Every­one remem­bers their first kung-fu movie — or every­one remem­bers their first wave of kung-fu movies, any­way. For some, they came late at night on the less-explored fre­quen­cies of the tele­vi­sion broad­cast­ing spec­trum; for oth­ers, they came on sparse­ly attend­ed dou­ble- and triple-bills at the local dis­count the­ater. They looked fad­ed and mud­dy, but some­how still vivid; they felt cheap­ly pro­duced, yet full of life and ener­gy; and as for how they sound­ed, time has turned their both hol­low and the­atri­cal Eng­lish-lan­guage dub­bing into an art form with con­nois­seurs of its own. They came from far­away lands, which ren­dered them exot­ic, but we expe­ri­enced them almost as dreams, prod­ucts of anoth­er real­i­ty alto­geth­er. And some of them you can expe­ri­ence again as pub­lic domain films.

We still call them “kung fu movies” even though, hav­ing grown old­er and wis­er — or at least more cul­tur­al­ly aware — we now know their heroes did­n’t always defeat their ene­mies with the Chi­nese mar­tial arts cov­ered by that umbrel­la term. But the label applies well enough to 1977’s Leg­end of Shaolin, the Hong Kong-made epic at the top of the post set in the 13th-cen­tu­ry Yuan Dynasty and deal­ing with that most kung-fu of all themes, revenge. But such his­tor­i­cal “kung fu” pic­tures could also come from coun­tries like Japan, an exam­ple of which you can thrill to just above: 1983’s Leg­end of the Eight Samu­rai fea­tures Son­ny Chi­ba, liv­ing embod­i­ment of the 1970s mar­tial-arts film, under the direc­tion of the pro­lif­ic and respect­ed provo­ca­teur Kin­ji Fukasaku, best known today as the mak­er of the con­tro­ver­sial Bat­tle Royale.

Next in this pub­lic-domain mar­tial-arts marathon, we have anoth­er Hong Kong movie, Guy with the Secret Kung Fu from 1981, whose title alone strikes me as rec­om­men­da­tion enough. And for our final selec­tion, we move to a more con­tem­po­rary set­ting with 1987’s Four Rob­bers, where­in the tit­u­lar quartet—pursued by both the police and a malev­o­lent crime syn­di­cate that at first wants to recruit them and lat­er wants revenge against them—have to flee from Hong Kong to Thai­land with­out gam­bling away the fruits of their labor or com­pro­mis­ing their prin­ci­ples. This movie, and many oth­ers of its kind, give the lie to the notion that there’s no hon­or among thieves. Most all of the wan­der­ers, samu­rai, rebels, aris­to­crats, cops, and rob­bers you see in them have one kind of hon­or or anoth­er — but when they come into con­flict, it tends to take some old-fash­ioned kung-fu fight­ing to set­tle things. You can find these films added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More, which includes more 23 Free Kung Fu and Mar­tial Arts Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

700 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

Rad­i­cal French Phi­los­o­phy Meets Kung-Fu Cin­e­ma in Can Dialec­tics Break Bricks? (1973)

The Five Best North Kore­an Movies: Watch Them Free Online

The 5 Best Noir Films in the Pub­lic Domain: From Fritz Lang’s Scar­let Street to Ida Lupino’s The Hitch-Hik­er

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Tony Zhou and his video series Every Frame a Paint­ing returns with a new episode: Van­cou­ver Nev­er Plays Itself.

A bustling sea­port city on the west coast of Cana­da, Van­cou­ver is a big movie pro­duc­tion town. In fact, it’s the third biggest film pro­duc­tion city in North Amer­i­ca, right behind LA and New York. And yet you would­n’t know it. Because Van­cou­ver nev­er plays itself. It always mas­quer­ades in movies as oth­er cities — New York, Seat­tle, San­ta Bar­bara and beyond.

Zhou shows you just how this decep­tion gets pulled off, again and again.

