Drunken Master
by Woo-ping Yuen
from Sony Pictures
Though it wasn't Jackie Chan's first film, Drunken Master is the film that cemented his stardom. Jackie plays the rebellious son of a kung fu master. To teach Jackie the value of discipline, his father apprentices him to another master named So Hi, who has a unique "drunken" fighting style. Jackie chafes at So Hi's rigorous exercises and runs away--only to be brutally humiliated at the hands of a hired killer named Thunderleg. Chastened, Jackie becomes So Hi's devoted student. He soon discovers he will need everything he's learned when Thunderleg is hired to kill his father. In Drunken Master, Jackie is only beginning to cultivate his mixture of action and comedy; here the emphasis is on kung fu acrobatics. But the kung fu is astounding. The final fight is dizzying and amazingly choreographed by director Yuen Woo-ping (now famous as the fight choreographer for The Matrix). --Bret Fetzer
Game of Death
by Bruce Lee
from 20th Century Fox
Bruce Lee died after shooting only a few scenes of his ambitious Game of Death, but that didn't stop greedy producers from finishing and releasing "Lee's last film," even if he's doubled for most of it. Lee planned an ambitious expression of his fighting philosophy, and his story culminates in the rigorous challenge of the "Game of Death," in which combatants take on successively greater and greater masters as they fight their way to the top of a tower. Only a few fight scenes were completed, and the released film is about a martial arts movie star who takes on a syndicate of drug dealers. Lee faces down the towering Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in an impressive battle, one of the only surviving scenes from Lee's original shoot, while outtakes from his battle with Chuck Norris in Return of the Dragon are used along with real-life footage from Lee's funeral. The rest of the film is a mishmash of car chases and clumsily edited fights, complete with awkward inserts of Lee's face. His double remains hidden behind a pair of dark glasses or a motorcycle helmet throughout, and he abruptly changes into a yellow jumpsuit for no reason other than to match Lee's costume in the final scene. --Sean Axmaker
Duel to the Death
by Siu-Tung Ching
from 20th Century Fox
The Game of Death II
by Corey Yuen
from 20th Century Fox
Avenging Boxer
by Jimmy Shaw
from Phoenix Entertainment Group
Enter the Invincible Hero
by Godfrey Ho
from Ground Zero
North & South Shaolin
by Chia-Liang Liu
from Videoasia
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