Wu-Tang’s RZA Breaks Down 10 Kung Fu Films He’s Sampled

What's up, Vanity Fair?

You got the RZA right here from the almighty Wu-Tang Clan.

And today we're gonna be talking about

Kung fu films that either

we sampled for our production,

or that inspired our lyrics.

So, let's have some fun, yo.

[dramatic music]

Hey yo, this movie,

the Master of the Flying Guillotine, y'all.

The Flying Guillotine became what I used

as my choice of lyrical weapon.

So when you hear this song,

Wu-Tang Clan Ain't Nuthin' ta [bleep] Wit.

♪ Wu-Tang Clan ain't nuthin' ta wit ♪

♪ Wu-Tang Clan ain't nuthin' ta wit ♪

I start off,

♪ And I be tossin', enforcin' ♪

♪ My style is awesome ♪

♪ Causin' more family feuds than Richard Dawson ♪

♪ And the survey said ♪

♪ You're dead ♪

The Fatal Flying Guillotine chops off your head.

So basically, Wu-Tang, our tongue is like a sword.

But the guillotine can beat the sword, yo.

And that's why I chose that to be my weapon.

Well, the cool thing about this part here

the flying guillotine hasn't come in yet, right?

And we have one of the Lau brothers here

with a three sectional staff

fighting against the pole fighter.

The Lau Clan actually becomes the best

directing team in martial arts.

And the funny thing about this movie

is that the guy who just got killed,

Philip Kwok, later goes on to be a big

Shaw Brother movie star,

playing the lizard as one of the venoms.

And we'll get to that later.

The Executioners from Shaolin.

One of my favorite films of all time.

And it follows the story of Hung Hsi Kuan,

who is the Hung Gar founder,

fighting the Priest, Pai Mei,

also known as the White Lotus.

My tiger Kung fu is better than yours.

If you listen to the Wu-Tang Clan song,

Wu-Tang Clan Ain't Nuthin' to Wit,

it starts off with [imitates piano music].

[RZA and Pai Mei] Tiger style.

[Pai Mei] Tiger style.

Well that's from this movie.

Tiger style. [man grunts]

This film really inspired us.

And when you watch movies like Kill Bill,

which I later went on to score,

you'll see this character, Priest Pai Mei pops up.

[woman grunts] [suspenseful music]

[man speaks in foreign language]

Wow, this scene here

is one of the pinnacle scenes of the film.

Priest Pai Mei is no joke,

and he's mastered the technique

of moving his weak spot at will.

Now, Hung Gar is a real form of martial arts,

the animal fist.

In fact, the five-pattern animal fist

is used in so many Kung fu movies,

whether it's from Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan,

and even in Tony Jaa films.

This technique has been incorporated.

It's really a foundation of Shaolin style.

Uh-oh, look at this.

Got him in the heart and the nuts.

Uh-oh, he's going for the nuts, he's going for the nuts.

Nope, no nuts, kid.

He moved the nuts.

I don't know how he moved the nuts.

He moved the nuts.

Can you find it?

Hai, ha, ha! The 36th Chamber of Shaolin.

This is one of my favorite films of all time.

I've seen it over 200 times and more to go.

This film, which was released in America

as Master Killer, not only gives

the name of one of our Wu-Tang Clan members.

♪ We have an APB on an MC Killa ♪

♪ Looks like the work of a master ♪

But it also gives us the partial title

to our first album, Enter the Wu-Tang [36 Chambers],

which we actually took enter from Enter the Dragon,

which another favorite movie of mine.

Bruce Lee, we consider him to be a minor prophet.

This film is directed by Liu Chia-Liang,

like I said one of the martial art legends.

But it also stars one of the greatest martial art

actors since Bruce Lee, Gordon Liu.

Now, Gordon Liu plays the hero here, the Master Killer.

And the scene that inspired me the most

after watching all the action was the scene

where he says he wants to go to the highest level

and he walks in and the monk is like,

without wisdom, there is no gain.

And that hit me and I heard that and it sent me

to start researching Buddhism

and finding Kung fu books and things.

But the beautiful thing is years later, once again,

the blessing of the universe, I'm doing a film,

Man with the Iron Fists, and Gordon Liu

plays the Abbot in my movie.

[Gordon speaks foreign language]

For me, there's been various samples for this movie.

You're worthy of a general. [rhythmic music]

If you want to fight, fight with me.

We have only 35 chambers, there is no 36.

So this is a scene here where he first enters

the first chamber, which is simply called,

crossing the water.

What I love about the character is that

while the other monks are sleeping, he trains by himself.

He does it with a hand of a leg and is holding his own leg

doing the killer and play dance.

And that movie there, trust me,

it became part of break-dancing.

♪ I wanna go to work on ya fellows too ♪

♪ Make you wanna do the things we do ♪

Five Deadly Venoms, directed by Chang Cheh.

This film right here is actually the film

that made me become a Kung fu fanatic.

You could hear the sample in a song we got

called, Da Mystery of Chessboxin',

where it starts off.

[Man] Toad style is a mentally strong

and immune to nearly any weapon.

When it's properly used, it's almost invincible.

Watching this film, the toad character

is the one we all root for.

He's the one that you wish you were,

the one with the invincible iron skin.

Now here's the snake.

[Man] Now number two, practice the snake style.

It was known as the snake's dirt.

This technique right here was crazy

because most snake styles is used like this,

with the Jackie Chan.

But here he used the cobra, the mouth and the tail,

and having them both act together.

That really only appeared in maybe two movies ever,

to see the snake style done like this.

I think it was this one and another film

called, The Deadly Challenger.

Look at that, wow.

And I seen that as a kid.

You gotta imagine, I'm a 10-year-old kid

watching this, y'all.

