Return to the 36th Chamber

Return to the 36th Chamber (少林搭棚大師, 1980) is a Hong Kong kung fu comedy you can watch online on iFILM. Director Lau Kar-leung reunites with Gordon Liu for a sequel that leans harder into farce than its predecessor, while still delivering the genuine martial-arts craft the Shaw Brothers films were built on.

A factory boss slashes workers' wages by twenty percent and backs the cut with Manchu enforcers. The workers scrape together enough money to hire a small-time con man to impersonate a Shaolin monk and frighten the boss into backing down. The act falls apart immediately. Humiliated and feeling responsible, the con man sets off for Shaolin for real — spending months on scaffolding duty before the monks will even acknowledge him, slowly building the skills he faked.

Lau uses the training sequences as the best jokes in the film, then earns the payoff completely straight. Gordon Liu makes both halves of the character — the bumbling fraud and the emerging fighter — feel like the same person. Stream Return to the 36th Chamber online on iFILM.