From ‘kung fu heaven’ to bloody hell, 2 of the best movies martial arts film legend Lau Kar-leung directed are a study in contrasts
- Kung fu legend Lau Kar-leung’s Martial Club and The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter both feature Gordon Liu and Kara Wai in leading roles, but are poles apart
- The former is optimistic, steeped in Confucian values and no blood is spilled, the latter downbeat and as gory as the films of Lau’s former boss Chang Cheh
Both Martial Club and The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter are regarded as classics of the genre, and both feature screen legends Gordon Liu Chia-hui and Kara Wai Ying-hung. But the films are very different.
Martial Club
Martial Club was badly received at the Hong Kong box office when it was released in 1981 – comedy kung fu was all the rage in the city at the time, and the venerable Lau’s tradition-minded martial arts movie was considered unfashionable.
It wasn’t helped by the stylised combat sequences that eschewed violence and gore in favour of precise choreography which carefully depicted different forms of kung fu. Audiences felt these, too, were very old hat.
The film is the most lucid representation of the beliefs that Lau – who could trace his martial skills back to Wong through his father, Lau Cham – held about the practice of kung fu.