War of the Shaolin Temple (1980)

As Taiwanese kung fu movies go, War of the Shaolin Temple is a cut above its contemporaries and features a number of the territory’s brightest talents within the genre including Alan Chui, Mark Lung and Five Element Ninja’s Ricky Cheng. Though lacking in acting talent and big studio production values, it delivers with elaborate, acrobatic-infused swordplay and kung fu action. It also features a decent, historical-based plot surrounding Shaolin’s involvement in the war between the dwindling Song Empire and invading Jin.

In the early 12th century, as Song Dynasty forces to the south battle to regain control of Northern China from occupying Jin forces, wounded soldier Wang Yung-lun (Ricky Cheng), bearing the Song seal of rule, finds aid from a young woman named Bai and her family. They’re all but wiped out in the process by Jin forces, led by a powerful warlord (Alan Chui), and Wang finds refuge in Shaolin Temple. As war comes closer to Shaolin and its abbot (Mark Lung), who is reluctant to get his monks involved, Wang trains in Shaolin kung fu in hopes of killing the Jin commander. He eventually becomes the thirteenth member of Shaolin’s famous thirteen pole formation of warrior monks and must defend Shaolin from destruction as the Jin army attacks.

War of the Shaolin Temple takes a while to warm up, despite some early kung fu excellence featuring acrobatic Venoms member Chiang Sheng. This can be blamed on some atrocious dialogue/dubbing and acting from Ricky Cheng and his leading lady, as the two struggle to escape from Alan Chui and B-movie stereotypes. But once the well-sculpted Ricky ditches his mop head hairpiece for a monk’s shaved head, things pick up considerably.

Shaolin Temple becomes the main setting for fast-paced and highly entertaining training scenes. While they lack the fantastic excess of Shaolin training movies from Lau Kar-leung and Joseph Kuo, they possess a creative energy all their own. The featured highlights are scenes where Ricky retreats to a cave to train with a crazed drunken monk. This may be a common character in kung fu movies, but rarely has the drunken monk performed such outrageous maneuvers. In scenes reminiscent of the even more extreme Five Fighters from Shaolin, the monk flips and tumbles endlessly, dances over wine casks and spars with an oversized Wing Chun dummy that doubles as a liquor cabinet, all while mixing home-brewed cocktails. It’s definitely an amusingly odd sight to behold, even for a veteran kung fu movie fanatic.

The rest of the film’s action is plentiful and covers extensive swordplay, spear work, a mix of open-hand sparring, and some clever formation pole work. Three thousand Shaolin monks are essentially represented by the physically talented Mark Lung, who plays the abbot, and twelve warrior monks who represent the martial descendants of the original thirteen cudgel-fighting monks of the Tang Dynasty era. At this time they use poles without the bladed tips, but this would have been appropriate for the Song era where martial combat was softened by Confucianism.

Ricky Cheng is fit as a fiddle and highly capable with his screen fighting execution, but sadly lacks the charisma of better classic kung fu movie actors like Alexander Fu Sheng and Gordon Liu. It is interesting to note that he bears some resemblance to a young Jet Li. This in enhanced by the fact that Jet Li’s first movie, Shaolin Temple (1982), tells the same story as War of the Shaolin Temple. So, comparisons are unavoidable. No doubt, the Mainland Chinese-produced Shaolin Temple is superior, production-wise and in terms of acting and wushu-styled martial arts. If for no other reason, it is superior as it was shot on location at the real Shaolin Temple. However, the earlier-produced Taiwanese movie should not be discounted, as it provides an alternate take that, for the most part, is just as fun to watch.