10 Weirdest Martial Arts Movies Ever Made

Martial arts movies can often get quite strange, taking risks with utterly absurd stories that aren’t to be found in any other genre. Things can often get lost in translation between East and West as martial arts movies make their way overseas, but there are some levels of strangeness that simply can’t be explained via traditional culture shock. From the greatest Wuxia epics to the most exciting super cop stories set in the modern day, martial arts movies across history have toed the line between curious and downright weird.

Some martial arts movies will dream up some creative fantasy elements for their plots, which can often clash with the typically lower budget of the average kung fu flick. The result can often be quite bizarre, with high-concept fantasy elements meeting realistic means of portraying them. Other times, it’s the smaller individual choices in a given martial arts movie that add up to an avalanche of weirdness, from bad English dubs to strange character decisions and more.

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10

Gymkata

An absurd mashup of martial arts and gymnastics

Sometimes, martial arts movies end up as a strange form of wish fulfillment for the people who make them. Gymkata is the brainchild of film producer Fred Weintraub, who felt an inexplicable urge to cast Olympic gymnast Kurt Thomas in a martial arts movie after seeing him in a TV commercial. Thus, Gymkata was born, casting Thomas as the lead of a terrible loose adaptation of the novel The Terrible Game, in which the fate of a nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia is determined by a single martial arts tournament.

Somehow, the U.S. government decides that a gymnast is their best bet to prevent nuclear armageddon, and Kurt Thomas’ character enters the fray with a bizarre mix of kung fu and gymnastics routines. The action of Gymkata is utterly nonsensical, with exchanges of blows that try (and fail) to make gymnastics look cool as a martial art in its own right. The most bonkers setpiece is the moment in which Thomas has to fight his way out of a village full of criminally insane residents, one of whom chops his own hand off just scare the hero.

9

The Legend Of The 7 Golden Vampires

An unruly blend of martial arts and horror

The martial arts genre isn’t above dipping its toes into other genres, such as horror, and two mix together like oil and water in The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires. A collaboration between the legendary Shaw Brothers and the esteemed Hammer Film Productions, known far and wide for their horror hits like Dracula. The plot sees famous vampire hunter Van Helsing do battle with a cult of Chinese vampires along with the help of a family of kung fu practitioners.

As interesting a concept as The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires makes for, in execution, it’s a laughably weird film. Van Helsing, played by the distinguished Peter Cushing, a Hammer Film Productions regular, mostly sort of stands around looking bewildered as the high-flying kung fu action simply unfolds around him. The film is simply an odd experience from its very conception, doing nothing to smoothly blend its two very different influences together.

8

The Battle Wizard

Mixes magic and muscles for bizarre results

Of course, The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires is far from the only strange film that the illustrious Shaw Brothers Studio ever churned out over its lengthy reign of dominance in Hong Kong martial arts cinema. 1977’s The Battle Wizard is far from a popular film in their catalog, but it’s nevertheless a bizarre feature that needs to be seen to be believed. The story focuses on a young scholar and his swordswoman sister who embark on a lengthy journey to battle three villains, each more supernatural and strange than the last.

Even calling The Battle Wizard a martial arts film at all is almost a difficult pill to swallow. The protagonist’s primary technique that he learns is a martial arts move that allows him to fire a deadly laser from his finger, chopping up opponents. Some of his foes include a lecherous monster with flying pincer hook arms and a masked woman who vows to either murder or marry the first man to see her face. Best of all, the main villain is an aged wizard with metal rooster legs for feet that can shoot fire out of his mouth.

7

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The Thundering Mantis

Mostly forgettable with a jaw-dropping final ten minutes

On the surface, The Thundering Mantis is as forgettable of a Drunken Master rip-off as they come. The stock-standard story centers on a young boy who learns an exotic new fighting style, the titular Thundering Mantis technique, in order to take on some criminal bullies terrorizing his neighborhood. In truth, this plot is a paper-thin convenience meant to string along a series of modest to decent action scenes, but it’s the final battle that truly enshrines The Thundering Mantis in the weird kung fu movie hall of fame.

After the protagonist is captured, his child sidekick is cruelly tortured to death by the gang, resulting in a full-on mental breakdown that causes him to fully shed his sanity. With the newfound strength of his shattered mind, the hero goes on a murderous rampage that mixes the Thundering Mantis style with his new feral rage. Squealing with delight at the pain he’s suffered and frothing at the mouth, he goes on to literally devour his final opponent in a fit of cannibalistic fury, an incredibly out-of-left-field end to a relatively simple tale.

6

Robo Vampire

A creative copy cat that can’t decide on a genre

Unlike in the West, Chinese martial arts movies, especially older ones, take international copyright law as more of a polite suggestion. As a result, some martial arts movies like Robo Vampire have blatantly copied popular blockbusters, adding in their own spices along the way for added weirdness. Robo Vampire is, for the most part, an obvious copy of the Robocop movies, featuring a hero that essentially undergoes the exact same origin story as Alex Murphy in Paul Verhoeven’s classic sci-fi action thriller.

