CHAN GETS WOOD

I think it's fare to say that Jackie Chan's golden period was from 1978 to 1989. Made in 1976 Shaolin Wooden Men just misses the mark, but I have to say it's one of the best of Chan's pre-Drunken Master efforts that I've seen so far. An incredibly youthful, almost unrecognizable Jackie Chan stars as a mute pupil within a shaolin school of martail arts who must survive a long corridor of chained up wooden robots in order to graduate. There's also a revenge sub-plot and a crazy kung-fu mercenary locked up behind a waterfall. It's worth watching just for the opening credit sequence involving several 'wooden men' in various fighting poses. With fantastic fighting sequences, unintentional humour and the kind of bizarre, random, b-movie inventiveness that can only be found in 1970's Hong Kong cinema, Shaolin Wooden Men is absolutely essential for anybody who is:

a) a Jackie Chan fanatic

b) a lover of obscure Hong Kong cinema

c) a cult movie aficionado treading the surreal, enlightening path towards midnight movie zen

d) a member of the Wu-Tang Clan

e) somebody looking for weird dialogue to sample for their next mash up

f) a mute student from a shaolin school of martial arts looking for something to empathize with.