The 36th Chamber of Shaolin
The 36th Chamber of Shaolin is a 1978 film from Hong Kong, directed by Lau Kar-leung, running 111 minutes. reelscum files it under martial arts.
- Year
- 1978 · 1970s films
- Country
- Hong Kong
- Runtime
- 111 min
- Director
- Lau Kar-leung
- Updated
- 29 Oct 2026
- Obscurity
- known (18/100)
- Also known as
- Shaolin Master Killer · 36th Chamber · The Master Killer · Master Killer
Defined in the glossary: Martial arts
The best training film ever made. Lau Kar-leung at the peak.
The best training film ever made. A young man flees the Manchus to the Shaolin temple and works through its chambers one punishing discipline at a time, and Lau Kar-leung, an actual master of the style, shoots the training as the story rather than a montage before it.
Gordon Liu's shaved head became an icon, and the film's structure, learn, suffer, master, return, is the template a hundred others copied without understanding why it worked. It works because the training IS the drama.
Foundational, and still one of the genre's peaks.
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Where to watch
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