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Joseph Kuo

A collection of 8 posts

The Swordsman of All Swordsmen Trilogy (Joseph Kuo, Chien Lung, Ting Shan-hsi, 1968-1971)

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The Swordsman of All Swordsmen Trilogy (Joseph Kuo, Chien Lung, Ting Shan-hsi, 1968-1971)

Joseph Kuo Capsule Reviews

Joseph Kuo Capsule Reviews

Shaolin Kung Fu (1974) — January 12, 2022 Has almost nothing to do with Shaolin and really not much kung fu either, at least of the philosophical variety you’d find in more reputable films. Instead it has a whole lot of fighting: quick and brutal, if not especially gory. The

Return of the 18 Bronzemen (Joseph Kuo, 1976)

Return of the 18 Bronzemen (Joseph Kuo, 1976)

Probably the most confounding entry in the excellent Joseph Kuo boxset from Eureka. Not so much because of the film, which is certainly unusual, but because it is so obviously merely the first part of a multi-film story (despite its title it is not in fact a sequel to The

The 18 Bronzemen (Joseph Kuo, 1976)

The 18 Bronzemen (Joseph Kuo, 1976)

Finally an honest-to-God Shaolin film from Joseph Kuo, and of course it’s not one that has the word “Shaolin” in the title. Focusing on the Temple’s site as a center of pro-Ming resistance to the nascent Qing Dynasty, it otherwise follows a typical Kuo revenge plot: like in

The Shaolin Kids (Joseph Kuo, 1975)

The Shaolin Kids (Joseph Kuo, 1975)

Like Joseph Kuo's Shaolin Kung Fu, this has very little to do with the mythology around the Shaolin Temple, nor does it feature any kids, at least of the non-grown up variety. Nor is it a kung fu film in the vein of the Shaolin cycle Chang Cheh and Lau

The World of the Drunken Master (Joseph Kuo, 1979)

The World of the Drunken Master (Joseph Kuo, 1979)

Solid bit of Yuen-sploitation from Joseph Kuo, a prequel that dares to answer the question nobody anywhere ever asked: why does Beggar So, the Drunken Master, drink so much? Yuen kids Yat-chor and Cheung-yan handle the choreography, while patriarch Yuen Siu-tien appears very briefly in the opening moments, performing on

The 36 Deadly Styles (Joseph Kuo, 1979)

The 36 Deadly Styles (Joseph Kuo, 1979)

There was a weird cutaway scene early in Joseph Kuo’s 7 Grandmasters that struck me as a mistake, a bit of the story thrown into the middle of another storyline, the context and meaning of which wouldn’t become clear until much later in the film. It was jarring

7 Grandmasters (Joseph Kuo, 1977)

7 Grandmasters (Joseph Kuo, 1977)

With the start of the new year I’m finally digging into Eureka’s Joseph Kuo boxset. The only other Kuo film I’ve seen thus far is a dubbed version of The Mystery of Chess Boxing. Right away here the limitations of Kuo’s independent production in Taiwan, as