Meng Lo
Five Deadly Venoms
The most prolific kung-fu director in Hong Kong martial arts cinema, Chang Cheh, ushered in a new phase of his career and a new generation of action stars with The Five Venoms. The setting is ancient China’s School of Five Venoms, so named for its five types of kung-fu based on five venomous animals: centipede, scorpion, serpent, toad, and lizard. The school is notorious for the evil deeds of its disciples, leading to another classic battle between righteousness and depravity. This international hit, lauded in Ric Meyers' premiere, groundbreaking book martial arts movies as one of the greatest, spawned a series featuring the same actors in new roles which was also enjoyed from America to Asia.
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Five Elements Ninjas
The “Venoms” were no more. After five years and more than a dozen films together, the only one of the original five who proved so successful for the director was the muscleman Lo Meng. But with just that one “venom” and his incredibly agile new star Cheng Tien-chi, he made this spectacular, internationally popular, favorite. Evil ninjas (who attack with, and from, fire, sun, wood, water, and the ground) brutally slaughter a noble Chinese kung-fu school’s students. The one survivor finds a teacher and four students who are ninjitsu experts. The five graduates take revenge. With this strong structure and exceptional kung-fu choreography (from the star and co-star Chu Ke), Chang Cheh produced platinum. This film was one of the director’s best of his superheroic, grand guignol period. By any name, it could be called, almost literally, “bloody good” entertainment!
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Crippled Avengers
The “godfather of the kung-fu film”, Chang Cheh, hit upon a winning formula when he combined three Taiwanese Opera artists with a muscular Chinese and a Korean kicker. Their first “official” film as stars, "The Five Venoms" was a hit, so the director/co-writer decided to launch a series with the same actors in different roles. Supporting this beloved sequel was real-life kung-fu champion Chen Kuan-tai, who Chang Cheh had already made a star. He plays a martial arts master (driven insane by his wife’s death and his son’s dismemberment), who replaces his child’s missing hands with metal versions, then proceeds to blind, deafen, render retarded, and chop off the feet of anyone who even mildly annoys him. The abused bystanders band together and brilliantly train to take their revenge. The result is a totally unbelievable, but totally awesome, super heroic delight.
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The Kid With The Golden Arm
When directors in the late '70s began jumping on the kung-fu comedy bandwagon renowned director Chang Cheh stuck to his guns of traditional brotherhood and moral code films made popular by him in the '60s. So in keeping with the spirit of the venomous success of the cultish The Five Venoms, Chang reunites the "Five Venoms" in arguably his second biggest cult hit in the West, "The Kid With The Golden Arm". As the film's lead martial arts instructor and one of the stars, it's also one of Lo Meng's finest moments on screen playing the righteous villain Golden Arms whose eventual showdown with the drunkard Hai Tao (Kuo Chue, fight choreographer for "Brotherhood Of The Wolf") is graphically artsy and balletically violent. You won’t be disappointed.
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Shaolin Rescuers
The "Venoms" are back in action in this thriller of Shaolin versus corrupt Ching soldiers, with the help of the Lama, Black Tiger and Mantis clans, headquartered at a pugilism school, a dyeing mill, and a beancurd shop. The five men that were made famous - by director Chang Cheh, in more than a dozen similar high-flying, blood-splattered adventures (starting with The Five Venoms) - are all here. There’s the Taiwanese opera artist Kuo Chue, his fellow light-skill acrobat Chiang Sheng, the evil Lu Feng, the Chinese muscleman Lo Mang, and Korean kicker Sun Chien, whose skills are specially spotlighted in this production. Together they create another wonderfully fun kung-fu showcase, filled with show-stopping sequences of martial arts expertise.
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Two Champions of Shaolin
A team that ranks high in the pantheon of cult Kung fu flicks is a quintet of martial artists who burst upon the screen in The Five Venoms, followed by Crippled Avengers and other cult classics. The "five venoms" are reunited in Two Champions of Shaolin, with four of the fab five wreaking havoc on screen and the fifth venom active behind the camera as action choreographer.
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Invincible Shaolin
Master of the "brotherhood" films, award winning director Chang Cheh has always had a good eye for martial art talent and in "Invincible Shaolin" he re-introduces what was to become known as the The "Five Venoms" to the world of heroic bloodshed. Chang intelligently weaves a mythical tale of treachery centered around the historic attempts of the Ching Dynasty trying to destroy the Shaolin Monasteries. It's a story of misunderstanding, revenge and doomed heroes who finally realize their error in judgment through the sanctity of their martial arts. The various fighting styles used are choreographed with such amazing precision and insanity, that it's hard to believe that all this psychotic stylish action was shot and made up as they went along. It's marvelous to behold.
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Life Gamble
Legendary director Chang Cheh was in a transitional period. The men he had made stars (Jimmy Wang Yu, Ti Lung, and David Chiang among them), had moved on to their own projects. Soon his new star, international idol Alexander Fu Sheng, would also look for other productions. So Chang used this opportunity to test the star power of some new talent, namely a Taiwanese Opera artist (Kuo Chui) and a powerful Chinese muscleman (Lo Mang) – who were soon to become the foundation for his internationally popular “Venom” series. Teaming the trio with the top supporting actors (Ku Feng and Wang Lung-wei) and the prettiest starlets (Lin Chun-chi, Shirley Yu, and Hui Ying-hung), he told an entertaining and exciting tale of a kung-fu blacksmith taking on four famous robbers while a villainous gambling boss plots to destroy them. The resulting thriller was another winner for the vaunted filmmaker.
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Lion vs. Lion
It captures the most impressive sequences of lion dancing on film. Besides being loaded with enjoyable martial arts chicanery, film historians can revel because it's also the first film that clearly demonstrates the intricacies and differences between the traditional Northern and Southern lion dancing techniques. In this film, "Five Venoms" star Lo Mang, who was discovered by Chang Cheh, teams up with Liu Chia-liang protege Wong Yu, as they inadvertently turn from vagabond kung-fu school operators into anti-Ching, patriotic fighters.
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