7. Films: “Shao Lin san hih liu fang” & “Shao Lin yu Wu Dang”

I’d like to claim there was a great significance to these films. I’d like to claim that seeing them changed my life. I’d like to claim they’re at least famous or respected among more than a tiny percentage of the world’s cinema fans. As it is, you’ll have to settle for the fact that they’re classic kung fu films and probably the basis of the Wu Tang Clan as we know them.

Both films are not only inspirational insights into the philosophy which drove the Shaolin temples and spawned the Wu Tang Clan (an aspect which I’d love to go into but I feel I wouldn’t do justice – to understand how it all fits together watch the films and then listen to the first Wu Tang album), but the source of a massive number of the samples which give the Wu-affiliated tracks that inimitable sense of kung fu-ness.

“There are only 35 chambers. There is no 36th.”
“I know that, but I want to create a new chamber.”