5 maîtres de Shaolin

Chang Cheh´s Five Shoalin Masters is perhaps the Best Kung Fu Movie ever, besides the Bruce Lee Masterpieces. Ti Lung, David Chiang, Chi Kuan Chun and of Course Alexander Fu Sheng are just great in this Movie I hope this One (and the other great Shaw Brothers Movies) comes on Dvd sometime !!!

Five students escape from the destruction of their beloved Shaolin Temple...now each must take revenge and train in their own separate fighting styles...they will become The Five Shaolin Masters!! The film focuses on Shaolin's historic rivalries with the Qing Dynasty, and in fact this is made clear in the prequel, "Shaolin Temple" (1976). Trying to keep the films straight is a challenge in itself, especially considering how many name changes tend to happen.

Among the Cheh Chang films, this may have the most epic battles. I love the gimmicks of other films (such as the different "venom" styles), but here we have a great one-on-one fight that rivals anything you would see from Bruce Lee.

No pun intended - I don't think the number 5 has a special meaning to it. Like the number 7 that is supposed to be ... well magnificent (sorry for the pun). But it works quite well for the movie right here. You have 5 good guys and 5 bad guys ... actually it is way more than that, but supposedly the main people ... who'll have to fight each other ... and fight they do ... a lot! Maybe even too much for some.

I remember watching a lot of Shaw Brothers movies when I was little - I don't remember most of them. So I don't know if I already had seen this. If I did, I don't remember them having so much blood in them - I assume that German censors cut quite a bit out of them ... but that's stuff for another story. A really amazing cast here - one of my all time favorites ... with the director that discovered him ... David Chiang that is ... good fighting and as I said, maybe even too much ... a sort of ... well overkill (to end with a pun)

Back in the mid-1980s, when was around 10-14 years old, there was a show on one of the basic cable channels called either Black Belt Theatre or Kung Fu Theatre...I can't remember which (whenever they came back from commercial, they would quote from Confucious before resuming the film). They played lots and lots of Shaw Brothers films from the 1970s, among other martial arts films. I remember trying to tune in every Sunday afternoon to get my fix of kung fu action.

Anyway, these days I barely remember anything about the movies I saw in those days...I remember a scene here and there, but nothing major. One movie, though, burned itself into my brain and I've never been able to forget it -- that film was Five Masters of Death (aka Five Shaolin Masters). About six months ago, after not having seen this movie for well over a decade, I decided to see if it was still as great as I remembered so I hopped on the internet and found a place where I could buy it on VHS.

This movie is still excellent. My VHS copy is of understandably poor quality, but the film is still a joy to watch. Each of the five protagonists specializes in a different style of fighting, as do the opposing five antagonists, so the film is chock full of great kung fu. I also find the story to be more engaging and epic in feel than most martial arts movies I've seen (however, I am far from being an authority on the genre). The theme music which plays repeatedly throughout is great...it helps give the film its epic feel and is very catchy--I find myself singing it in my head for days after watching this movie.

At any rate, I love this movie. I wish there was still something like Black Belt Theatre (or Kung Fu Theatre) on cable so I could catch some more of the Shaw Brothers era of kung fu film. Martial arts films of today use undercranking and especially wirework far too much--I find myself more impressed by films like Five Masters of Death which rely on "natural" skills.

Cheh Chang directed this martial arts masterpiece (well, I thought it was when I was a kid) in 1975, and kids like me knew it by the title "5 Masters Of Death". I loved this film. I saw it on TV when I was in about 2nd or 3rd grade, and it changed my youth! Because it was after this film that I was being dragged into the Princible's office for trying to flex my Karate skills in the play yard! Of course I was one of those kids who made my own num-chucks, and bonked kids heads with them, until my parents made me dismantle my weapons of destruction. But until then, I thought my hands were illegal weapons. I can still recall the day my Mom picked me up from the school and took me to get a milk shake, while she proceeded to tell me "no more Karate! I'm throwing away your weapons!" and that milkshake went down my throat like a brick, as the tears swelled in my eyes. I know this isn't much of a review, but I want to convey the power this film had on my youth. I wanted to be a killing machine (but one of the good guys as well!), because this film burnt a hole in my young psyche. Like a lot of things, I did abandon my desire to learn Karate. But the film still nestles in a place of my youth, and I did finally locate a copy on video. Unfortunately my memory served up a far nicer looking print. The quality looked horrible! But the film was fun to watch again, and I might still learn Karate yet. I give it a 10, because it's fun!