Download Shaolin Wooden Men
Niki Wienberg
As legend goes the Shaolin Temple has a hall known as the LoHan Palace where 36 wooden figures were set up [...] These spring loaded dummies would then swing or slide down in the direction of the startled monk with wooden fists or weapons aimed to do damage.
Should the kung fu man be lucky and skillful enough to reach it, the next phase of the test involved a sloped ramp bordered with twenty-four wooden horses. The only thing to do was reach the bottom of the slope while dodging these two dozen run away steeds.
Jackie has to graduate and defeat a gauntlet of mysterious robotic wooden men who throw every kung fu style at him before he can even face up to his nemesis. Packed with startling action courtesy of Half a Loaf of Kung Fu director Chen Chi-Hwa, this is another early Jackie Chan classic that's not to be missed by those seeking fine martial arts entertainment!
These all revolve around the titular wooden dummies from Shaolin Wooden Men. In their original appearance, they are 36 mannequins moved from beyhond walls using chains, and they are used in the test of the "Shaolin Wooden Men Alley".
Little Mute is an orphan traumatized into silence by the death of his father at the hands of a vicious fighting master. Living at the Shaolin monastery, he befriends a dangerous prisoner who teaches him a secret form of deadly kung fu. Seeing his intense determination, other masters share the wisdom of the Gliding Snake and Drunken Master techniques. In one of the most exciting fight scenes ever filmed, Little Mute must run the gauntlet of the famous 108 wooden men in an extreme test of skill and endurance. But if he becomes a master, will he use his unmatched force for redemption or revenge?
'Shaolin Wooden Men' is a pretty decent 70s kung fu film but also a somewhat irritaging early Jackie Chan film, because of just how untypical it is for him to play a mute shaolin student. Of course most of Jackie's films of the Lo Wei era don't really feel like his personality very much, but this has to be one of the oddest examples as far as using him and his character goes. The role of the Little Mute could have pretty much been played by anyone and it wouldn't have made a big difference as long as they had some similar martial arts skills.
Chan plays Little Mute, a young man training in a Shaolin monastery, who as a child was reduced to becoming a mute after witnessing his father's brutal death. Training to make himself stronger for revenge, Little Mute can only become the most powerful fighter in the martial arts academy by passing the "The Shaolin Pathway of Wooden Men", a dark corridor containing thirty-six wooden mechanical wooden dummies that activates the moment anyone trespasses and will destroy anybody attempting to cross to the end.
Its your rather standard martial arts revenge movie, but the wooden dummies as an obstacle is a fresh, unique concept, one which is popular enough to, decades later, inspire Mokujin from the Tekken franchise.
I suppose that the 1976 martial arts movie titled "Shaolin Wooden Men" (aka Shao Lin mu ren xiang") was a great movie back in the day when it was newly released. But sitting down to watch it for the first time in 2021, I have to say that the movie wasn't all that great.
Of course I sat down to watch the 1976 movie because I am a fan of Jackie Chan and never had the chance to watch "Shaolin Wooden Men" before now in 2021.
Sure, "Shaolin Wooden Men" was watchable, but it was held back by a lack of proper storyline. It was essentially just a movie that consisted of 90% fighting and very little effort put into constructing a wholehearted storyline.
And for a Jackie Chan movie then it wasn't outstanding. Sure, he was new and up and coming back then, but this was not among his best of performances, neither in terms of martial arts, stunts or acting performances.
Some of the scenes in the movie were interesting and nicely executed, don't get me wrong. But the movie was just suffering from an interior storyline which proved to be rather thin and weak.
It should be said that most of the fight scenes throughout the course of "Shaolin Wooden Men" weren't really all that nicely performed. They were just too obviously staged and delivered in a manner that screamed 1-2-3, moves set up to be formed in a specific order. The fight scenes just didn't have that usual natural flow to them that Jackie Chan is known for. The scene with the wooden men, though, was actually quite impressive - stupid and silly, but impressive.
"Shaolin Wooden Men" is a movie for the diehard fans of Jackie Chan. If you sit down to watch it because it is a martial arts movie, then chances are you will be left sorely disappointed.
My rating of writer Hsin Chin and director Chi-Hwa Chen's 1976 movie lands on a mediocre five out of ten stars.
Beyond the art of warfare, there is plenty of ancient wisdom dispensed by the monks. Chan is especially entertaining as the self-deprecating cook whose noodle kneading turns out to be as instructive as the hours the monks spend in martial arts training sessions. The kung fu itself is great fun to watch, from the discipline of balancing on one foot on a wooden pillar, the other in the air, for hours at a time to the confrontations that send fist and feet flying.
Twenty Shaolin monks take to the stage in this extravaganza of martial arts which will give an insight into how the practise of Kung Fu came about. Expect superhuman physical feats of endurance alongside a nice bit of history about the monks and their philosophy. They break marble slabs with their heads, do handstands on finger tips and splinter wooden staves with just their bodies.
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