Huo Yuanjia was nicknamed « northern  Wong Fei-hong ». It's a very adequate comparison. Indeed, the two masters lived at the same time and are exemplary figures of Chinese martial folklore occupying the same niche; the one of the wise, valiant and patriotic patriarch. Each one in his way trained disciples and assured the reputation and continuity of Chinese martial arts. Their origins, exploits, destinies and martial arts styles that each practised were however totally different.

Though he was as great a martial figure as him, Master Huo didn't experience the film notoriety of Wong Fei-hung, quite the contrary. Indeed, only two films were devoted to him. A fistful of other films did evoke his name but they dealt with the myth of his death. This difference would be partly explained by the fact that the kung-fu cinema originating from Hong Kong and closely linked to Cantonese martial folklore, Wong Fei-hung was thus a much more recognised and appropriate figure than the northerner Huo Yuan-jia. Hong Kong's Mandarin cinema (mostly composed of refugees from Shanghai and Beijing, so people from the north) had indeed its own martial folklore but this one essentially drew from the tradition of the wu xia stories and not from pugilist masters of a recent past (see kung fu pian, wu xia pian, Mandarin and Cantonese cinema). Master Huo's film prospects were therefore doubly handicapped.

Yet the Mandarin cinema didn't really take advantage of its period of domination to impose Huo the master from the north as a great cinema hero the way the Cantonese cinema did with Wong Fei-hug in the 50s and 60s (1). One of the reasons behind this missed opportunity was that during the 70s masters characters weren't as important as before. It was the young avenging disciple who was now influential in kung-fu films and the master was mostly a pretext for the disciple to avenge his death as in Fist of Fury. This film knew how to praise master Huo's name and legend as never before but paradoxically it presented him in the most possible restrictive manner because limited to a mere funeral photograph.

(1) Some films were however made at the time around the figure of the master but it was Wong Fei-hung. The Shaw Brothers, Hong Kong 's biggest Mandarin studio, produced itself two films on the Canton master (Master of Kung Fu et Rivals of Kung Fu). Even those at SB judged Wong was a more relevant cinema martial hero than Huo Yuan-jia.