Others focus on mental discipline, like the “Eye Chamber” where he stands between two flaming sticks and tries not to move his head while watching a pendulum swing. There are chambers devoted to the practice of individual weapons. Some focus on training individual parts of the body, such as the incredible “Head Chamber” where he has to fight his way through hanging sandbags using only his head. The earlier ones play San Te’s incompetence for laughs but, as he moves through the chambers and improves his skills, the tasks become harder and more exciting. Most of the chambers are iconic and imaginative. It’s quite a daring narrative in that at least an hour of the film is devoted to training sequences (something most films get finished in a five minute montage) but it’s never dull. There’s initial resistance to training him but, when it’s clear he’s not giving up, they give him a monk name (San Te) and allow him to enter the 35 training chambers. Although Shaolin is closed to outsiders, the monks take him in and heal him, seeing his arrival as an act of providence. Liu escapes and manages – starving and injured – to literally crawl his way through the woods and up the mountains to Shaolin Temple, the place where he’s heard they teach kung fu. Although he joins a group of revolutionaries, their plans are discovered by the Manchus and a bloody massacre ensues. He’s the son of a fishmonger, sick of seeing his family and friends persecuted by the Manchu oppressors who rule the province with an iron fist.
Gordon Liu plays Liu Yude, a working class student in Qing Dynasty Guangdong. The end result is a compelling, sophisticated martial arts film.
Ni Kuang’s screenplay took Lau and Liu’s idea of a more realistic and philosophical approach to onscreen kung fu and turned it into a political piece based on Chinese folk hero, San Te. Lau was also a highly skilled martial artist and master of the difficult Hung Fist style, which is how he initially met Gordon Liu. Years after they’d trained together, Lau insisted Liu – his favourite student – play the lead in 36th Chamber despite having little experience in front of a camera. The 36th Chamber Of Shaolin was one of the first films directed by Lau Kar-leung, although he had been around the industry for some time, working as an actor and an action choreographer for the Shaws.
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