A box office success in Asia at the time of its release, Dragon Inn resuscitated and updated the martial arts film genre before the explosion of action films with Bruce Lee. Set in the 15th century, the story follows a royal eunuch who kills his main political opponent. The film is a reference point for Tsia Ming-Liang, who recalls watching it with his grandparents on their almost daily visits to the cinema. Many years later, he paid tribute to the film — one of the first in the genre to feature a woman fighter — in his own work Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003).