Was my DVD messed up or was the end fight scene choppy? and it had no ending! Then he is teaching Kung-FU. I realize this may be the point of the story (other than the weakly explained habitation)but still I wanted there to at least be an end to the final fight scene.
shareYes thats how it really ends, atleast its on all DVD (including the R2) and VHS releases. There may have been a reason why it was shot the way it was, but you could tell Gordon Liu won the fight anyway when the villian was bleeding. I was fine with the ending except that jerky fight scene edit. Although having him teach kung fu is a satisfying conclusion representing he did open his own chamber,.... the 36th chamber.
shareok, at least i know my vcd isn't defective then. but the ending is inconclusive, which was my main beef with the movie...what about the top chamber?! it makes me go insane just thinking about the fact that the loose ends weren't wrapped up.
sharewhat loose ends? the top chamber was the one where they practice zen koans, where you learn "spiritual power" so to speak. that is the Qi strike from a distance. He clearly has learned this, since he uses it in this last fight scene against lo lieh. in the lau movies, sending someone up and over you pretty much spells the end of that fight scene. take for example legendary weapons of kungfu (or 18 legendary weapons of china), when master lau fights his adopted brother gordon liu (the master killer). at the end of the fight, master lau defeats gordon by sending him up and over him.
the last scene, he is teaching because that means he has opened his 36th chamber to teach outsiders. this leads to the legend of the martial tradition that master lau comes from, namely hung gar. it is named for its founder hung xiguan, about whom there are also numberous movies and tv shows. he is one of the only students to survive the burning of the shaolin temple. he's best portrayed by chen kuan tai in heroes II and disciples of death. he's also portrayed by jet li in new legend of shaolin (fantasy version of the story). in "36th chamber of shaolin", hung xiguan is the guy in the graveyard that master killer saves. he becomes his first student.
this movie is in a lot of ways a prequel to all the shaolin temple movies from the early and mid-70s. So, him teaching at the end of the movie sets up all later films about his students. this storyline is basically totally dropped for the sequel to this film Return to the 36th chamber, but is fortunately picked up again in the third film "disciples of master killer" 1984-5 that focuses on fong sai-yuk (aka fang xiyu) and only briefly shows hung xiguan.
master lau's style is hung-gar, as his father and uncle were students of butcher wing (played by sammo in Magnificent Butcher), who was a disciple of Wong Fei Hung, of whom over 100 films have been made (in the guiness book of world records for the longest running film series).
We will never be free until the last politician is hanging from the entrails of the last capitalist