Holy Robe of the Shaolin Temple (木棉袈裟)(1985)

 Holy Robe of the Shaolin Temple (木棉袈裟)

Dir: Siu Ming Tsui
Cast: Rongguang Yu , Dalu Yu , Xiangdong Xu , Qiuping Lin, Qiuhua Wu, Qin Chen

Plot:  Ming dynasty, the shaolin temple is accused of riots against the government. Qi Tian Yuan (Rongguang Yu), an officer from the gov, is sent to the shaolin temple to take over. After the defeat of the old master , Tian Yuan and the army begin to kill all the monks. Luckily, some of them managed to escape the massacre and run away with the Holy robe, which Tian Yuan needs in order to take over the temple…

Year: 1985
Country: Mainland China / Hk 

Trailer (edit by me from the original dvd ): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9iKZIsi7hw

Notes:  The movie is released in China on dvd by Da Sheng company, it does carry both English and Chinese trad. subtitles, both are burned it (the souce is probably from HK or TW) and mandarin audio. The movie was also released in USA with Cantonese audio (as stated in Amazon, I do not own this version).

The director, Siu Ming Tsui, directed other martial arts movies such as The Buddhist Fist (1980), The Rats (1973). His career was almost HK based with just few co-operation with China.

Rongguang Yu, on the other hand, started his career with this flick and then he managed to act in so many movies both in China and HK (for ex. Red Fists (联手警探)(1990), Iron Monkey (1993) and so on).  

As far as I know almost all the cast were martial artists also in the real life, some even champions of wushu. Rongguang Yu, if I am not mistaken, was just a really good acrobat and he picked up MA skills in a very short time. Impressive !

Personal opinion:  What a gem! I didn’t know what to expect from this flick, never I thought it was DA BOMB!

Even though the plot is pretty traditional, the action scenes were just top notch. Thanks to the skills of the cast (girls and boys) , the movie is packed with superb fights and training sequences. For example I loved the training sequences at the Wu Dang mountain and in the Shaolin Temple, excellent showcase of wushu stuff.

Also the music was great! You gotta love the song played as background of the training sequences.

Overall the movie is awesome. Ok the story is meh, the love story is meh as well, but who cares about those things when you have Wushu campions on screen? Nobody!  Just go and pick it up, you will not be disappointed!

Some snapshots from the original dvd: