Synopsis
The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter (1984) is a Shaw Brothers martial-arts classic you can watch online on iFILM. The Yang generals are betrayed in battle, and only two of the family's men crawl away alive.
After the slaughter the fifth son loses his mind; the sixth (Gordon Liu) hides out as a monk in a Buddhist temple. Trouble is, the order swears off violence while his heart wants nothing but the traitor's head. So he reworks the family spear style for a wooden pole, filing lethal thrusts down into tooth-knocking, disarming blows — built to break a wolf, not kill a man. The climactic brawl in a hall of coffins ranks among the fiercest pole duels the genre ever staged.
Director Lau Kar-leung, a giant of Hong Kong fight choreography, made the film under a cloud: leading man Alexander Fu Sheng died in a car crash mid-production, forcing a hasty rewrite. What survives is brutal, almost operatic kung fu that fans rank with the very best of Shaw Brothers. Stream The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter online on iFILM.
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