Originally released in Hong Kong as Tian xia di yi quan, this is the film which – dubbed into English and released through Warner Brothers – launched the craze for kung fu movies in the United States.
Promising young student Chih-Hao (Lieh Lo) is sent to train under a new master – Sun Hsin-Pei (Mien Fang) – so he can win a martial arts tournament by beating tyrant, Meng Tung-Shun (Feng Tien), thus preventing him and his thugs from getting the power and prestige that would come if they won it.
A strong cast – with impressive fighting skills and great fight choreography (some of it extraordinarily violent for its time) – combines with sumptuous photography in a film which set the standard for martial arts movies over the next three decades.
Quentin Tarantino paid tribute to this film in Kill Bill, even using complete replicas of some of the sets seen here and re-using some of the music from Five Fingers of Death (including the siren sound originally lifted from the TV series Ironside),
Released in some markets as King Boxer.
Chao Chih-Hao
Lieh Lo Sung Ying Ying
Ping Wang Okada
Hsiung Chao Yen Chu Hung
Chin-Feng Wang Sun Hsin-Pei
Mien Fang Meng Tung-Shun
Feng Tien Han Lung
Nan Kung-Hsun Wan Hung-chieh
Shen Chan Pa Tu-er
Bolo Yeung Sung Wu-yang
Wen-Chung Ku Tu Wei
Lung Yu Oshima Shotaro
Yukio Someno (as Ran Yeh) Sun’s pupil
Tse Lin Yang Chen Lang
Ki-joo Kim (as Chi-Chu Chin) Lu Ta-ming
Bong-jin Jin (as Chen Feng Chen)
Director
Chang Ho Cheng
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A strong cast – with impressive fighting skills and great fight choreography (some of it extraordinarily violent for its time) – combines with sumptuous photography in a film which set the standard for martial arts movies over the next three decades.
