Five Deadly Venoms (1978) on Netflix
A dying master sends his last pupil, Yang Tieh, to find his five former students, each trained in a different animal style of kung fu. He fears their skills now serve evil.
- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb7.0/108,804 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes80%
Trailer
Plot summary
The master of the Poison Clan lies dying. Five former pupils have gone their separate ways, each trained in a lethal animal style of his own: the Centipede, the Snake, the Scorpion, the Lizard and the Toad. Fearing those skills are being used for evil, he sends his last pupil, Yang Tieh, to warn an old comrade, Yun, that the fortune he amassed through the clan is under threat. Yang knows a little of all five styles, and the dying master teaches him the weaknesses of each. Centipede and Snake knew each other as the first two pupils; Lizard and Toad, the fourth and fifth, also knew each other; Scorpion, the third, was unknown to the other four, and Yang cannot yet tell which of the five he can trust.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Five Deadly Venoms (1978)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Five Deadly Venoms inspired Quentin Tarantino's 2003 Kill Bill, whose team of five assassins is called the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, and also the Furious Five, the animal kung fu masters of Kung Fu Panda.
- The Wu-Tang Clan built songs on the film: dialogue is sampled in "Da Mystery of Chessboxin" from Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) and "Intro (Shaolin Finger Jab)" from The W, and in solo tracks by Ol' Dirty Bastard and Masta Killa.
- International audiences collectively nicknamed Chiang Shieng, Lu Feng, Sun Chien, Philip Kwok, Wai Pak and Lo Mang, the actors who played the five fighters, the Venom Mob.
- The film's Snake style was invented for it by action director Leung Ting: the user attacks and defends with the left hand as the "head" and the right as the "tail", unlike the traditional snake style.