Where things go truly off the rails is with the introduction of Chinese hopping vampires as not-Robocop’s primary villain. Brilliantly, Robo Vampire doesn’t have anywhere near the budget necessary to portray such high-concept fantasy characters, with the protagonist’s main suit being literally made out of tinfoil. From hilariously bad editing to shoddy makeup to gallons of fake blood, Robo Vampire is an ambitious fever dream of a martial arts flick that makes no pretenses of being grounded in reality.

5

Shaolin Youth Posse

Puts some kids through the ringer in a brutal martial arts extravaganza

The novelty of Shaolin Youth Posse is quite a clever premise on paper, being a martial arts movie consisting entirely of child actors as its protagonists. The movie centers on an evil princess who sends an army of evil thugs to break into a Shaolin Temple, hoping to assassinate a young prince taking refuge there. With all of the temple’s adults away on some sort of important mission, it’s up to the kids left behind to fend off wave after wave of attacking fighters.

One would think that a cast of child characters would make Shaolin Youth Posse a relatively family-friendly, lighthearted version of a kung fu movie, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. The film isn’t afraid to show kids getting violently gored by their adult foes in broad daylight, making for a laughably dark experience. Even stranger are the retinue of villains the evil princess sends forth, including ninjas, cross-dressing bandits, vampires, ghosts, and most disturbingly, a feral jungle-dwelling woman that attempts to seduce one of the young monks.

4

Ninja III: The Domination

The most aggressively 80s martial arts flick ever conceptualized

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Some martial arts films are so bizarre that even describing them proves to be an almost Herculean task. Though Ninja III:The Domination is technically the third entry in the Ninja anthology trilogy, no amount of context could ever justify the dizzyingly strange narrative. The movie follows Lucinda Dickey’s Christie, an aerobics expert who is possessed by the ghost of a dying ninja when he hands her his sword. As a result, wielding Chris’ nubile body, the ninja goes on to get revenge on his killers…a group of normal police officers.

Despite being killed by standard cops, the film later claims that only a ninja can beat another ninja, calling for a high-flying exorcism complete with a deadly laser light show. Along the way, the possessed Christie goes on a slaughtering spree that weaponizes both the ninjutsu of her dominating spirit and the dancercise skills latent in her body. The film also finds time to rip off The Exorcist films, complete with rotating heads and the spewing of magical emesis.

3

Matching Escort

A goofy, campy good time with an endearingly weird set up

A great way to make any martial arts movie stand out is to give its hero some kind of unique skill, condition, or disadvantage, a la Drunken Master. Matching Escort presents a unique solution to this, following the exploits of a martial artist woman who has absurdly powerful legs after spending her entire life wearing heavily weighted iron shoes. When her massive family of 73 people is killed in a mass slaughter, the girl trains with a cave-dwelling hermit literally named “Uncle Strange” in order to maximize her natural skills and take her revenge.

Pearl Cheung’s vision as both the writer, director, and star of Matching Escort is second-to-none. During her character’s training arc, she practices profane techniques such as meditating in a pool of toxic slime to become immune to poison or eating an early version of Black Panther‘s heart-shaped herb to further increase her natural abilities. The film’s art direction is like a Halloween parade of spooky cobwebs and charming skeletons, but it’s the odd fight scenes that further accentuate the weirdness of Matching Escort. Villains include ninjas, cyborgs, and worse.

2

The True Game Of Death

A disheartening exploitation of a beloved martial arts icon

It’s rare for martial arts movies to get particularly meta, but The True Game of Death is a distillation of the legendary Bruce Lee in the same way Scary Movie homages the best horror films. Imitating the similarly-named Bruce Lee classic, Game of Death, The True Game of Death starts off making no reservations about how low it’s willing to stoop to exploit Lee’s actual life, beginning with footage of his literal funeral. From there, an unseen narrator explains how a lookalike actor will be carrying out Lee’s legacy.

The True Game of Death features one of the most tasteless Brucesploitation moments ever during a sex scene in which a poison planted on the new Bruce takes effect mid-lovemaking, resulting in an appalling beat that parodies Lee’s actual death. For what it’s worth, the film actually does feature some decent action once the Bruce Lee stand-in puts on the iconic yellow jumpsuit, fighting a decent variety of opponents like sumo wrestlers, a boxer, and an entire biker gang. The True Game of Death is a spectacularly strange method of cashing in on Bruce Lee’s posthumous fame.

1

Lady Iron Monkey

A kung fu-powered genderswap of Tarzan

Lady Iron Monkey proved that kung fu filmmakers of the late 70s had endless bounds of creativity, if nothing else. Directed by early Jackie Chan collaborator Chen Chi Hwa, Lady Iron Monkey tells the story of Ming Ling Shur, a feral child raised by apes who somehow grew up to resemble a half-human half-monkey hybrid herself. Unsurprisingly, her unique childhood gives her a natural talent for monkey-style kung fu, which is taken advantage of by an evil prince when the simian maiden falls in love with him.

Lady Iron Monkey has a unique sense of absurdist humor that’s hard to find in other martial arts movies. Ming Ling Shur leans to use her tail like a propeller to fly through the air, her male object of affection constantly loses his shirt as a running gag, and at one point, the action is intercut with stock footage of chimpanzees flipping around. Other martial arts movies may be weird, but they aren’t “genderswapped Tarzan ugly duckling forbidden romance interspersed with kung fu action” weird.

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