The Best of the Martial Arts Films

Without a shadow of a doubt, for me, this was the holy grail of viewing pleasure when I was a youngster. Having fell in love with Hong Kong films at an early age in the mid-80's, The Best Of The Martial Arts was the greatest thing I had ever seen!

With no internet to surf for information, find photos, watch video clips or to shop from, this feature length documentary was my only insight to what Hong Kong films were out there, leaving me blown away the first time I saw it. It got to the point where I had rented and watched the video so much from my local video rental shop, that they let me buy it and had to get a new one in. It didn't take long after that for me to wear that video tape out...

Presented by Golden Harvest, and directed by Sandra Weintraud, better half to producer Fred Weintraud, the film was basically a passion project for the couples love of Hong Kong films and having just worked with Golden Harvest on China O'Brien 1 & 2, seem to have been given the go-ahead by Raymond Chow to use the cream-de-la-crem of what the incredible film studio had compiled up to that point. This included an incredible list of kung-fu classics from Bruce Lee's legendary flicks to Broken Oath, Magnificent Butcher, Warriors Two and many, many more alongside 80's action hits like Jackie Chan's Armour Of God, Wheels On Meals, Dragons Forever, Tsui Hark's Zu Warriors, and Sammo Hung's epic Eastern Condors and Shanghai Express - and it doesn't even stop there!!

No millennial could ever imagine the amount of excitement and amazement this film could bring to a young, new fan of the fascination that is Hong Kong cinema. Not once, and still, did I ever tire of it. Hosted and narrated by John Saxon, co-star of Bruce Lee's epic Enter The Dragon, viewers are taken on a journey and review of Golden Harvest and Hong Kong's finest, albeit with a few mistakes and hiccups of wrongly named movies to the clips that are playing. In between we get to see interviews with the legends Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung, along with director Robert Clouse, the awesome Cynthia Rothrock and Keith Cooke from the set of China O'Brien, which of course, appears numerously throughout.

While dated by today's standards given how spoiled we are with 4K restored Blu-ray's, special features and the fact that I now know, just what exactly was released in Hong Kong during the same period, I still can't help but have a major soft-spot for The Best Of The Martial Arts and rate it 5 stars for sheer nostalgic reasons, and the joy it gave in introducing me to such amazing films, encouraging my love for Hong Kong cinema even more. While many more have came since, I've yet to find one that amazes me in the same way as this first did.

A must-have for any fan of martial arts cinema and Hong Kong movies, The Best Of The Martial Arts is one of the greatest introductions to the films we all love, and a great collection of some of Hong Kong's finest martial arts fights and superstars!

Overall: One of my childhood favourites, and a fantastic introduction to the amazing world of Hong Kong movies!

A pretty cool documentary, featuring a lot of Jackie Chan stuff, not to mention a bunch of other good stuff. Very entertaining for a taste of HK action cinema...It even features some "American" stars fighting in some Hong Kong flicks, which only goes to show how much better the HK choreographers are...

A rather odd video in that it doesn't actually have a plot. Well maybe not that unique. Instead it is set as a documentary style feature dealing with the numerous aspects of martial arts videos. It's narrated by an amusingly serious man in a bizarrely dark room, where it cuts to footage of stars such as Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan et al.

Unfortunately as it is quite old it doesn't feature Jet Li or any other of the up and coming martial arts stars. But it a good way to be introduced to the genre and the more experienced among you will get to see some bit's of movies you probably haven't seen.

This is the definitive documentary about classic pre-1990 martial arts films.

It's a beautifully paced look at some of the best fight scenes of the 70s and 80s, and it's a great starting point for anyone looking to get into the genre. It's elegantly presented and narrated by John Saxon, whose voice adds some real gravitas and glue to the flow of the clips.

It's a very Golden Harvest heavy selection, but there are also scenes from other Hong Kong movie companies such as Seasonal Films which add to the variety. A few Shaw brothers clips wouldn't have gone amiss, but I think that would have been too complicated due to rivalries and licencing.

A martial arts classic in its own right, and a tremendous source for the very best in which films to seek out.

Talk about underrated! This film is great! If you want " The best of Acting movies", or "The best of Plot driven movies", this is not for you (and you probably can't read too good either). What you will get from this film is a very professionally made documentary that showcases an excellent and incredibly varied selection of martial art fight scenes. In addition, we are also treated to interviews with some of the top actors in martial art films such as: Jackie Chan, Samo Hung and Cynthia Rothrock.

The film begins with the list of stars we're are about to bare witness to. Everyone from Bruce Lee to Van-Damme is here and you know we're in for a treat! After the opening credits there is a fantastic 3 minute or so scene which edits together out-takes of the film (which, of course, are themselves out-takes of other films) under Lalo Schifrin's ingenious score from "Enter The Dragon". Then John Saxon (Bruce Lee's co-star from "Enter The Dragon") takes the floor and gives us a brief overview of what martial-arts are and how they evolved. From then on its action, action, action!

The film is very well paced in that as soon you feel like you've just about had enough of a kung-fu fight scene, it will switch to something more kickboxing based or an interview segment, or even something comedic. You'll learn a lot about some of the lesser known talented stars in the industry and, unless you're already a hardcore fan, probably a lot you didn't know about the bigger stars too.

The only thing that stops this film from getting a straight 10 out of 10 is its slight out datedness and tendency to focus perhaps a bit too exclusively on the Hong Kong industry. It would have been nice to see some of todays stars and up-and-comings like Jet Li or Mark Dacascos, and to be fair Van Damme isn't the only Martial Art star Hollywood has to offer (surely Seagal could've had a mention). But these slight set backs should in no way deter you from seeking this film out. Highly recommended!