Jackie Chan is silent and deadly when he takes on SHAOLIN WOODEN MEN, on Blu-ray from 88 Films.

Traumatized as a child by the murder of his father by bandits, "Brother Mute" (Chan) has grown up in a Shaolin monastery, although he is far from a competent student. Relentlessly picked on by his brother monks and the abbot, Brother Mute one day spies a pair of his brothers taking food into a forbidden area where he discovers Brother Foolish (Kang Chin, MASTER OF THE FLYING GUILLOTINE) chained up but planning his escape through a vicious Kung Fu technique he has been detecting. In exchange for providing him with decent food, Brother Foolish trains Brother Mute in his art; however, his moves are noticed by a nun Five Plums (Doris Lung, HALF A LOAF OF KUNG FU) who stresses that Shaolin fighting techniques are not for killing, teaching him at the same time moves for self-defense to avoid the "sin of killing." Brother Mute reaches a level of training where he is ready to take on Wooden Men Lane, a tunnel lined with mechanized wooden fighters that each student must pass through before they can be ordained. Although the abbot is suspicious of how Brother Mute came about his sudden skills, he is powerless when Brother Mute decides to leave the temple. Sworn to secrecy, Brother Mute takes a message to a town chemist, unaware that he is part of the Green Dragon Gang and that Brother Foolish – who has escaped in Brother Mute's absence – is their leader. Brother Mute even save Brother Foolish's life from an attack by the Shaolin Arhat guards before he finally realizes the truth after seeing Brother Foolish ruthlessly murder a family who offers them shelter and hospitality. Brother Foolish instructs his men in the deadly fighting technique "Lion's Roar" as he wages revenge on the Shaolin monks who imprisoned him; and only Brother Mute may know how to counter his deadly fists.

More entertaining than NEW FIST OF FURY, the follow-up SHAOLIN WOODEN SOLDIERS gives Chan no dialogue but he manages to convey a little of his comic spirit with his expressions as he endures the test of the monks, and the looser fight choreography makes up for the rather pedestrian camera coverage. Lo Wei seems to have realized that Chan should be up front and center from the start and dials back much of the drama that takes place without him. The Shaolin Wooden Men tunnel sequence is actually entertaining, and the climactic fight is actually thrilling thanks to Chin's viciousness and Chan's energy. The pacing does not drag as much as the former film despite several characters thrown in to fill out he story, including the family of an innkeeper Brother Mute befriends (the possible love interest daughter of which is held for ransom by the Green Dragon gang before being let go without explanation). Apart from being loaned out to John Woo for his early film HAND OF DEATH, Chan continued with Wei for a handful of middling entries like THE KILLER METEORS and TO KILLWITH INTRIGUE, shelving SPIRITUAL KUNG-FU and THE FEARLESS HYENA due to money problems and dismissing the comedy HALF A LOAF OF KUNG-FU in which Chan had more creative control, not taking notice what set Chan apart from Bruce Lee until the twin successes of Chan's independent productions SNAKE IN THE EAGLE'S SHADOW and DRUNKEN MASTER; whereupon Wei finished the shelved productions and revisited NEW FIST OF FURY and SHAOLIN WOODEN MEN (recutting the former and redubbing the latter in Cantonese).

Unreleased theatrically in the United States, the film turned up first on cropped VHS from All Seasons Entertainment, but Columbia/Tri-Star's DVD was not an improvement, coming from a 16:9 cropped fullscreen tape master with a green cast over the image. The earlier masters had a damaged English dub track so UK label Eastern Heroes elected to revert to the Mandarin track while Columbia dropped the first ten minutes of the film altogether. The later UK Hong Kong Legends edition utilized a track that redubbed the missing audio while the German Blu-ray featured only the Cantonese dub (in addition to the German and being upscaled). 88 Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen Blu-ray comes from a new 2K restoration of the original 35mm camera negative and cannot help but look better than everything that came before. Studio and location interiors look crisp and colorful although still soft given the older anamorphic lenses used in Chinese productions of the time. The bright exterior scenes also look well-exposed. On the other hand, some of the scenes in the shaded forests – as observed it the commentary – look a little noisier in the shadows because of faster, grainier film utilized. Both the 1976 Mandarin dub and the 1980 Cantonese dub sound largely clean, subject only to the recording conditions with a faint layer of hiss while the English dub may be the same one with the redubbed early scenes. An alternate Cantonese track with some music differences is also included. The Mandarin and Cantonese tracks have separate English subtitle translations with slight variations while another English subtitle track only translates Chinese text for the English audio track.

The disc features a pair of new audio commentary tracks. On the first track, Asian cinema expert Brandon Bentley covers Lo Wei's attempt to turn Chan into the next Bruce Lee – particularly with reference to the opening sequence – the reception of their early collaborations, Chan's subsequent surgery and dental work to look a little less ethnic, the film's influence on MORTAL KOMBAT, the five styles of Kung Fu demonstrated in the film and how Chan's character embodies each style, and suggests that the opening sequence – so different in style and tone from the rest of the film – may have been a promo piece shot after and appended to the opening of the film. On the second track, Hong Kong cinema experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema suggest that the opening sequence may have been directed by action director Chan Chi-Hwa (who is credited solely for the film on IMDb while Lo Wei is solely credited on the print) and labeling Wei as a hack next to Chan Chi-Hwa who would work with Chan on subsequent collaborations, and even questioning how many of Chan's films Wei actually did direct. They also provide such trivia as Chan's tea line and his commercial campaign for it that ran into the nineties.