Dreadnaught (勇者無懼). 1981. Directed by Yuen Woo-ping

Dreadnaught (勇者無懼). 1981. Hong Kong. Directed by Yuen Woo-ping. Martial arts direction by the Yuen Clan (Yuen Woo-ping, Yuen Chun-yeung, Yuen Cheung-yan, Yuen Shun-yi, Yuen Yak-chor, Chiu Chung-hing). With Yuen Biao, Bryan Leung Kar-yan, Kwan Tak-hing. 35mm courtesy American Genre Film Archive; courtesy Janus Films. In Cantonese; English subtitles. 96 min. A murderous masked fugitive (Yuen Shun-yee) hides among a local opera troupe, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. When a meek laundryman (Yuen Biao, in a standout performance) loses his close friend to the killer, he must conquer his cowardice and seek justice. Yuen Woo-ping, working alongside his Yuen Clan brothers, choreographs the action with gleeful unpredictability, fusing intricate hand-to-hand technique with acrobatics, sharp comic timing, and sudden bursts of real violence. The result is a genre-bending kung fu slasher-comedy that has no business working as well as it does—and yet it’s one of the era’s most delightfully strange surprises.