Bruce Lee’s career lasted barely 3 years and after his death the entire Bruceploitation genre appeared as producers and distributors tried to fill the gap left in the market. The second Jackie Chan found fame in after 1978’s Snake in Eagle’s Shadow and Drunken Master a wave of Chanploitation briefly swamped the market. And after Jet Lie rose to fame with Shaolin Temple (and then reappeared in the spotlight with Once Upon a Time in China) a series of Shaolin documentaries came out trying to cash in.

THIS IS KUNG FU (1983)

Exploiting Jet Li’s marque value by splicing footage of Kids From Shaolin into a standard issue kung fu documentary, complete with breathless voice over and generous slatherings of library music, this el cheapo production still has charms. Starting with scenic pans of the Chinese countryside, the first half of the film is occupied with blink-of-an-eye fist displays by men and women in tacky athletic outfits, some of the more precise displays coming courtesy of the National Wu Shu team (from whence Jet Li came). None of it’s too earth-shattering until you think about the budget: with the low number of takes they could afford the number of times these martial artists get it right is truly impressive.

There are a few flashes of bizarro (ie, a middle-aged woman dressed as a barbarian taking on some opponents with dual battleaxes), but for a while there’s nothing more than that to put in your funk trunk. Next comes some interesting footage of animal styles: monkey (which comes complete with costume), dog, crane, weak-looking duck, and bizarre mantis. Lots of women get to strut their stuff, and the props get a little more adventurous, but your blood still isn’t pumping.

Then, with the appearance of a very strange family, things move firmly into mondo territory. It all starts innocently enough with an old fellow breaking some rocks on his head and snapping them in two with his lightning finger of death. Then his wife stands on some swords while he busts a stone slab on her butt with a sledge hammer. She seems okay afterwards, but it’s hard to tell. And it keeps getting better. I guarantee you’ll feel sorry for one kid who’s had so many things broken on his head that it’s got a bald, flat spot worn into it. By the time our intrepid film makers (Chung Yee and Yeung Chung, for the record) are done with this bunch your own family starts seeming pretty normal by comparison. Taking leave of these characters, we end up at a huge wu shu competition and the film comes to a close with everyone getting medals. Just like in Star Wars.

DRAGONS OF THE ORIENT (1988)

Dragons of the Orient manages to differentiate itself from Shaolin Kung Fu (1994) and This is Kung Fu (1983) by having a plot. Yeung Ching-ching, a lady reporter from Hong Kong, travels to Shaolin to research martial arts for her newspaper. She hooks up with (in every sense of the word) Wang Chun, one of Jet Li's National Wu Shu Team members, and they travel around the country by train (competent fighters will only see them if they travel by train) taking in a panorama of hard-hitting freakery.

There’s some new Jet Li footage, a plotline, and it’s all run by…a WOMAN?!? Holy cow! Yeung Ching-ching was Brigitte Lin’s stunt double on The Bride With White Hair (rumor has it that iconic close-up of Lin’s eyes are actually close-ups of Yeung’s) and she’s got a long history of choreographing and doubling in Hong Kong action films. For this one she’s not only the martial arts choreographer on this production, but she's also calling the shots (much to Wang Chun's distaste). She even, patronizingly, gives Wang a few minutes of the movie in which to audition on film. However, as Wang delivers lines like, "I'm much willing for that, only you won't call me buffalo anymore," it's obvious why Jet's in movies and not Wang.

Kitsch and kung fu are almost interchangeable here as we see Jet Li's teammates individually strut their stuff on an astroturfed playground, and then we visit a pack of Qi Gong masters. Qi Gong, the controversial breathing/martial arts technique that prompted mass arrests and a huge crackdown in China and Hong Kong in 1999, is on full display here and it's easy to see why it started a cult. Although some of the feats are obvious fakery (the "No Head" stance for one - look for the mirror beneath the table) others, like standing on a sheet of paper, and being drawn and quartered by five fellas on motorcycles, and bending a steel pipe around one's neck all look real enough.

But the breathy narration and the strange stunts often fall over into pure sideshow freakery. At one point a bunch of Qi Gong masters hang out at a table in a restaurant, stopping electric fans with their fingers, pulling off beer bottlecaps with their fingernails, and eating glass. Later, one of them practices "Hard Hitting By Trunk": eight guys hold an enormous tree trunk and hit him hard. This is the kind of display that inspires Wang to giddy heights of po-faced portentousness. "No one dare say we Chinese are a weak people," he intones. Cut to a pack of topless men hitting trees with their chests. Not as boring as This Is Kung Fu and not as sideshowish (except for those weird Qi Gong masters) as Shaolin Kung Fu, Dragons of the Orient is a wonderful chance to see a paper man hold up a wok full of water, and to see two narrators fall in love.

Shaolin Kung Fu (1994)

If there’s one Shaolin documentary to own, this is it. It’s a doc that sits up and screams at you for an hour and a half. Edited by someone who was under a lot of pressure, there’s more jump-cutting here than in your average Wong Kar-wai movie, and the cameramen get so excited they keep running up to the Shaolin monks and pushing the camera waaaay up in their faces. This one has all the pageantry and crowd scenes that other docs lack: parades; mass practices; monks making living Buddhist swastikas Busby Berkley-style. It’s all quite mad, and pretty enthralling. And if you don’t think it’s enthralling the narrator takes frequent time-outs to remind you, screaming, “What a rare scene!”.

There’s plenty of footage of Jet Li, some from his childhood. Some is the standard stuff swiped off Kids From Shaolin and Shaolin Temple, some is from his childhood trip to the US and Mexico, and some is brand new, and filmed just for this documentary. Nothing too exciting, but it’s nice to see Jet Li bursting with shy enthusiasm and yucking it up with his elderly teachers.

The film focuses on the martial arts training of Shaolin monks. It starts with head butting. Monks head butting sandbags, monks head butting each other, monks head butting logs. It’s called Iron Skull and it’s useful, screeches the narrator, because, “A monk can win a fight with his skull!” From there it moves on to Iron Neck, Iron Hands, Iron Mouth and Teeth (for that one, a monk chomps down on the corner of a wooden table and carries it around). Before long, the monks are starting to sound like different brands of car wax, “If this monk were not strong and resistant enough he would be wounded seriously.”

Without the jokes and plot twists, the Shaolin monks come across as bald, humorless punishment machines, and one can tell why Tsui Hark went after them so hard in Green Snake. Still, there’s lots to be amazed at in this cabinet of curiosities. Iron Egg Skill (also known as Groin Skill). A fat American tourist kicking a monk in the stomach over and over. A monk fighting an ox. Monks using their tummies for chopping boards. They even take time out for the astonishing story of Monk Hai-tak, master of Finger Skill. The 90 year old monk is persuaded to demonstrate his skill for the cameras, a skill no other Shaolin monk can replicate. It’s all pretty astonishing, and the narrator keeps up his banter right until the end. ”Another unique skill,” he cries after a monk sticks a spear in his belly and spins on the point like a human weather vane. And then another. And another. And another...