A Film Festival of Kick Ass Kung Fu/Martial Arts Films in the Public Domain

Every­one remem­bers their first kung-fu movie — or every­one remem­bers their first wave of kung-fu movies, any­way. For some, they came late at night on the less-explored fre­quen­cies of the tele­vi­sion broad­cast­ing spec­trum; for oth­ers, they came on sparse­ly attend­ed dou­ble- and triple-bills at the local dis­count the­ater. They looked fad­ed and mud­dy, but some­how still vivid; they felt cheap­ly pro­duced, yet full of life and ener­gy; and as for how they sound­ed, time has turned their both hol­low and the­atri­cal Eng­lish-lan­guage dub­bing into an art form with con­nois­seurs of its own. They came from far­away lands, which ren­dered them exot­ic, but we expe­ri­enced them almost as dreams, prod­ucts of anoth­er real­i­ty alto­geth­er. And some of them you can expe­ri­ence again as pub­lic domain films.

We still call them “kung fu movies” even though, hav­ing grown old­er and wis­er — or at least more cul­tur­al­ly aware — we now know their heroes did­n’t always defeat their ene­mies with the Chi­nese mar­tial arts cov­ered by that umbrel­la term. But the label applies well enough to 1977’s Leg­end of Shaolin, the Hong Kong-made epic at the top of the post set in the 13th-cen­tu­ry Yuan Dynasty and deal­ing with that most kung-fu of all themes, revenge. But such his­tor­i­cal “kung fu” pic­tures could also come from coun­tries like Japan, an exam­ple of which you can thrill to just above: 1983’s Leg­end of the Eight Samu­rai fea­tures Son­ny Chi­ba, liv­ing embod­i­ment of the 1970s mar­tial-arts film, under the direc­tion of the pro­lif­ic and respect­ed provo­ca­teur Kin­ji Fukasaku, best known today as the mak­er of the con­tro­ver­sial Bat­tle Royale.

Next in this pub­lic-domain mar­tial-arts marathon, we have anoth­er Hong Kong movie, Guy with the Secret Kung Fu from 1981, whose title alone strikes me as rec­om­men­da­tion enough. And for our final selec­tion, we move to a more con­tem­po­rary set­ting with 1987’s Four Rob­bers, where­in the tit­u­lar quartet—pursued by both the police and a malev­o­lent crime syn­di­cate that at first wants to recruit them and lat­er wants revenge against them—have to flee from Hong Kong to Thai­land with­out gam­bling away the fruits of their labor or com­pro­mis­ing their prin­ci­ples. This movie, and many oth­ers of its kind, give the lie to the notion that there’s no hon­or among thieves. Most all of the wan­der­ers, samu­rai, rebels, aris­to­crats, cops, and rob­bers you see in them have one kind of hon­or or anoth­er — but when they come into con­flict, it tends to take some old-fash­ioned kung-fu fight­ing to set­tle things. You can find these films added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More, which includes more 23 Free Kung Fu and Mar­tial Arts Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

700 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

Rad­i­cal French Phi­los­o­phy Meets Kung-Fu Cin­e­ma in Can Dialec­tics Break Bricks? (1973)

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Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.