Movies: Tsao Chien

Ku Shen Chai, an artist in his early 30s, still lives with his mother, but he is suddenly shaken by the arrival of Yang Hui-ching, a mysterious princess on the run. Yang brings Ku into her circle of protectors, including a nameless monk whose spiritu...

During the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, a Chinese woman trains in the covert arts. When she arrives in Hong Kong, she learns that her brother works on behalf the Japanese cause. She then pulls together a team of women warriors to stop her brother...

China, year 1457. The Minister of Defense is executed, and his children are sentenced to exile by order of the tyrannical Tsao. Fearful of future revenge from the young people, Tsao sends cruel soldiers to murder them, but a brave group of swordsmen ...

Directed by some of most well known Chinese-language directors of the time, the portmanteau film Four Moods was an attempt to alleviate Li Han-hsiang’s financial troubles during the late 1960s. Arguably one of his best works, King Hu’s short Anger is...

Leaving the poverty of his life in Shantung to seek fortune in Shanghai, The Boxer is instead drawn into a world of corruption, gang warfare and evil... Where his only protection is his famed fighting technique....

As China and Russia's governments are talking peace, traitorous agents on both sides seek war. Enter John Liu as a special agent sent to identify who the Russian traitor is, and who his contact is within the walls of the Forbidden City....

Hsi Shih: The Beauty of Beauties was one of the most ambitious films made in the Taiwan film industry in the 1960s. After leaving The Shaw Brothers studio in Hong Kong and moving to Taiwan, filmmaker Li Han-hsiang mounted this historical epic. Told t...

Despite the national resistance, the Manchurians have taken over China, but the Ching Emperor fears that the Shaolin Temple disciples would overthrow the dynasty. So he disguises himself as a disciple, in order to become a kung fu master and control ...

A master swordsman is on a twenty year quest to revenge the death of his parents....

A Chinese doctor's assistant fights the morphine-dealing criminals who run a Japanese nightclub....

Kao Han (Kenny Bee) and Pan-yun (Xiu-ling Lu) meet for the first time as strangers in a pet shop. It is destiny that they meet a second time and Kao Han takes a chance in this second meeting to pursue Pan-yun. Pan-yun is reluctant to get involved wit...

Complicated mix of Chinese history and myth, where old Shaolin friends find themselves on different sides, one a Ching general, and the other faithful to Ming....

Jointly and respectively directed by King Hu, Lee Hsing, and Pai Ching-Jui, three major Taiwan directors of the 1970s, this film consist of three shorts with the same cast of two actors and one actress, who through reincarnation meet in three differe...

The story follows a young man as he changes from an intelligently aware youth, to a teenager with much less confidence than he once had, and finally, to a stable adult....

Set against the backdrop of Thai International Boxing, what starts out as a happy love story between Wong, a champion boxer, and his beloved, develops into a violent and explosive saga of blood and guts. 'The Dark Alley' lights up in a furor of incre...

The greatest martial arts spectacular of all time!...

A village under the thumb of a band of thugs recruits a hero to help fight them off....

During the time of the Sung dynasty (roughly, around the 12th century), rebels in North China are fighting the Tartar invaders. A lady known as the Iron Mistress made a kind of Robin Hood career, from simply leading a bunch of thieves to become a loc...

A young man joins a kung-fu academy but fails to fit in. He soon runs off with the master's daughter and becomes a salt smuggler. He ends up joining with the school's top fighter - his former rival - against a local mob leader....

In the waning days of the Ming dynasty, Japanese marauders raid villages on the Chinese coast. A wandering swordsman single-handedly dispatches a group of the foreign thugs, and agrees to help defend the town. He assembles a core team of highly skil...