In the last few years American audiences have discovered the delights of Hong Kong martial arts actioners, replete with ghosts and fantastic warriors. But it all started with Taiwan director King Hu, who turned what Variety called "chop-socky" kung-fu films into "royal ballets," and introduced us to the warrior heroine, actress Hsu Feng. "From the moment she enters a room or even raises her eyebrows, one knows immediately to expect the unexpected" (Film Society of Lincoln Center). In A Touch of Zen a weak-willed youth, aided by Buddhist monks and the feisty Feng, displays nerves of steel when faced with a band of Ming Dynasty thugs. "It folds its violent story into a landscape of ultra-poetic refinement where the camera takes as much aesthetic pleasure in the quiver of a birch branch as King Hu does in bringing the Zen philosophy of 'mind over matter' to bear on the physical encounters....You never get the chance to see from which direction death comes, so that it appears as a bizarre continuum of the action, rather than the end result." (Alexander Walker)