5 maîtres de Shaolin

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.

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 Shaolin Brothers distinguishes itself from other Shaw Brothers movies I've watched recently in several ways:

• Lots of it's filmed outdoors (mind you, I don't mind the soundstages so much anymore, as I've gotten used to them).

• It's apparently linked to another Shaw Brothers movie called Shaolin Temple, which is apparently a prequel, seeing as it takes place before this film, but was released two years later. This kind of confused me at first.

• The action is just constant, even in the first and second acts, which tend to be more low-key in most martial arts movies. Maybe it feels like quantity over quality at times, but I also loved how there seemed to be a new fight scene every five minutes.

• The characters say "among us" several times.

It's a little rough around the edges, but that also gives it a scrappy kind of charm that makes it endearing and fun. I enjoyed it quite a lot.

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)

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!