elisha Cook Jr.) dead and nearly kills Frankie, too. Patch, Frankie, Donna and Heavy St. John (Kenneth McMillan) get their revenge by pulling another scam on the criminals, then the carny leaves town again, but this time with Donna as her own woman, belonging to no one.

This movie also has small roles for some of my favorite actors, like Fred Ward, Tim Thomerson and Craig Wasson (as Foster’s townie boyfriend). As for Foster, she was 16 when she made this movie and had love scenes with Busey, who was 35, and Robertson, who was 36. There’s also a scene where she tries to seduce a lesbian mark that is nearly volcanic.

Everyone is uniformly great in this film and Robertson was a natural at acting. Sadly, it came out on the same weekend as The Shining and The Empire Strikes Back, so you can just figure how well it did at the box office. This movie also feels more like a hang out than a plot and that’s another reason why I liked it so much. You get the vibe of what it’s like to be part of the carnival. The freedom, as well as the issues, the way each city is different and how the relationships work. It’s really something.

You can watch this on YouTube.