SO I HEARD YOU'RE INTERESTED IN WUXIA

The Classics

A little more dignified and not nearly as wild or as fantastical as the rest of this list but these are the foundational works that much of the genre then riffs off of as it develops. Also to be clear there are still plenty of arms and heads being cut off so the meatheads won't be disappointed (that's me, I'm meatheads)

Come Drink with Me (King Hu, 1966) - this and the next one are the granddaddied of them all as far as I'm concerned and establish many of the essential wuxia tropes and archetypes. The lead actress of this film, Cheng Pei-Pei is arguably the first female action star or at least one of the very first.

Dragon Inn (King Hu, 1967) - I think this is the one that really cemented the art here. Beautiful film full of badasses and bloody fights and devious eunuchs. Well one devious eunuch but watch out he's a real hard son of a bitch.

The Black Tavern (Teddy Yip Wing-Cho, 1972) - takes the above film and really develops the idea of setting a film in a remote isolated inn and filling it full of insanely lethal badasses and letting them kill each other. It's also got one of my favorite wuxia villain actors, Ku Feng.

The Bells of Death (Griffin Yueh Feng, 1968) - maybe not as formative as the above but a super solid and stylish revenge film with some great characters and great deaths. Also one of the earliest wuxias I'm aware of with a very strong and noticable spaghetti western influence.

Director Spotlight: Chang Cheh

Of the directors working at the Shaw Brothers studio in the 70s, Chang Cheh and Chor Yuen are in my opinion the kings of wuxia. Cheh had two major themes in his films: absurd carnage and intense homoeroticism. This is the guy you go to if you want to see manly heroes in revealing tops stare lovingly into each others eyes and then possibly get horribly disemboweled.

The One-Armed Swordsman & Return of the One-Armed Swordsman (1967 & 1969) - a couple very early wuxias starring Jimmy Wang Yu, one of the first martial arts stars despite being a bad actor and not particularly good at fighting either. Please understand I say this with much affection.

The New One-Armed Swordsman (1971) - after Jimmy Wang Yu left the Shaw Brothers to go make cheaper weirder movies in Taiwan, he got replaced by David Chiang and Ti Lung, both much better at fighting and also a hundred times more charismatic. They are 100% boyfriends in this and nobody can convince me otherwise.

Crippled Avengers (1978) - If I had to choose, this would probably be my favorite Chang Cheh film. This was around the time he started getting really weird and inventive with the violence in his films. It stars the Venom Mob, a popular group of martial arts actors active during this period that frankly are all kind of boring to me in terms of on-screen personality but goddamn can they do some insane gymnastics. This and the next one are borderline cases where they're arguably a little too grounded to be called wuxia proper but still too fantastical to be just regular martial arts films.

Five Element Ninjas (1982) - another Venom Mob film, even more absurd than the last one. Seemingly invented the concept of color-coded ninjas that Godfrey Ho would go on to base his entire career on.

Director Spotlight: Chor Yuen

The other 70s Shaw Bros wuxia king. Chor Yuen's main preoccupations were incredibly beautiful and colorful sets and lighting and also deeply convoluted plots of intrigue and betrayal. Despite liking him even more than Chang Cheh, I don't actually have a lot to say about the following individual films other than that they're all beautiful and violent and fun. Just trust me on this. Later in the 80s he'd also make some of the most wild and colorful wizard fight wuxias of the era, which I'll get to a little further down the page.

The Magic Blade (1976)
Pursuit of Vengeance (1977)
The Sentimental Swordsman (1977)
Jade Tiger (1977)

Director Spotlight: Tsui Hark

Tsui Hark was kind of the 80s-90s evolution of Chor Yuen, taking his colorful painterly visual aesthetic and cranking it up as high as it could possibly go. The absolute god of color and lighting. Unfortunately his later movies are completely unwatchable to me after he got really into CGI in the late 90s.

Once Upon a Time in China and Once Upon a Time in China II (1991 & 1992) - There were actually six of these but the first two are the best ones, with the second being my favorite. Some of the best wuxia fight choreography ever put to film.

Swordsman and Swordsman II (1990 & 1992) - much sillier and more fantastical than the above series, these were co-directed with one of the major Hong Kong fantasy directors of the era, Tony Ching Siu-Tung, who'll reappear a bit later. These films feature more people (and one horse) getting bisected lengthwise than all other films I've seen combined. The second film has a trans villain/antihero that, IMO, is handled way better than you'd expect from a movie made in this time and place. In fact my understanding is that character becomes the protagonist of the third film in the series, which I've heard is pretty good but haven't watched yet.

Green Snake (1993) - A super cute and beautiful wuxia/romance/fantasy film. The two lead actresses are cartoonishly sexy and also sometimes turn into giant snakes.

Director Spotlight: Yuen Wo-Ping

The other major 80s-90s martial arts director and also big time fight choreographer. Most of his films are much more solidly in the kung fu film camp than the wuxia one but he definitely made his share.

Iron Monkey (1993) - very much in the same vein as the Once Upon a Time in China film both in terms of setting, theme, and insane fight choreo.

Wing Chun (1994) - there weren't a lot of wuxias starring women, especially after the 60s era with Chang Pei-Pei (who cameos in this) and a few others, but this one starring Michelle Yeoh is good as hell and also pretty funny!

The Miracle Fighters (1982) - a flat out wizard comedy. Absolute Looney Tunes ass shit right here. CW for some brief animal cruelty to snakes.

