The Scorpion King

Much more stylishly produced than earlier kung-fu movies, even if the story itself is little more than cartoon melodrama. Yuk Su (Chin) is a schoolboy weakling, an aspiring artist, who beefs up and indeed learns beef noodle kung-fu in one inventive sequence to defend his egalitarian ideals from slave traders and bully boys. He wins an MBE for his troubles. The movie is dominated by its exotic villains, and especially by the Korean Yuan Jeung who made his debut here, sporting a Phil Oakey haircut with pigtail accessory, dressed in purple silk, scuttling along floors and up walls and kicking like Nijinsky in his eye-popping scorpion kung-fu style.