I turned 36 years old yesterday. I’m shocked and embarrassed by the well-wishing and insanely good presents I got this year. I try to stay low-key about my birthday for various reasons but other people decided to play dirty pool. One of my best friends got me a flat monitor that my eyes are still trying to get used to. Everything is so fresh and so clean-clean. One of my sisters even bought me a best German Chocolate cake, possibly my favorite cake of all cakes. Thanks again to everyone who got me a gift or said Happy Birthday. Damn you for making me smile about my birthday!

I only had two plans for this birthday. One of those plans: Root Beer and Pizza. Once again, even with lower-grade sources of both items, the combination managed to be the sure shot. The other plan was to draw something special. Since it was my 36th birthday and I’m a martial arts fan, there was only one choice: Gordon Liu as San-Te from the classic film “the 36th Chamber of Shaolin” from Shaw Studios. I’m still horrible at likenesses but it was still fun to draw this. It was a quick pic drawn after working the last work day of a week where I barely slept so I’m sure it could have been a lot worse.

Those who visited the now-defunct Bad(ass) Movies channel on Mogulus may have seen something that is close to the hearts of many 30-something Kung-Fu flick junkies. That’d be this:

That is the intro to Kung-Fu Theater. When I was a young’un back in the 80′s, this show would start right when the Saturday Morning Cartoons were over and delivered a weekly dose of cinematic assbeatery. Words, especially as clumsily as I use them, cannot express how much I looked forward to seeing that promo. During the original run you could catch anything from a Shaw Brothers classic like Superninjas (“Secret Weapons? YA BASTIDS!!!”) to a movie where, I swear to Grodd, a Kung-Fu master rides a wooden horse and increases his power by drinking urine. No, I’m not making that up and I have the tape somewhere. This show lead to a lot of things.

1.) 2:01 PM: I believe that Kung-Fu Theater started at noon and ended at 2:00 PM. At 2:01 PM, tons of male children in our apartment complex ran outside and began to fake-fu and beat the Wooden Horse Piss out of each other. Imagine the forest fight from Zu: Warriors of the Magic Mountain redone with kids fighting with broomstick bo staffs, improvised nunchacku (more on that later) and their tiny bare hands. Describing these wars with the word “epic” would be a insult to our life-and-death struggles beneath the Saturday afternoon sun and above the parking lot asphalt. No one really hit each other but you couldn’t tell because years of beat boxing gave us the power to provide all the necessary sound effects of beating each other to death. I think back on it now and, dammit, we were some amazing and psychotic kids.

2.) Improvised Nunchaku: Some kids bring out some kind of stick to use as a bo staff and most of us rolled into the fray barehanded like Golden Arms, leader of the Chi Sah gang. A few of us possessed a power developed by Poison Clan of the Five Deadly Venoms (especially the Lizard). No one was more brave than the few who had the cast iron nerve to take one of their mother’s broomsticks, cut it in half, attach each half to a piece of rope and wade into battle with the almighty Improvised Nunchaku. On the Universal Scale of Weaponry, it still ranks above the Fatal Flying Guillotine and Mike Haggar’s lead pipe but slightly below the Eternian Power Sword and the Crissaegrim. Why was it so fearsome? Imagine the beating you’d get for cutting one of your mother’s broomsticks in half. Yeah. Due to this, the Improvised Nunchaku was the sign of a true B.M.F. of the highest order.

3.) Influence: This show was the reason that I got addicted to the genre and love these movies by the pound. Most Hollywood action flicks are pretty predictable in how people fight. But Kung-Fu movies seem to have an infinite amount of ways to beat someone down with the human hand or foot and that’s before you start bringing in both real and imaginary weapons. I didn’t care if the movies didn’t always make sense or that the voices and mouths didn’t sync properly. So what? Those movies were high-octane awesome and reality need not apply in this kind of escapism. Beyond the violence, I always loved the constant underdog status that many of the movies had. The theme of rebels fighting the Chings or Japanese occupation had a social resonance beyond its own setting. Plus, you can’t beat watching people fight social injustice by kicking the hell out of it.

Aw hell yeah. This was back when I started to make up my own characters and I thought it’d be cool to have a martial arts character. I didn’t know that much about martial arts so I made him a ninja superhero so I put “that weird swirly thing from the beginning of Kung Fu Theater” on Snake-Eyes’ comic book outfit. After years of changes, that character became the man that you see to the side of this text: Twofold. ORIGINAL CHARACTER DON’T STEAL. Sorry, that’s an internet habit. Seriously, if Kung-Fu Theater never existed or even had that intro, I never would’ve made Twofold. Many of the supporting characters like his teacher Master Hsu and Sean Chan were inspired by sitting in front of Grandma Marva’s big floor model TV to watch the adventures in this world that was just as exciting, heroic, violent and bugged-out as the comic books I was already hooked on. These movies also inspired my appreciation of the Beat-Em-Up video game genre of games like Final Fight, Double Dragon and Streets of Rage. That love is on display on a certain fansite that I created that lead to me making a lot of great online friends. I don’t care how corny that sounds, because it’s damned true. So as much as I thank all the filmmakers, directors, actors, teachers and others who made those flicks possible, I also want to thank the gang who put USA’s Kung Fu Theater and especially those who made that intro. I owe that person a lot. Maybe even a pair of Improvised Nunchaku.

From the moment I got into making things for M.U.G.E.N. (that customizable fighting game that people are now making random-assed videos from and poppin’ it on the YouTube) I had a mental list of things that I’ve always wanted to make or recreate in it. I finally finished one yesterday: the Shaw Brothers Studio introduction.

