How two of King Hu’s best martial arts movies, Raining in the Mountain and Legend of the Mountain, have hardly any fight scenes

Although King Hu helped launch the new wave of wuxia films with Come Drink with Me in 1966, the director – unlike many of his contemporaries – was not particularly interested in martial arts styles. Hu often said in interviews that he knew little about martial arts and used his knowledge of the movements of Beijing Opera when discussing fight scenes with choreographers.

The director’s primary interests were the aesthetics of movement, and – even though he was not himself a Buddhist – the ideas of transcendence and nirvana. His fascination with both is illustrated in two of his later masterpieces, Raining in the Mountain and Legend of the Mountain, both of which were filmed between 1977 and 1978 and released in 1979.

The two films are intriguing in many ways. They were shot on location in South Korea, making use of the country’s many Buddhist temples and mountainous locations. What’s more, both films were shot at the same time, with the two shoots taking place in parallel rather than back to back. Even though the storylines of the films are completely unconnected, Hu used the same cast members in both films, with actors swapping between roles during the two shoots.

Raining in the Mountain and Legend of the Mountain are also not strictly speaking wuxia films, and perhaps they are not even martial arts films at all.

The former, which is deeply philosophical, features some scenes of kung fu rather than sword-fighting, but focuses more on the deceitful relationships of the characters. The latter, an entertaining story about a demonic ghost, has action scenes featuring magic and supernatural explosions, but no martial arts. But the way the characters move about the sets and locations of both films is choreographed with the precision and accuracy of a martial arts scene.