YMMV / New Dragon Inn

• Awesome Moments: The fight scenes, in both the original and the remake, are frenetic masterpieces of cinematography. The first battle with Tsao's men outside the inn in the original is one of the finest wuxia fight sequences of all time.
• Complete Monster: Both versions of the classic wuxia villain Tsao/Cao Siu-yan count:
  • Dragon Inn (Dragon Gate Inn) (1967): Tsao is an asthmatic, merciless eunuch and the chief of the Dong Chang, allowing them to murder and terrorize people with full impunity. Besting and executing his political rival, the noble Minister Yu, Tsao has Yu's children ruthlessly hunted down, having his men conduct a full massacre of the people within and around the titular inn to set up an ambush. Revealed to have castrated and press-ganged two of Yu's remaining sympathizers after they paid respects to the late Minister's grave, Tsao ultimately murders the border officer with his own sword en route to the inn and tries to slaughter everyone between him and the children himself.
  • Dragon Inn (New Dragon Gate Inn) (1992): No less evil than his original incarnation, Tsao here is a power-hungry eunuch who subverts the Emperor's authority to pursue power himself, having prisoners used as target practice by his men and having all of his politically rivals systematically captured and horribly killed. Personally torturing Minister Yang Yu-xuan to death and having his entire family murdered, Tsao spares only his two young children for the purpose of luring in the noble general Chow and his men so he can wipe them all out at once. His men pursuing Chow and the children to the Dragon Gate Inn, Tsao rides in himself and has his archers fire through both rebels and Dong Chang soldiers alike, ultimately coming down himself to kill the children and all of their sympathizers and successfully killing Mo-yan himself before his own death.
• Magnificent Bitch: Dragon Inn (New Dragon Gate Inn) (1992): Jade is the charming, quick-tongued keeper of the titular inn and a devious woman always focuses on personal profit. Jade cheerfully uses her wiles to seduce greedy customers and turn them into meat buns to which she feeds her unknowing customers, who never notice due to how tasty the buns are. When Dong Chang soldiers intrude into her inn looking for some of her customers, Jade initially takes neither side and satisfies herself by playing tricks on the Dong Chang to divert their suspicions while simultaneously trying to extort the hero. Utterly above intimidation, when one of the Dong Chang soldiers tries to kill her Jade coolly and effortlessly throws him into the press with which she grinds people into meat buns.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Tsao is verging on the line when he tries to have Minister Yu's innocent children set to follow their father in death, but he's not truly over until we learn two Dong Chang agents were castrated on his orders for sympathizing with Minister Yu.
  • Tsao in the remake crosses the line by the first few minutes of the movie when we see his proclivities include riding out prisoners on horseback to have them used as live target practice.
• Nightmare Fuel: In Dragon Inn (New Dragon Gate Inn) (1992), Tsao's arm and foot◊ are burnt down to the bone.