General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

The Five Deadly Venoms (五毒)

A 1978 martial arts mystery from Hong Kong, The Five Deadly Venoms (五毒), also issued as The Five Venoms and literally rendered Five Poisons, had Chang Cheh as its director and co-writer, with Runme Shaw producing it at the Shaw Brothers Studio; Chiang Sheng stars as Yang De, the sixth student of a Poison Clan master on his deathbed, who is dispatched to locate and, when needed, overcome five onetime pupils, each schooled in a distinct animal-based style of kung fu.¹^•² It was the first of Chang Cheh's Venom Mob films, the run of movies starring his troupe of acrobatic fighters, and it set the tone for those that followed.³ Although it drew little attention from Hong Kong critics, it became a cult favorite abroad, ranked #11 in Entertainment Weekly's "Top 50 Cult Films of All-Time," and its influence reaches the Wu-Tang Clan, Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill, and video games such as Mortal Kombat.³^•⁴^•⁵

Key fact	Detail
Native title and aliases	《五毒》; released as The Five Venoms, The Five Deadly Venoms, and Five Poisons, a direct translation of the Chinese title²
Release	Hong Kong, August 12, 1978, in Mandarin and Cantonese; United States, January 26, 1979, rated R, 1 hour 41 minutes⁴^•⁶
Director and writers	Directed and co-written by Chang Cheh with Ni Kuang (Kuang Ni); produced by Runme Shaw for Shaw Brothers¹^•⁷
The five venoms	Centipede (Lu Feng), Snake (Wei Bai), Scorpion (Sun Chien), Gecko/Lizard (Kuo Chue), Toad (Lo Meng)⁸
Sixth disciple	Yang De (杨得), played by Chiang Sheng (江生)⁸
Retrospective standing	#11 in Entertainment Weekly's "Top 50 Cult Films of All-Time"; probably the best of the Venom Mob films⁴^•³
Legacy	Footage edited into Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003); influence on the Wu-Tang Clan, John Woo's heroic bloodshed films, and Mortal Kombat⁴^•⁵

Spoilers

Plot and premise

The Poison Clan (五毒门) is a sect with an infamous reputation in the martial world. Its old master, kept alive in his last years by medicinal baths, has only one disciple still with him, Yang De (杨得), played by Chiang Sheng. The dying master orders Yang De to clean house: to find the sect's hidden treasure and deal with his five senior brothers, each of whom practices a martial art derived from a poisonous creature.⁸^•⁴

The five styles are distinct in both technique and screen behavior. Centipede style uses fast hand-work; lizard (gecko) style allows the fighter to stick to walls; scorpion style emulates the slicing of the scorpion's claws and the lashing of its tail; snake style is the fifth; and toad style renders the body almost impermeable to blows.³^•⁸

The story unfolds as a mystery. Constable He, aided by the fifth brother's toad kung fu (蛤蟆功), captures the eldest brother, but the county magistrate, in league with the second brother, has the fifth brother imprisoned and killed. Because clan members always wear masks, not all of them know who the others are, and this masked-identity structure turns a simple plot into a suspense thriller.⁸^•⁵

Cast and the Venom Mob

Playing the five venom roles were Sun Chien as Scorpion Gai Ji, Lo Meng as Toad Liang Shen, Lu Feng as Centipede Zhang Yiao-tian, Wei Bai (also rendered Wai Pak) as Snake Qi Dong, and Kuo Chue (also romanized Kuo Chui; the actor's full name is Philip Kwok Chun-fung) as Gecko Meng Tian-xia.²^•⁸^•⁹ The film actually features eight venoms: three characters have no associated animal, namely Yang De (Chiang Sheng), the head of Venom House (Dick Wei), and the bookkeeper (Ku Feng).²

The film launched the Venom Mob, Chang Cheh's team of acrobatic fighters whose animalistic nicknames came from this picture. The five venom actors appeared together in only three other films: The Kid With the Golden Arm (1979), Invincible Shaolin (1978), and The Brave Archer II (1978).⁹^•²

Production and choreography

Chang Cheh wrote the film with Ni Kuang, and it was photographed by Mu-To Kung and Hui-Chi Tsao for Shaw Brothers Ltd.⁷^•¹⁰ The martial arts are acrobatic and inspired by Beijing opera, a deliberate departure from the fashion for realism and authentic styles in kung fu cinema.³ The assassins wear polychromatic masks, and the direction heightens the fight choreography with slow motion, wirework, and sonic cues.⁷

According to one account, Golden Harvest was unhappy with Chang's script, feeling it too dark and violent, and wanted him to add broad comic relief; he kept his original script.⁵

The 五毒 concept

The title refers to the Five Poisonous Creatures of Chinese folklore, the traditional grouping of five creatures (centipede, snake, scorpion, gecko or lizard, and toad) from which the five disciples' styles are drawn.¹^•⁸ The English title Five Poisons is a direct translation of the Chinese title 五毒.²

Release and reception

The film opened in Hong Kong on August 12, 1978, in Mandarin and Cantonese, and received a US release on January 26, 1979, rated R.⁴^•⁶ Chang Cheh's Venom Mob films received little attention from Hong Kong critics, but they were big hits with martial arts fans abroad.³ In the United States, Five Venoms received heavy cable-TV airtime and had the biggest impact of the Shaw Brothers titles distributed that way.² Retrospectively, Entertainment Weekly ranked it #11 in its "Top 50 Cult Films of All-Time."⁴

How it compares with its siblings

Among the Venom Mob films, The Five Venoms is probably still the best, although Mortal Combat, also known as Crippled Avengers (1978), is also a fan favorite.³ The follow-up Crippled Avengers was renamed Return of the Five Deadly Venoms for American release after Wei Bai was replaced by Chiang Sheng, and 16 additional movies were released in America under the "five venoms" banner, a measure of how valuable the original title had become.²

Legacy and influence

The film's cultural reach extends well beyond kung fu cinema. Footage from it was edited into Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), and its influence has been traced to the World of Warcraft online role-playing game.⁴^•¹⁰ One critic calls it arguably Chang Cheh's finest movie and notes its continuing influence on Hong Kong cinema, from the themes of loyalty, brotherhood, and revenge explored in John Woo's heroic bloodshed films of the late 1980s, to music such as the Wu-Tang Clan, Sprite commercials, and video games such as Mortal Kombat.⁵

On home video, the film received a US Blu-ray release from Vivendi Visual Entertainment on May 17, 2011.¹⁰

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Action and adventure films (individual works) › Martial arts films › Released 1943 to 1985

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

Notice something wrong?