---
title: "The 36th Chamber of Shaolin"
year: 1978
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-36th-chamber-of-shaolin"
fi1m_id: "the-36th-chamber-of-shaolin"
imdb_id: "tt0078243"
tmdb_id: 11841
wikidata_id: "Q572563"
fi1m_score: 83
critics_score: 72
critics_reviews: 4
published: "2026-09-26T00:34:31.999741+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-26T00:34:52.408088+00:00"
region: "NO"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978)

Directed by Lau Kar-leung · 1h 56m · Action, Adventure

## Identity

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/the-36th-chamber-of-shaolin
- **Type:** Film
- **Fi1m ID:** the-36th-chamber-of-shaolin
- **IMDb ID:** tt0078243
- **TMDB ID:** 11841
- **Wikidata ID:** Q572563
- **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078243/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/11841, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q572563

**Fi1m score: 83** · Critics 72 (early) from 4 reviews

*In a sentence:* An hour of a shaven man failing tests in a temple, and we would gladly have sat through another

> Lau Kar-leung’s Shaw Brothers film is a plain revenge story wrapped round an hour of training that nothing else in the genre has matched. Gordon Liu carries it with a patience that is its own kind of charisma; the villains barely register, and it does not matter.

## Synopsis

Canton. General Tien Ta (Lo Lieh) has put down a rebellion and now rules the city by force, with Lord Tang San-yao (Wilson Tong Wai-Shing) and Lord Cheng (John Cheung Ng-Long) doing his enforcing. Liu Yu-de (Gordon Liu) is a student at a school run by Teacher Ho (Frankie Wei Hung), and he and his classmate Lin Zhen (Hon Kwok-Choi) discover that their teacher is quietly working against the general. Tien Ta’s men find out. The school and Liu’s family pay for it, and Liu, wounded and alone, flees the city with one idea left: to reach the Shaolin temple in the mountains, where kung fu is taught to monks and never to outsiders, and to learn it. There he is given a new name, San Ta, and set to the first of thirty-six chambers.

## Review

*The 36th Chamber of Shaolin* is the film of someone who cares more about how a fighter is made than about what he does afterwards. Ni Kuang’s screenplay gives Liu Yu-de a reason to climb the mountain and, much later, a reason to come down again. Everything in between is lessons. It is the plainest story imaginable, and it contains an hour of training that nothing else in the genre has matched.

The Canton section is Shaw Brothers stock. General Tien Ta (Lo Lieh) has put down a rebellion; his officers Lord Tang San-yao (Wilson Tong Wai-Shing) and Lord Cheng (John Cheung Ng-Long) go about the town in matching menace and are hard to tell apart once they take their hats off. Teacher Ho (Frankie Wei Hung) runs a school and a quiet resistance from the same room, with Liu Yu-de (Gordon Liu) among his students. It is shot fast, scored loud and acted broad, and it does its job, which is to give a young man a grievance and get him out of town in under half an hour.

Then the temple, and the film changes gear. Liu is taken in, shaved and renamed San Ta, and the teaching, when it starts, is not fighting. The chambers are tests, some of the body and some of the mind, and each asks him to do one ordinary thing, walk, carry, strike, hold still, until he can do it without thinking about it. We winced at the cuts and bruises he collects on the way, and by the third chamber we were checking our own limbs, because Lau shows the damage each time and does not hurry past it.

Arthur Wong Ngok-Tai frames all this wide, with Liu’s whole body in the picture from feet to shaved crown, so there is no doubt who is doing the work. Chiang Hsing-Lung and Lee Yim-Hoi hold the shots long enough to include the failure as well as the success: the slip, the fall, the walk back to the start. The sets are plainly sets, with painted skies and a courtyard swept for the camera, and it does not matter, because the film’s realism is in the sweat. Gordon Liu plays the learning honestly. He is funny when he fails and slightly smug when he does not, and he lets his face go slack with effort in a way handsome leading men are usually spared.

The things that do not work are the things around the training. Frankie Chan’s music announces every mood a beat before it arrives and repeats its cues until they stop meaning anything. The villains are cardboard, and Lo Lieh is given a moustache and a glare and nothing else to do. The two most interesting people on the mountain are the Abbot (Woo Wang-Daat), who watches Liu’s progress with something between pride and worry, and the Justice Officer (Lee Hoi-Sang), whose duel with Liu on the training ground is the best fight in the film, and it is not really a fight but an argument conducted with poles. What Liu takes back down the mountain we will not describe, except to say that the last stretch returns to Canton and the plot, and the film gets smaller as it goes.

Shaw Brothers turned out these films by the dozen and most of them are busy where this one is patient. It spends an hour on a man learning, without a single cut to the world outside the temple walls, and never seems to worry that we will get bored. The revenge is the price of admission and Lau pays it without much interest.

It carries an 18 certificate, which seems stern for a film whose violence is mostly a young man being taught to stand up properly. It runs 116 minutes and the middle hour survives a small screen without loss. Watch it for that hour, and be patient with the half hour before it; the film is asking you to be, and it earns the request.

*Fi1m score 83, published 26 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

With only 4 reviews in so far, the lean is warm but not settled. Two critics call the film a classic of the genre, and everyone who gives a verdict points to the same thing: the long training sequence in the Shaolin chambers, with its varied physical and mental tests, which Eye for Film pairs with praise for Gordon Liu’s performance. The reservations sit around that sequence rather than inside it. Radio Times finds the revenge plot formulaic, and Time Out’s partial notice describes the opening as standard Shaw Brothers melodrama. The training is what the reviews remember; the story around it is where they part.

