Return to the 36th Chamber (1980)

Disgruntled dye factory workers hire Chu Jen-chieh (Gordon Liu), a conman to pose as famous Shaolin monk and kung fu expert San Te in order to stop their wages from being cut. But when the ruse is uncovered, their only hope is in Chu’s efforts to sneak into Shaolin Temple in order to learn real kung fu.

It’s no overstatement to say that Return to the 36th Chamber ranks as one of the most entertaining kung fu classics of all time. Director and action choreographer Lau Kar-leung is at the top of his game and presents a super-satisfying combination of training sequences, comedy, and both jaw-dropping and highly unusual kung fu action centering around the use of bamboo scaffolding materials.

This comedic follow-up to Lau’s breakthrough international hit The 36th Chamber of Shaolin recasts his star pupil Gordon Liu with a slight twist. Instead of continuing to play San Te, the legendary creator of the first Shaolin hall of training for non-monks, he plays Chu Jen-chieh, a lowly conman who sneaks into Shaolin in order to learn kung fu from San Te (Lee King-chue). His goal is to help his dye factory buddies reclaim their lost wages from their tyrannical bosses after initially failing to con the owners with staged displays of kung fu. He succeeds in getting in after several humorous attempts, but instead of joining the other laymen in training, he’s forced to wash the dye out of a wig he’s wearing the hard way, by repeatedly dropping a rock into a deep well in hopes of catching the inevitable spray of water. Having succeeded only after days of tortuous effort, Chu is then charged with building bamboo scaffolding around each building at Shaolin. Over a year later his task is finally completed, but San Te simply tells him to tear it all down. Furious, Chu fights with San Te before being told to leave Shaolin for good. Chu returns to his friends in disgust over having spent nearly three years at Shaolin and supposedly having nothing to show for it. But what the viewer has already seen and what his friends quickly discover is that he has mastered kung fu after all by applying his strength training with the rock and bamboo scaffolding skills with his many observations of the Shaolin students in training. After realizing this Chu triumphantly challenges the dye factory bosses in an intense and unique display of kung fu where Chu uses bamboo ties and scaffolding to match his opponents’ skills with folding tea benches.

Lau Kar-leung is possibly the genre’s greatest artisan. Despite his obvious obsession with portraying real and truly impressive kung fu in massive quantities onscreen, he has also managed to transcend the stereotype of kung fu movies as simple revenge plots leading to mindless brawling. Much like his equally outstanding Japanese meets Chinese tale, Heroes of the East, Lau expertly transports kung fu training and expertise into a situation that more readily reflects real life. In this case, he presents two themes. The first is what causes the central conflict in the film and this is the common fight for labor rights. Secondly and most importantly, he presents kung fu as not simply a path towards mastering a weapon or technique, but as being able to adapt the all-important rudiments of kung fu to any situation or skill. It takes a real master of kung fu and filmmaking to not only explore the depth and meaning of kung fu, but to present it onscreen in a clear and entertaining way that any viewer can appreciate. Despite some less than stellar modern films, Lau Kar-leung remains just such a master.

Return to the 36th Chamber is a film for just about everyone. There is ample humor and varied action for novices, subtleties for avid kung fu movie fans, and relatively mild violence suitable for general audiences. But don’t let the term “mild violence” misrepresent the action. Kung fu onscreen doesn’t get any better and Lau certainly doesn’t hold back in the film’s extended finale. The film and its subsequent action plays in three acts beginning with the heroes’ funny, yet doomed attempts to con the dye factory workers. The action here is intentionally fake and the fun is in actually seeing the wires and exaggerated responses to Gordon Liu’s ‘powerful’ kung fu moves from his cohorts. Then we get to the traditional training sequences as Lau inadvertently learns real kung fu at Shaolin Temple. Many, many kung fu movies feature training sequences, especially after Lau made it popular in the original 36th Chamber. But they generally resort to increasingly implausible, esoteric, or repetitive routines. But within reason, you will believe that Gordon Liu can do everything he does. Perhaps that’s because he really is doing most everything you see onscreen. Liu was personally trained by Lau in Shaolin kung fu and under the master’s direction he is a peerless force to be reckoned with. This leads to the final act as Liu is shown finally as the master who wields bamboo with ease. But even he has his limits and must draw his enemies into an advantageous environment where bamboo scaffolding is readily available. If this seems a little too convenient, consider the maxims of expert tacticians Sun Tsu or Miyamoto Musashi who stressed the need to use your environment to your advantage. This is something most kung fu movies neglect.

The villains of this piece are pretty incidental to the story, but several actors still deserve mention. Kwan Yung-moon is memorable as one of the leading Manchurian bully boys who sport a wicked sneer that is until Liu gets a hold of him. Underrated regular heavy Johnny Wang is excellent as the dispassionate factory boss who quickly dismisses Liu’s fake skills and gets to taste the real ones later. He makes great use of a folding tea bench as a weapon.

Return to the 36th Chamber is flawless as a kung fu movie. Everything is done to perfection and you will find no greater satisfaction than in seeing Gordon Liu hogtie his helpless opponents. Kara Hui, another Lau Kar-leung student, is underused from a fan’s perspective but her character which is one of only a couple minor female roles is not central to the story apart from being the undeveloped love interest for Liu. With nothing really to complain about and a whole lot to praise, I confidently declare this as a must-see film that will not disappoint.