Come Drink with Me (1966)

Cheng Pei-pei's Golden Swallow walks into an inn full of bandits and takes them apart without losing her poise, and that entrance is still one of the genre's great introductions. King Hu cast a ballet dancer rather than a fighter and said his combat was always keyed to the notion of dance, so every parry has rhythm and every pause has weight. Start here to see where Crouching Tiger's elegant swordswomen come from: Cheng returned decades later as Jade Fox. The Drunken Cat, a beggar who turns out to be a hidden master, is a wuxia convention in miniature.