Korean director Chung Chang-wha was among the foreign talent hired by studio mogul Run Run Shaw in the late ’60s to help meet Asian audiences' growing taste for tough action films. King Boxer’s gritty revenge tale met that challenge and more; it became the first kung fu film to be a hit in the West and paved the way for the Bruce Lee phenomenon to come. Actor Luo Lie brings characteristic intensity to his role as an “Iron Fist” adept whose fingers are viciously shattered by a rival gang. (The film was released internationally under the title Five Fingers of Death). In paradigmatic fashion, he then trains his way back to peak form and wreaks vengeance on his adversaries. Joining ferocious hand-to-hand combat with a nationalistic subtext (as did the contemporaneous Bruce Lee films), King Boxer unabashedly ascribes villainy (and inferior fighting methods) to the Japanese.