Find more episodes from his series below…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Used Move­ment to Tell His Sto­ries: A Video Essay

Every Frame a Paint­ing Explains the Film­mak­ing Tech­niques of Mar­tin Scors­ese, Jack­ie Chan, and Even Michael Bay

The Art of Mak­ing Intel­li­gent Com­e­dy Movies: 8 Take-Aways from the Films of Edgar Wright

The Evo­lu­tion of Chuck Jones, the Artist Behind Bugs Bun­ny, Daffy Duck & Oth­er Looney Tunes Leg­ends: A Video Essay

Most film-lovers must long for the next Stan­ley Kubrick, a new the­mat­i­cal­ly adven­tur­ous, aes­thet­i­cal­ly rig­or­ous, big bud­get-com­mand­ing, and take-after-take per­fec­tion­is­tic cin­e­mat­ic vision­ary for our time. But some film-lovers believe our time already has its own Stan­ley Kubrick in David Finch­er, direc­tor of such high­ly acclaimed pic­tures as Fight Club, Zodi­ac, The Social Net­work, The Game, and Sev­en — excuse me, Se7en. And just like Kubrick, Finch­er did­n’t start off at that lev­el of the game. No, his career first gath­ered momen­tum with com­mer­cials, a bunch of music videos for the likes of The Motels, Paula Abdul, and Rick Spring­field, and of course, Alien 3 — excuse me, Alien³.

So what exact­ly went wrong with that crit­i­cal­ly sav­aged yet (we now real­ize) auteur-direct­ed chap­ter of the Alien fran­chise? That ques­tion gets addressed in detail ear­ly on in the lat­est mul­ti-part video essay from Cameron Beyl’s Direc­tors Series.

You may remem­ber that we fea­tured the Direc­tors Series’ pre­vi­ous essay in April, but if you don’t, it should­n’t sur­prise you to learn that it exam­ined the Kubrick oeu­vre. Beyl end­ed it with a dec­la­ra­tion of his own mem­ber­ship in the afore­men­tioned Finch­er-Is-Our-Kubrick club, and cinephiles all over the inter­net thrilled to his announce­ment of Finch­er as his next object of analy­sis.

To date, five episodes of The Direc­tors Series: David Finch­er have come out, which deal with Fincher’s career as fol­lows:

1. “Bap­tism By Fire” (Rick Spring­field­’s music videos and The Beat of the Life Drum, assort­ed music videos and com­mer­cials, Alien 3)
2. “Redemp­tion & Tri­umph” (assort­ed com­mer­cials, Se7en)
3. “Cap­tur­ing the Zeit­geist” (The Game, Fight Club, Pan­ic Room)
4. “Into the Dig­i­tal Realm” (var­i­ous com­mer­cials and music videos, Zodi­ac, The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin But­ton)
5. “The Bleed­ing Edge”

Even though the series has­n’t yet reached The Social Net­work, The Girl with the Drag­on Tat­too, and Gone Girl, you won’t come away from the case Beyl has assem­bled so far uncon­vinced of Fincher’s influ­ences, pref­er­ences, and obses­sions: crime, decay, punk, obso­lete tech­nol­o­gy, archi­tec­ture, sur­veil­lance, cor­po­rate and per­son­al wealth, unusu­al illus­tra­tive visu­al effects, col­ors like blue and orange in high con­trast, nihilism, pre­de­ces­sors like Rid­ley and Tony Scott — the list goes on, and will go on as long as Fincher’s career does. It says a great deal about his film­mak­ing skill and style that his work has become so wide­ly known for both its over­whelm­ing­ly “grit­ty, grimy” and over­whelm­ing­ly “cold, clin­i­cal” look and feel. But if any direc­tor can ever arrive at this sort of tow­er­ing, con­tra­dic­to­ry rep­u­ta­tion, Finch­er can, and if any video essays can explain how he did, the Direc­tors Series can.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Film­mak­ing Craft of David Finch­er Demys­ti­fied in Two Video Essays

Dis­cov­er the Life & Work of Stan­ley Kubrick in a Sweep­ing Three-Hour Video Essay

Every Frame a Paint­ing Explains the Film­mak­ing Tech­niques of Mar­tin Scors­ese, Jack­ie Chan, and Even Michael Bay

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.