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Best Martial Arts Movies of the 1970s by Year. by ckormos1 • Created 9 years ago • Modified 8 years ago. The 1970s was the greatest decade in the history of martial arts movies (if not in the history of all movies).
Sep 2, 2023 · The 20 Top Best Martial Arts Movies of the 1970's Part I : 1970-1975. Updated: Nov 27, 2023. The first kung fu film I saw was in 1973, Bruce Lee's The Big Boss (aka Fists of Fury; 1971). Since then, I've accumulated 950+ martial arts movies from the '70s from 20 countries mostly on Betamax.
- 12 'Dragon Inn'
- 11 'The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter'
- 10 'A Touch of Zen'
- 9 'The Legend of Drunken Master'
- 8 'Police Story'
- 7 'The 36th Chamber of Shaolin'
- 6 'Enter The Dragon'
- 5 'The Raid'
- 4 'The Raid 2'
- 3 'Hero'
IMDb Rating: 7.4/10
King Hu was a Chinese director who was a pioneer within the martial arts genre, directing numerous early classic movies in the 1960s and 1970s. While Dragon Innwasn't his very first movie, it was arguably his first great martial arts film, and holds up today as an early classic of the genre, delivering exciting action despite being over half a century old. Like many martial arts films, Dragon Inn'splot is simple and designed to allow numerous action scenes to be stringed together. It largely...
IMDb Rating: 7.4/10
Like many classic martial arts films, The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter is set in China during historical times. When a powerful family is almost entirely slaughtered in battle, the two survivors need to go on the run, with the film mostly following one young man, Yang Wu-lang, who seeks refuge in a monastery and becomes a Buddhist monk. Eventually, circumstances force him to become a brutal warrior once more. The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter is one of those glorious action movies where each actio...
IMDb Rating: 7.5/10
Dragon Inn may have established that King Hu was one of the greats when it came to directing martial arts movies, but A Touch of Zensolidified such a claim. This is a true epic that runs over three hours, and follows the story of a young woman who hides out in a small village while on the run from corrupt (and deadly) government officials. The film eventually becomes a prolonged fight for survival, but before its second half, it's not as much of a martial arts movie. A Touch of Zen is quiet,...
IMDb Rating: 7.5/10
You could fill a whole list (or two) of great martial arts movies starring the legendary Jackie Chan. He's been in the business for close to 50 years at this point, and before transitioning to Hollywood in the mid to late 1990s, made some of the best and wildest action movies of all time. Some combined martial arts with more modern-day action set pieces, like car chases and shootouts, while some were all focused on the hand-to-hand stuff. The Legend of Drunken Master is one of those purely ma...
IMDb Rating: 7.5/10
The other Jackie Chan martial arts classic worth highlighting among the very best of all time is Police Story, an excellent blend of action, crime, and thriller genres. Narratively, it's about a police officer who gets framed for a particularly violent crime, and so ends up on the run while trying to prove his innocence. The story's decently told, but honestly is mostly just there to provide a series of spectacular action sequences, which is what most people come to a Jackie Chan movie for. H...
IMDb Rating: 7.6/10
Training montages and preparing for climactic showdowns are things that show up in numerous classic martial arts movies, with The 36th Chamber of Shaolindeservedly being one of the best-known of these. It follows a young yet inexperienced man who's wronged by corrupt members of the government, leading to him training at the famed Shaolin Temple so that he'll one day have the skills to fight back and seek vengeance. Structurally, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin is very straightforward and doesn't...
IMDb Rating: 7.6/10
Bruce Lee's career as a martial arts star was cut tragically short by his passing in 1973. Enter the Dragon, therefore, became his final complete film, and was released at the end of July 1973, just a few days after Lee passed away. The film was a legendary one, and is up there with the very best movies of the 1970s. He was already on his way to becoming a huge action star, but Enter the Dragon solidified Lee as an icon, making it all the more unfortunate that this was his last proper film (1...
IMDb Rating: 7.6/10
Few action movies can claim to be as simple, satisfying, and bone-crunchingly brutal as The Raid. This low-budget Indonesian film sees a squad of highly-trained but outnumbered S.W.A.T. team members trapped in a high-rise building run by a crime lord who puts a bounty on their heads. After this setup, The Raidbecomes a fight for survival, with the police needing to fight their way out of the building. Come for the violent martial arts, and stay for the violent martial arts, because there's no...
IMDb Rating: 7.9/10
The Raid 2 currently boasts a slightly higher rating on IMDb than its predecessor (7.6/10 compared to 7.9/10). It has a more complicated storyline, with various criminal gangs struggling for power, plenty of betrayals, and a setting that goes far beyond just one apartment building. The complexity may leave some viewers wishing for the directness of the first movie, but ultimately, The Raid 2 is one of those sequels that's better than the first. Its action is more ambitious, it's filmed in a m...
IMDb Rating: 7.9/10
While Hero is not Yimou Zhang's only martial arts movie, it's probably the legendary Chinese director's best. It's a staggeringly beautiful movie that tells an epic story in under two hours, with the main plot being about a lone warrior tasked with eliminating three notorious assassins before they can make a move on China's king. The action is on a truly breathtaking scale here, and the use of color is unparalleled. Beyond being a great-looking and sounding movie, it has some of the best on-s...
- Jeremy Urquhart
- Senior Author
Here are the best martial-arts movies of all time, from old-school cult films (The 36th Chamber of Shaolin) to post-’80s essentials (Black Belt, Throwdown)
Chopsocky (or chop-socky[1]) is a colloquial term for martial arts films and kung fu films made primarily by Hong Kong action cinema between the late 1960s and early 1980s.
Mar 14, 2024 · While the roots of martial arts cinema stretch back to the silent era, the genre saw its true explosion with the birth of Hong Kong action cinema in the 1960s. Studios like Shaw Brothers crafted tales of sword-wielding heroes and vengeful fighters, laying the foundation.
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Oct 14, 2022 · I dug through history for you, and I found some of the best martial arts movies ever that combine a good (sometimes even great) story with some of the best fights ever seen on the big screen. Without further ado, here are the best martial arts movies in history (not sorted in any particular order).