And I seen a guy just lay on a bed of nails.

It was hard laying on my box spring, you know, man?

So anyway, most of the films that we really enjoyed

was Shaw Brother films.

Shaw Brothers had big budgets.

It was like a studio lot and all their films

had a studio quality production.

All of a sudden, here comes this independent,

low-budget film called, The Mystery of Chess Boxing.

[dramatic music]

Now being a chess guy, a chess fanatic,

I was like, I gotta see this movie.

And it became my favorite.

There's a character in this film,

whose name is Ghost Faced Killer.

[man laughs]

Ghost Faced Killer!

And he's one of the most ruthless villains

to ever test the screen.

And so when it came to Wu-Tang,

I was like who is that guy everybody is gonna be scared of,

based on their lyrical content.

And that name became Ghostface Killah's name.

And he put on a mask like the Five Deadly Venoms.

And he came in and when you watch him in

Da Mystery of Chessboxin', hip hop was never the same.

♪ Speakin' of the devil psych, ♪

♪ No it's the God, get the right ♪

♪ Mega trife, and yo, I killed you in a past life ♪

And you'll find out, on Ghostface album you will hear

some of the quotes from this movie.

The sky is high, the cloud is low.

But my water technique is hard to beat.

But the Earth can absorb water.

Ha, hai!

The Ten Tigers of Kwangtung.

Here this film, there's a conflict between these young men.

They never settle the beef.

These young guys can't beat each other,

but then the old G comes in at the end,

and kills the villain in three seconds.

Me and Method used to always say

that's how our lyrics gotta be.

As we get older, we gotta be able to get on the mic

and in four bars rip a mother's ass, excuse my language.

Wu-Tang martial expert.

There's not many who can match up with him.

Now this film has a great sample in it.

En garde, I'll let you try my Wu-Tang style.

That's the sample right there.

And the Wu-Tnag guy pulls out a sword, right?

And he does the Wu-Tang style, right, with his sword.

But the crazy thing is, when he gets defeated,

he then pulls out a weapon that I only seen in one movie,

this movie, and you will never see it

again in no other Kung fu movie.

And it's a gold statue.

I don't know where the production designer thought of this,

I don't know if this weapon ever exists.

If somebody could make me one, I would appreciate it.

It's the coolest thing, Ten Tigers of Kwangtung.

[eerie music]

So Shogun Assassin, which is the intro

to GZA's album, Liquid Swords.

[Child] When I was little, my father was famous.

He was the greatest samurai in the empire.

Most of our influence came from Kung fu movies.

Sometime there's a lot of swinging, a lot of blocking.

But in Japanese samurai movies, it's one-stroke kills.

Bing, stroke, bing, stroke.

When it came time to incorporate it,

a film into the Wu-Tang world,

I chose this film to represent the GZA.

His lyrics are straight to the point.

Your

technique

is

magnificent.

Don't be afraid, bad dreams are only dreams.

Choose the sword and you will join me.

Choose the ball and you join your mother.

So just when the Kung fu genre was slowing down

and a lot of films, Shaw Brothers wasn't making as many,

this group from Taiwan came out with Shaolin vs. the Lama,

which is a trilogy actually.

In this film, you see a display of shadow boxing.

[RZA and Man In Movie] Allow me to demonstrate the skill

of Shaolin, the special technique of shadow boxing.

[Man] Allow me to demonstrate the skill of Shaolin,

the special technique of shadow boxing.

I'll never forget being in the movie theater

when the shadow boxing technique came out,

man, the whole audience just start screaming.

[men grunting]

Wow.

So after Mystery of Chess Boxing stayed

reigning champion as my favorite movie,

Shaolin vs. Wu Tang comes out.

And this changes my whole martial art ideology.

It became my favorite film, still holds the title,

tied with Eight Diagram Pole Fighter.

The way they use their sword in this movie

and the way they use the Qigong fist,

is really unseen before now.

This film is actually directed

by the actor, Gordon Liu, which is crazy.

I mean, all the years he played as an actor

and his brother directed him,

he decides to direct his own film.

It's a lot of parables in this film.

A game of chess is like a sword fight.

You must think first, hai, before you move.

That's the truth, y'all.

♪ Killer bass ♪

If what you say is true,

the Shaolin and the Wu Tang could be dangerous.

Wu-Tang Clan name is pulled from Shaolin vs. Wu Tang

because of the best sword technique that they showed.

And I reasoned that our tongue is like a sword.

If you think you're the best lyricist,

you must be using the Wu Tang sword.

And so we are the Wu-Tang Clan,

we felt we were the best lyricists in hip hop.

But the film that also helps cement our brotherhood,

is The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter.

Because here's a movie about brothers

who sacrifice themselves for their country,

for their family, and relentlessly,

against all odds, fought to right the name of their family.

We would cut class and hang out at my house and watch.

This film actually made some of us well up.

You know what I mean?

This scene here is the final scene,

where he's fighting against the general,

who actually framed his family.

Where's my sister?

I'm standing on her.

Eight Diagram Pole Fighter is the name of Wu-Tang's,

which was supposed to be our final album.

The 8 Diagrams.

In the old days, sampling,

any signal to a sampler was a headache.

To get it from a VCR was the worst,

because you had to have about three plugs.

Because samplers only took quarter inch plugs.

So you actually would have to go from your VCR,

into your mixer, then out of your mixer headphone jack

into your sampler, and then you'll get

a very distorted signal.

And then if you missed it, you gotta rewind it, right,

and try to find it, because the sampler

only sampled x amount of seconds.

So it was a challenging way to produce,

you know what I mean?

So, yo, this been the RZA.

Vanity Fair, I wanna thank you guys for inviting me.

And wa-psh, Wu-Tang forever.

Bong bong.