Martial arts maestro’s 36th Chamber of Shaolin sequels, from comedy gold to chaotic flop

Shaw Brothers backed Lau Kar-leung to make two sequels to The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, one so bad it was the studio’s last martial arts film

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Gordon Liu in a still from Return to the 36th Chamber (1980), directed by Lau Kar-Leung. Photo: Celestial Pictures

Published: 4:15pm, 26 Jan 2025

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, the 1978 film directed by venerated martial arts choreographer Lau Kar-leung for Shaw Brothers, is one of the tentpoles of Hong Kong cinema.

The influential film made a star of Gordon Liu Chia-hui, who played the fighting Shaolin monk San Te, and set the style for many of the martial arts films which followed.

But Lau’s two sequels were very different to the influential original. Here we take a deep dive into the second and third instalments.

Return to the 36th Chamber (1980)

Kung fu comedies were all the rage in the 1980s, so Shaw Brothers decided to capitalise on the success of The 36th Chamber of Shaolin by turning the follow-up into a comedy.

This decision was not as strange as it seemed. Lau may be known for his mission to depict martial arts styles accurately on screen, but he was no stranger to comedy. Although less popular than Jackie Chan’s smash hit Drunken Master, his 1977 directorial debut Spiritual Kung Fu is considered to be the first kung fu comedy.

Because of the humour, Return to the 36th Chamber is a very different kind of film to the original. Gordon Liu returns to the series, not as the monk San Te, but as the jovial, good-hearted Chou Chun-chi, who begins the film as a con man posing as a Buddhist priest.

Chou lives in a community that is centred around a textile dyeing factory, where the workers are exploited by a greedy boss (Johnny Wang Lung-wei). When the boss hires a group of violent Manchu thugs to oversee the workers, Chou poses as a Shaolin monk and fakes some martial arts moves to scare them.