Dragon Inn (1967) (Dragon Gate Inn) is a Taiwanese wuxia film written and directed by King Hu. The film was remade as New Dragon Gate Inn (1992), and again as The Flying Swords of Dragon Gate (2011). The film stars Polly Ling Feng Shang-Kuan who is a Black Belt in karate, judo and tae kwon do. It also stars kung fu practitioner Ying Bai.
Yin-Chieh Han is the martial arts instructor for the film.
Dragon Inn (1966) was shot in Taiwan after King Hu left the Hong Kong-based Shaw Brothers Studio in 1965. Hu met Sha Rongfeng in Taiwan and the two created the studio called Union Film Company.
Dragon Inn (1967) takes place in 1457 China, where General Yu has been ousted from political power by his opponent Tsao, the emperor’s first eunuch. Taso has the general beheaded and his remaining children exiled from China. As the children are being escorted to the western border of the Chinese empire, Tsao plots to have the children killed and his secret police lie in ambush at the desolate Dragon Gate Inn. Unknown to the secret police is that the innkeeper, Wu Ning, was one of the general’s lieutenants and he has summoned martial arts expert Hsiao to help the children. Children of another Yu lieutenant who are a brother-sister martial-artist team also show up to help. These four race to find Yu’s children and lead them to safety.
Dragon Inn premiered on October 21, 1967. The film set box‐office records in Taiwan, Korea, and the Philippines, but The Union Film Company did not make any great profit from the film because to break his contract with Shaw Brothers, King Hu agreed to give Shaw Brothers the distribution rights in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. In North America, Dragon Inn (1967) showed at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.
Masters of Cinema Series. released Dragon Inn (1967) in the United Kingdom on Blu-ray and DVD and it was released by The Criterion Collection in the United States on Blu-ray July 2018.
