Martial arts movies don’t come more iconic than this kung fu masterpiece from director Lau Kar-leung. With an acute focus on the disciplines of combat, it’s the ultimate training film, as Gordon Liu’s lithe apprentice eschews the path of vengeance for one of grace and spiritual self-determination.

The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter may have arrived at the midpoint of Lau Kar-leung’s career, but it plays like a late-period reckoning with a genre he helped create. Possessing some of the action maestro’s finest set pieces, and steeped in spiritual exhaustion, this is kung fu’s answer to The Searchers.

Kung fu is pitted against Japanese fighting styles in this sparkling culture-clash romcom. Talked into a marriage of convenience, Gordon Liu meets his match in Yuka Mizuno’s feisty bride, while Lau Kar-leung shows why he’s the king of action staging, with some of the most dynamic battles on his CV.

The Venom Mob—five masked ruffians with singular fighting styles— would appear in dozens of films at Shaw Brothers, but Five Deadly Venoms is where they first made their mark. A Tarantino favorite endlessly sampled by the Wu Tang Clan, Chang Cheh’s kung fu murder mystery is a ferocious cult classic.

Gordon Liu would don the white hair of wizened master Pai Mei in Tarantino’s Kill Bill vol. 2, but here he’s the callow apprentice studying a female fighting style to defeat the iconic villain. Directed by King Boxer’s leading man Lo Lieh, Clan of the White Lotus is a quintessential kung fu classic.