I am sure that many of you people out there are frightened and confused by the bizzare physics and logical peculiarities of Hong-Kong Kung Fu cinema. Well no more! Gather ‘round as I reveal the mystifying secrets of…
The World of Kung Fu
Leaping
In certain situations it is possible for guys in Kung Fu movies to jump really high. If someone needs to jump over a wall, retrieve some kind of scroll, or do a cool leaping attack, the laws of gravity are temporarily suspended. Sometimes (for instance, if someone throws an important scroll really high in the air) some guy will do a really funny looking superman thing and fly up to get it.
Invincible Body Kung Fu
If you watch a lot of Kung Fu movies you will notice that some sort of invincible body Kung Fu appears in quite a number of them. Here's the basic idea of invincible body. By doing a lot of weird training exercises (usually involving getting hit in the groin with stuff and soaking in steamy vats of mysterious liquid) a person can become impervious to harm. There is always one weak point, however. The weak point is always located in one of the 108 pressure points; usually somewhere interesting like the groin or the pinky. Movies that feature invincible body Kung Fu will usually end with a climactic battle scene where the main character cleverly discover's the bad guy's weak spot, triggering a death scene where the bad guy is all: "AAAAARRRRRGH!! My one weak spot, you found it... AAAAARRRRRGH!!" (gasping followed by slow-motion flailing and falling, perhaps with a little pelvic thrustage at the end). And then the screen is all like: "THE END."
Old Men
There is usally at least one old master in every Kung Fu movie. Since these old guys have to do all kinds of kickass moves, they are always played by younger men wearing fake beards. Confusion arises, however, when there are several old men in one movie. Since all old men wear the exact same fake white beard, it becomes very difficult to tell them apart. Due to the nonsensical nature of many of these movies, context alone is often not enough to identify a particular old man.
Shaolin
Those Shaolin characters tend show up a lot in Kung Fu movies, and it's not hard to see why. Who can resist the natural appeal of a bunch of bald guys in orange robes going around kicking ass while spouting off a bunch of cheezy, somewhat-mystical-sounding lines? Not I!
Most movies about the Shaolin will mention something about The 36 Chambers; a bunch of chambers (36, if you must know) where training occurs via various weird-ass machines. Depiction of the 36 Chambers can vary quite a bit from film to film. Many movies will also mention The Line of the 18 Bronzemen. This a final test for Shaolin students where they have to fight a bunch of moving bronze statues (played by guys in either bronze body paint or huge, blocky, costumes). At the end of this test the students have to pick up an incredibly hot stove that permanently scars them with a mystical Shaolin symbol. Oh yeah, and for some reason Shaolin priests always say "Buddha be praised" right before they kick someone's ass.
Lamas
I'm pretty sure the only reason these guys even show up in Kung Fu movies is to give the Shaolin monks some evil Buddhists to fight against. It does strike me as kind of strange, however, that Tibetan Buddhists (who I typically associate with the likes of the Dalai Lama) would be portrayed as evil Kung Fu masters. Evil Lamas are frequently credited with the creation of various bizarre weapons.
Wutang
The Wutang are the Taoist counterparts of the Shaolin. They have their own special style of Kung-Fu (usually a sword style) and their own mystical temple. They fight the Shaolin in quite a few movies and team up with them in almost as many.
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