WIZARD FIGHT TIME

Alright here we go. This is my shit right here. I have a much more extensive list of the genre here and also uploaded most of my faves to a google drive here (NOTE: all of these files have internal subtitles. You'll need to download them and play in VLC or something like that). There is nothing in the world I love more than some kung fu wizards shooting lasers and fireballs at each other. I have a pretty hard cut-off for this genre around the mid-90s when CGI started to take over because it is simply incapable of recreating the unbridled delight of hand-made special effects

Buddha's Palm (Taylor Wong, 1982) - if I had to recommend one single wuxia film it'd be this. It's based off of a 6-part black and white series from the mid-60s that used a lot of rudimentary special effects, and they basically condensed the whole thing down to one 90-minute film and put their entire ass into the SFX. This one's got everything: wizards shooting lasers at each other, magic swords, death traps, a pet dragon, the world's cuntiest wizard played by my main man Lo Lieh. Truly you could not ask for more.

Zu Warriors of the Magic Mountain (Tsui Hark, 1983) - a completely bewildering plot but more importantly some of the coolest set design I've ever seen in my life and genuinely insane practical effects. It also has Sammo Hung as a wizard with giant prehensile eyebrows. As a side note Tsui Hark made a 2001 remake of this that is maybe the most unwatchable thing I've ever seen, though some folks love it for the bad millenial CGI camp so YMMV.

The Hidden Power of the Dragon Sabre (Chor Yuen, 1984) - this is technically the third part of a trilogy but A) the first two parts while good aren't nearly as fantastical as this one and B) with how twisty Chor Yuen's plots are, watching the other two probably wouldn't help you understand the plot any better. In any case I'm using this as a representative of Yuen's final evolution into the god of disco-colored wizard fight cinema, see also Descendant of the Sun and The Enchantress as further examples.

Holy Flame of the Martial World and Bastard Swordsman (Tony Lou Chun-Ku, 1983 & 1983) - a really good year for this director. Holy Flame is just about on par with Buddha's Palm as far as the peak expression of the subgenre goes.

The Battle Wizard (Pao Hsueh-Li, 1977) - the title says it all!

The Maidens of Heavenly Mountains (Andy Chin, 1994) - this was a relatively recent discovery for me. It's got that early 90s Tsui Hark psychedelic watercolor palette and laser fights but also more importantly is deeply and openly sapphic, an incredible rarity for the genre. Don't let the dense infodump at the beginning intimidate you; all you really need to know is that Brigitte Lin plays twin sisters in a wizard love triangle with Gong Li.

Ghost Hill and The Beheaded 1000 (Ting Shan-Hsi, 1971 & 1993) - These are a couple Taiwanese wuxias that are a little cheaper and weirder than the Hong Kong stuff. Ghost Hill is technically the third part of a trilogy but like Dragon Sabre the first two parts are unessential for enjoying this one. Beheaded 1000 features a nearly unrecognisable Jimmy Wang Yu from his One-Armed Swordsman days.

Portrait in Crystal and Bloody Parrot (Hua Shan, 1981 & 1983) - two wuxias by maybe the weirdest director in the Shaw Brothers arsenal, both so violent and bizarre that they're borderline horror films. Highly recommended.

Wolf Devil Woman (Pearl Chang, 1982) - another Taiwanese one, this time written and directed and starring one of the very few female auteurs of the genre, Pearl Chang. She's raised by wolves and wears one as a hat and also rips a ninja in half. I also recommend her film Matching Escort.

Duel to the Death (Tony Ching Siu-Tung, 1983) - not actually a wizard wuxia but I didn't know where else to put this. Easily one of the most insane non-wizard films in the genre. At one point there's a giant ninja made out of regular sized ninjas and its just never explained. Directed by the co-director of the Swordsman series above and also the Chinese Ghost Story trilogy that are arguable more general fantasy films but I think still very much fit in the Wizard Wuxia canon.

Miscellaneous

not strictly wuxia but still essential period martial arts cinema

The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter and Dirty Ho (Lau Kar-Leung, 1984 & 1979) - two films starring Gordon Liu directed by the god of stickfighting Lau Kar Leung. The final fight of 8 Diagram Pole Fighter is the most jaw-dropping piece of fight choreography in the history of cinema. This is a fact and not an opinion.

Master of the Flying Guillotine (Jimmy Wang Yu, 1976) - our boy Jimmy directs and double-stars as both the hero AND villain in a film that I'm 100% certain was a primary inspiration for the Street Fighter games.

The Fugitive (Chang Tseng-Chai, 1972) - not content with just taking heavy inspiration from spaghetti westerns, the Shaw Brothers even put out a straight up western of their own, but heavily inflected with wuxia tropes and energy. Also starring my number one guy Lo Lieh.

The Duel (Chang Cheh, 1971) - also definitely not a wuxia proper since like the above film this one is set vaguely in the 19th or very early 20th century but again has deep wuxia influence and like Cheh's earlier film The New One-Armed Swordsman stars Ti Lung and David Chiang both being insanely sexy and cool and tragic and also like a hundred guys stabbing each other with giant knives on screen at once.

That's it for now! I could easily recommend dozens more but this list is probably already overwhelming and I think it's a good jumping off point. Almost all of the named directors have a deep filmography full of treasure to be discovered.

One of the other fun things about these movies is that all feature a fairly small cast stars that you love to see pop up again and again. The more you watch, the more actors you recognize and get excited about. At this point my top 15 most seen actors according to letterboxd are all from these movies. Maybe sometime I'll make an addendum to this page about my Favorite Guys.