## Straight answers

**Is The 36th Chamber of Shaolin worth watching?**

*The 36th Chamber of Shaolin* is worth watching for anyone with patience for an hour of a man learning rather than fighting, and we scored it 83. The Canton revenge plot around it is stock Shaw Brothers, with cardboard villains and a score that repeats itself, but the training section in the temple is unmatched in the genre.

**How long is The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, and what is it rated?**

*The 36th Chamber of Shaolin* runs 1h 56m. It is an action and adventure film.

**Where can I watch The 36th Chamber of Shaolin in Norway?**

*The 36th Chamber of Shaolin* is streaming on Amazon Prime Video in Norway, and it is also available to rent from Apple TV from kr 39.00. Availability is checked daily; the links above go straight to each service.

**How violent or frightening is The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, and is it suitable for children?**

*The 36th Chamber of Shaolin* carries an 18 certificate in the UK and an R in the US, which we find stern for what is on screen. Most of its violence is cuts and bruises collected in training, shown plainly and not hurried past, with the fighting confined to the beginning and end. It is not for young children, but it is far from frightening.

**How does The 36th Chamber of Shaolin compare to Kill Bill: Vol. 2?**

*The 36th Chamber of Shaolin* is the plainer and more patient of the two, and Kill Bill: Vol. 2 borrows its training chamber outright and casts Gordon Liu as the master. The Shaw Brothers film is the better made and the tighter; Tarantino's is talkier, twenty minutes too long, and rewards those who come for David Carradine's Bill rather than for the kung fu.

**What should I watch after The 36th Chamber of Shaolin?**

After *The 36th Chamber of Shaolin*, try [*Kill Bill: Vol. 2*](https://film.one/film/kill-bill-vol-2) (2004, Fi1m 77): Tarantino borrows the training chamber wholesale and casts Gordon Liu as the master. Then [*Whiplash*](https://film.one/film/whiplash) (2014, Fi1m 84): The same idea in a jazz conservatory: a cruel teacher, repetition, blood on the equipment.

### Reviews we read (4)

- **The AV Club**, Noel Murray (80/100, inferred): Murray considers The 36th Chamber of Shaolin a classic that holds up well. He singles out its nearly hourlong training sequence as legendary action cinema. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/king-boxer-the-36th-chamber-of-shaolin-1798202768)
- **Time Out**, TR (64/100, inferred): The accessible description characterizes the opening as standard Shaw Brothers melodrama. It singles out the early Canton-subjugation vignettes, but the page provides no fuller verdict. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-36th-chamber-of-shaolin)
- **Radio Times**, Jamie Healy (3/5): The critic says the film is a formulaic revenge story elevated by its inventive training sequences. They praise the varied physical and mental tests in the Shaolin chambers. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-5rbp0b/the-36th-chamber-of-shaolin/)
- **Eye for Film**, Daniel Hooper (90/100, inferred): Hooper calls the film a classic of the genre and recommends it to kung fu fans. He praises Gordon Liu’s engaging performance and the film’s focused, inventive training sequences. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/the-36th-chamber-of-shaolin-film-review-by-daniel-hooper)

## Details

- **Director:** Lau Kar-leung
- **Director:** Lau Kar-leung
- **Screenplay:** Ni Kuang
- **Cinematography:** Arthur Wong Ngok-Tai
- **Editor:** Chiang Hsing-Lung, Lee Yim-Hoi
- **Music:** Frankie Chan
- **Costume design:** Liu Chi-Yu
- **Producer:** Run Run Shaw
- **Cast:** Gordon Liu as Liu Yu-de / Monk San Ta; Lo Lieh as General Tien Ta; John Cheung Ng-Long as Lord Cheng; Wilson Tong Wai-Shing as Lord Tang San-yao; Wa Lun as Liu Yu-de's Classmate; Hon Kwok-Choi as Lin Zhen; Lau Kar-Wing as General Yin; Frankie Wei Hung as Teacher Ho
- **Runtime:** 1h 56m
- **First release (Hong Kong):** 2 February 1978
- **Genres:** Action, Adventure

## Where to watch in Norway

- Amazon Prime Video: streaming
- Apple TV: rent kr 39.00, hd
- Apple TV: buy kr 79.00, sd

*Checked 2026-09-26.*

Also available in: AT, AU, BE, BG, CA, CZ, DK, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, HU, ID, IE, IL, IN, IS, IT, JP, KR, LT, MY, NO, NZ, PH, PL, PT, SE, SG, TH, US, VN, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## If you liked this

- *The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter* (1984): Lau Kar-leung and Gordon Liu again, angrier this time, with poles doing the talking
- *Kill Bill: Vol. 2* (2004), Fi1m 77: Tarantino borrows the training chamber wholesale and casts Gordon Liu as the master — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/kill-bill-vol-2.md)
- *Come Drink with Me* (1966): King Hu’s earlier Shaw film, elegant where this one sweats, with a female lead
- *Whiplash* (2014), Fi1m 84: The same idea in a jazz conservatory: a cruel teacher, repetition, blood on the equipment — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/whiplash.md)
- *Ong-Bak* (2003): Thailand’s answer, a village boy’s Muay Thai shown in long takes without wires or cuts

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/the-36th-chamber-of-shaolin