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Break out the nunchucks and bo staves, it’s time to talk horror with Eastern roots. The kung-fu / martial arts sub-genre of the action-horror theme is populated with some of the wildest, most convoluted, and most colorful movies imaginable. And some of these films push past the imagination level.

The glory years of kung fu horror were in the 1980s, before the take-over of Hong Kong cinema by the People’s Republic of China, where the ghosts that were so often used in HK horror films are now strictly verboten in mainland China. And now that China makes up the second largest movie-consuming culture in the world, movie producers are less likely to go down that route.

In the ’80s though, we had hopping vampires, flowing ghostly robes, vengeful demonic monks, wicked sorcerors, and some material that is so strange it can only be described in a podcast! (That’s your cue to listen to our podcast for the lowdown on the strange happenings in this genre.) As the Shaw Brothers’ film empire waned, the Golden Harvest era began, and actors like Jackie Chan, Michelle Yeoh, Donnie Yen, and Jet Li became household names with Western audiences.

Alas, the trend of great kung-fu horror has been diminishing in Hong Kong, as the more conservative PG-13 level taste of the Chinese government prevails. However, hope flows eternal as the Indonesians in particular seem poised to fill in the gap of martial arts horror. The exported talent of Hong Kong fight choreographers is also felt in Western productions as films like Blade II, Brotherhood of the Wolf, and Upgrade all contain a considerable amount of kung-fu choreo.

That does bring up a consideration when making these selections. Kung-fu horror is a sub-genre that falls very heavily on the side of action, as opposed to horror, And, what do you do with the super gory action films like Oldboy, Ricky Oh: The Story of Ricky, and The Night Comes for Us? These films definitely provide the gore quotient. Revenge films are a real commodity that gets traded in the horror genre (I Spit on Your Grave, Last House on the Left, Revenge… etc.) The separation gets blurry when you look at something like Kill Bill, which is extraordinarily bloody, but nobody would ever peg that in the horror genre.

For the purposes of discussion, we are including the Grindhouse siblings here. The gory squeamish factor comes into play here, with beheadings a plenty, and lots of knives put where you wouldn’t want them to be. And in my opinion, the Grindhouse attitude is in concert with the identity of much horror. The Matrix and Kill Bill? Too big to be adjacent! (Is that a thing?) Note that we are also including wrestling as a martial art, so bring on the Luchadores! Liz is the current mayor, and she made the rules.

OK, enough talk! Get Ready!