The Miracle Fighters

Two elderly Taoist priests are an odd pair, enemies to each other but living in the same place. They take on a young apprentice. The trouble is that the boy is taken for the crown prince who went missing from the palace. The emperor sends a eunuch with magical powers to catch him. What follows is a chase in which sorcery and martial arts are mixed together. Yuen Woo-ping's film is one of the best known examples of the strand that joins fight cinema to Chinese folk magic. The fights here are not only physical; paper dolls, jars and symbols are part of the combat too. The brothers of the Yuen family both perform and do the choreography. Years later Yuen Woo-ping would become known worldwide for staging the fight scenes in The Matrix and Crouching Tiger.