Epitome of Shaw Bros' "Venoms" films

I always liked Shaw Brothers kung-fu movies... they took a very simple premise and turned it into a fat bankroll: "Show them good solid kung-fu choreography, and let the plot and dialogue simply set it up."

Five Deadly Venoms and Kid with the Golden Arm were not the only two Shaw classics that brought together the six stars Chiang Sheng, Lu Feng, Wei Pai, Sun Chien, Kuo Chui/Philip Kwok and Lo Meng. Throughout all the movies they all did together, you really got to appreciate their actual real-life styles of kung-fu as portrayed in the movies. Sun Chien was obviously well-schooled in a kung-fu that strongly emphasizes kicking and footwork, when most Chinese martial arts tend to minimize them and rely on the arms and hands. For a Chinese actor, Sun Chien's style was most like a Korean style of karate in his broad arsenal of kicking techniques, as even a brief perusal of martial-arts encyclopedias and history will reveal. Lo Meng was far more traditional, using his arms and hands exclusively, and you could easily see he had the strongest and most well-developed musculature of all six actors; this being translated by Shaw Brothers into characters that were all but impervious to any kind of harm or injury-- how do you defeat an opponent who doesn't even feel your strongest blows? Finding his weakness was the key to beating him. Kuo Chui I have a strong notion was trained in one of the "drunken" styles of martial arts that emphasize complete unpredictability and randomness, and behaving and thinking as if intoxicated to help increase that unpredictability. You never knew what he'd throw at you next, meaning if your guard went down a second, you were finished. Wei Pai was very limber and flexible, well-suited for the roles of the Snake in 5DV, and swordsman Li in KWTGA.

The Shaw Brothers weren't out to produce quality FILM... they were out to entertain audiences who had caught kung-fu fever in the wake of Bruce Lee's death. I never thought Bruce Lee's best acting was anything to shake a stick at, but people didn't pay to see him ACT... they paid to watch him FIGHT. So it was with the actors in Shaw Brothers movies. Deliver top-notch kung-fu choreography and catchy "styles" of martial arts... everything else will fall into place.