When I was talking about surefire no-brainer movies, I meant movies like Come Drink with Me. A classic Shaw Brothers kung fu from 1966, it stars Cheng Pei Pei as a woman warrior seeking to free her brother from kidnappers with her monkey-style high leaping kung fu. She meets up with a drunk beggar, called Drunken Cat, who is more than he seems.
Apparently, this was the first of the classic kung fu movies, introducing the fight-scene-as-artform concept, as well as the woman disguised as a man trope, etc. For a mid-sixties film, it looks incredibly up-to-date - although since it is a period piece, I don't know why it would look any different.
Most of all, it is total, pure entertainment. Great fights - some with wires, some without. Great villains, including the Joe E. Brown faced "Smiley Face" and powder and paint wearing "Sleek Face". Some nice music - Drunk Cat has a gang of child-monks that follow him around singing. (One of them is supposed to be a young Jackie Chan, but that may be a rumor.) The musical numbers tie this movie to the early Peking Opera tradition, even as it breaks with the tradition to show more realistic action.
Finally, the cherry on the icing on the cake on top of the sundae: the subtitles are beautifully whacky. Never so off-the-wall that you can figure out the story, but goofy enough to get a laugh. Example: something that must have been "Stay out of my business" is subtitled, "Don't touch my thing."
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