Netflix pick for 1/4/16 – ‘The Five Venoms’

“The Five Venoms,” also know as “Five Deadly Venoms” is a cult classic martial arts film from 1978, produced by the legendary Shaw Brothers Studio.

As a matter of fact, if you’ve seen any mainstream martial arts movies in the past decade or more, you would have noticed specific influences in this movies from this 1978 classic. The group of assassins in “Kill Bill“ and the Furious Five in “Kung Fu Panda“ are direct descendants of the five deadly venoms featured in “The Five Venoms.”

Who are the venoms? They are kung fu students trained in very specific and deadly kung fu styles, each one named for a different animal like toad or scorpion, and when this story starts, these five students are already out in the world, using their skills for either good or evil. The master who taught them all sends his final pupil, who has yet to complete his training, to uncover the identities of these men and recruit the good ones to help fight the bad. A basic set up loaded with mystery, and it works pretty great as the deadly venoms are revealed in turn over the course of the movie, with lots of treachery and backstabbing along the way. It is as if Alfred Hitchcock wanted to make a martial arts movie, which would have been dope. But since he never did, this is the closest we’ll ever come.

This is a fun movie, with excellent fight scenes and a lot of fun ideas thrown in, ideas which have since made their way into many subsequent kung fu and action movies. See “The Five Venoms” on Netflix for yourself to understand why it is so revered and copied.

The poison clan rocks the world!