The logos and text were made with screenshots of the Celestial/Dragon Dynasty DVDs but the rest comes from my pathetic attempt to recreate the graphics. It’s not much, but something about having that kick off a fighting game that makes me smile. If you have M.U.G.E.N. and want to give it a try, download the intro here and read the instructions to learn how to install it. If you don’t have M.U.G.E.N. and want to learn more about it, go here.

So I got the Dragon Dynasty release of One-Armed Swordsman by the Shaw Brothers Studios a little while ago and said I’d ramble about it later. I’ll still probably do one later on, but I have a further need to talk about the 2nd Dragon Dynasty/Shaw Bros. DVD that I bought: the 36th Chamber of Shaolin (also known as ‘Master Killer’). I saw it as a kid on TV (I believe it was USA’s Kung-Fu Theater) and this flick has been a part of me ever since. Sure, some people say that about flicks like Steel Magnolias, It’s a Wonderful Life or Soul Plane. Me? I say that about a Kung-Fu movie and the following is why.

This film takes place during the Qing Dynasty era in China where the invading Manchus ruled over the people with little mercy. Gordon Liu (Johnny Mo from Kill Bill vol. 1 and Pai Mei from Kill Bill vol. 2) plays a young man named San Te who has a teacher that’s part of the underground revolution to fight the Manchus. When he and his group of friends see fallen revolutionary’s body on grisly display in the village and San Te calls him a hero out loud, he’s heard by an official who accuses them of being rebels. The three teens almost catch a beatdown until an elder breaks things up. The experience shakes them up to do just that: join the revolution. It’s there that he sees another member demonstrate the still-secret skill of Shaolin Kung-Fu. Unfortunately, the movement is discovered and the Qing forces start killing off any known revolutionaries, anyone that they think are in it, their family, friends and anyone else the bad luck of being in the way. After escaping the onslaught, San Te makes his way to Shaolin Temple to learn the kung-fu that will let him get revenge on the Qings and free his village. But being a Shaolin monk isn’t about killing. Well, unless you’re playing Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monk where you’re allowed to shove someone’s head down their throat with enough force to make it launch out of their buttcrack and such. Here, not cool. San Te accepts their terms which leads to some of the coolest and insane martial arts training sequences in movie history, period.

Hollywood flicks train heroes by having them chase a rooster in a circle or shine up a car. This is a Shaw Bros. flick directed and choreographed by Hung Gar master and Gordon Liu’s mentor, Liu Chia-Liang (a.k.a. Lau Kar-wing) so all half-stepping is prohibited. Each training sequence is one of the 35 Chambers of Shaolin Kung-Fu skill. There are many reasons why fans geek out over the chambers. For one, each chamber is imaginative, painful looking and difficult. The first chamber is on the way to the chow line. If you don’t learn, you don’t eat! That’s cold-blooded! Even better is that the only way to defeat each one is an equal balance of physical and mental power. Unlike most movies, his training doesn’t just make him a stronger fighter, but a better human being. That’s deep.. Of course, he still goes on to kick large amounts of assflap, but that’s where the other brilliant part comes in. Besides the fact that each fight is filled with skilled martial artists and actors who battle each other with very little wire work or cutting, you will see the actual chamber lessons and skills used in the midst of the fight now matter how trivial they seemed at the time. The chamber that tested how quickly San-Te’s eyes could track an ever-shifting target comes into play and blends into another chamber lesson. Unlike other flicks that awkwardly shoehorn the moments into a plot later in the film (along with a quick flashback just in case you forgot) , the chambers and the Shaolin philosophy form the foundation of San Te’s actions. Yes, all that stuff that the monks talk about is more than just random mumbo-jumbo here. The more that I think about it, the more it makes sense that this was directed by an actual teacher.

This Dragon Dynasty version of the 36th Chamber is from the Celestial remastered print that has a crisp look to it. In other words, this isn’t from some old VHS tape with damage lines rolling through it. Language tracks include Mandarin, Cantonese and the same English track that U.S. Master Killer and Wu-Tang Clan fans know and love. Oh… and the RZA provides commentary along with Andy Klein. As a Wu-Tang fan since the Protect Ya Neck/Method Man single, it was great to hear him drop jewels on Chinese history and point out film-making bits, cameos and trivia. He also brings up a lot of childhood stories about watching this and other flicks that I’m going to devote an entire post to one day. They should get those two to do more commentary for future flicks, because they make a great team. Other treats include a brief documentary on Shaolin and an in-depth interview with Gordon Liu. As much as I enjoyed One-Armed Swordsman’s interview with Jimmy Wang Yu, the Gordon Liu interview was even better. He talks about everything from how Lau Kar-wing took him in as a brother to how people thought that he looked a bit like Yul Brenner after he shaved his head. He seems like he’s having a lot of fun during the interview, too. I’m hoping that Celestial/Dragon Dynasty can get a Lau Kar-Wing as Andy Klein (I think) mentions that the director still does great and lively interviews. Also included are film trailers to this and other movies made by the crew. With the two movies that I have already, Dragon Dynasty does such a great job that they are to Martial Arts films what Anchor Bay is to cult and horror flicks. I never thought I’d see U.S. releases with so much effort put into them, but that’s exaxctly what these are. If you’re looking for mindless violence, this isn’t your flick because they’re are long stretches of time without any actual fights. But if you appreciate martial arts movies that are skillfully done, you’ll be rewarded by those great training scene that help to make the amazing fights even better. I think I’ve rambled enough about it, so buy it or rent it. After all, it’s the closest most people will get to watching a classic kung-fu flick while chilling out with the RZA.