#sun chien

[haveyouseenthismovie-poll]

Have you seen The Five Venoms (1978)?

Yes

No

Haven’t even heard of this movie

Voting ended onApr 12

[kungfuwushuworld]

Sun Chien and Chiang Sheng in Crippled Avengers (1978)

[silveremulsion]

The Five Venoms (1978)

[venomsreviews]

Who's your favorite Venom?

Five Deadly Venoms (1978)

[venomous-five]

Sun Chien in What Price Honesty? (1981)

[jghassen]

ceux qui veux lui donner un bisou met j'aime 🥰

[storms-of-lastweek]

Happy birthday Sun Chien!

A little tribute. January 26

Honestly I think my favorite part was painting the dramatic eyebrows <3

[venom-mob-network]

Was Sun Jian really on the plum blossom poles?

Yes, he was!

Sun Chien is, as stated before, a taekwondo master. Obviously, this mastery of skill translates into a mastery of one's balance and feet placement -- both things that are exemplified on the plum blossom poles! In the clips where you can see him running across the poles and performing martial arts atop them, he really is doing that stuntwork.

Sun Chien can be seen on the plum blossom poles in both Shaolin Rescuers (1979) and Ten Tigers of Kwangtung (1979), but right now I'll just be using examples from Shaolin Rescuers.

You can see here very clearly that those are his feet actually making contact with those poles. And since this was Chinese cinema in the 70s, their special effects weren't yet advanced enough to fake these visuals. However, just because Sun Chien was capable of these stunts, that's not to say that all of his coworkers were. There are a few times in these movies where his character and another have a fight atop the poles, and with smart editing and quick cuts, and very deliberately not showing their feet, they shot the fights on the ground but made it look like they were both still on the poles.

Ku Kuan-Chung is a magnificent actor, but I don't think he would have been able to do fight choreography while atop the plum blossom poles. On the other hand, I do think Sun Chien could. And in fact, he does! It really depends on the martial arts capabilities of his partner. Where Ku Kuan-Chung was unable to film atop the poles with him, Lau Fong-Sai was able.

Now, the choreography here isn't that complicated, and Sun Chien is the only one who's actually moving around on the poles. But the fact that their feet are visible in this shot implies that Lau Fong-Sai had the ability to keep his balance while fighting, and Ku Kuan-Chung couldn't.

Anyway, this is a long winded post to say and to show that Sun Chien really was doing his stunt work on the plum blossom poles.