Underplayed Gems

Dragon Gate Inn (1967)

Dragon Gate Inn poster
Original title
龍門客棧
Directed by
King Hu
Genre
action film, wuxia, martial arts film
Country
Taiwan
Runtime
1h 51m
Rated
16
Rating
7.4 of 10 from 142 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
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How it feels

In 15th-century China, a group of martial artists band together to protect the family of a disgraced official from a corrupt eunuch and his secret police. The action unfolds at a remote inn where loyalties are tested and fights break out.

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What happens

Dragon Inn (龍門客棧), also known as Dragon Gate Inn, is a 1967 Taiwanese wuxia film written and directed by King Hu. Set in 15th-century China during the Ming dynasty, the film follows a small, disparate band of martial artists who protect the exiled family members of a respected official from persecution by a treacherous eunuch and the secret police. Hu had recently left Hong Kong to Taiwan where he set-up the short-lived Union Film Company. The film was shot in 1966. The film was released in 1967, and broke box‐office records in Taiwan, Korea, and the Philippines. Dragon Inn received positive retrospective reviews in Empire, Radio Times and Sight & Sound, with critic Michael Brooke of the latter magazine referring to the film as "one of the most important wuxia films to emerge from the Chinese-speaking world prior to the great martial arts boom of the turn of the 1970s." The film was remade as New Dragon Gate Inn (1992) and Flying Swords of Dragon Gate (2011). (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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