Five Deadly Venoms (1978)

Original title

五毒

Directed by

Chang Cheh

Genre

action film, adventure film, martial arts film, thriller film

Country

Hong Kong

Runtime

1h 41m

Rated

R

Rating

6.6 of 10 from 168 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A martial arts student is sent by his dying master to find five former pupils. Each pupil has a unique fighting style based on a venomous animal. The student must figure out which ones have turned evil and stop them.

groovynostalgicadventurousmysteriouscampyenergeticintenseclever

What happens

Five Deadly Venoms (Chinese: 五毒), also known as The Five Venoms, is a 1978 Hong Kong martial arts mystery film directed and co-written by Chang Cheh and produced by Runme Shaw for the Shaw Brothers Studio. It stars Chiang Shieng as Yang Tieh, a martial arts pupil who aims to follow his master's dying wish: to find the new identities of the master's five previous pupils, and kill them if they have turned towards evil. While doing so, Yang stumbles onto a web of murders and investigations involving all five pupils. Each of the master's previous pupils (the titular "Five Deadly Venoms") practices a unique animal-themed style, with the animals being based on the Five Poisonous Creatures of Chinese folklore. Five Deadly Venoms is considered one of the most popular martial arts films of its era, and has gone on to be considered a cult film. For their roles, Shieng, along with Lu Feng, Sun Chien, Philip Kwok, Wai Pak, and Lo Mang (who portrayed the five fighters), would become collectively dubbed by international audiences as the Venom Mob. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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