The 36th Chamber of Shaolin is the most popular screen version of one of the key foundation myths of the kung fu subgenre: the story of the dissemination of the top-secret combat techniques developed at the Shaolin Temple to the populace at large. A bald and tautly muscled Lau Kar-fai plays a real-life figure long since transmuted into myth, a Chinese commoner on the run from Manchu oppressors (including a glowering Luo Lie) who seeks refuge at the Shaolin Temple. The film is an absorbing account of his initiation into the vaunted Shaolin style, known for its emphasis on the external and the physical. But as depicted here the training process is very much an inner voyage of discovery: the novice must work his way through a series of torturous “chambers” before becoming the newly minted monk, San De, demonstrating the truth of the adage that “the mind is also a muscle.”