Shawscope Volumes

[cdnchris]

Sorry to be a shameless consumer but Chris: are there any hints of titles for Volume 3 in the booklet like Volume 1 did for some of Volume 2 titles?

I've only skimmed the booklet so far and can't say there's anything that has popped out I'm sorry to say, but once I'm able to actually sit and read it I'll do what I can.

[yoloswegmaster]

I don't think that would have mattered since I recall certain newly released titles not being a part of the July B&N sale this year.

I didn't shop the sale this year, so I didn't know that. Everything that was out was discounted during the previous sales

Edited to add, I seen you mention over at the Blu-ray.com forum Tenebrae not being on sale during the B&N sale, and the reason for that not being part of the sale is because it is a Synapse title in the US, not Arrow.

Whoops, it definitely wasn't Tenebrae but it was definitely a newer release that for some reason I can't recall (I'm probably thinking about True Romance though). Thanks for the catch though.

[Finch]

Mike from Grindhouse explained on the other forum that he got copies early and started shipping them because he hadn't been told by Arrow not to. So a few people got lucky with their pre-orders (he's now holding everything else back until the revised December date). Though, frankly, if they were that fussed about B&N sales, they could have either not provided anyone with any units this early or surely told B&N to exclude that particular set from their sale.

[tenia]

Edit : skip that, too big of a delay to be some pallets not being delivered yet.

[feihong]

My Volume II set arrived today. I never thought I'd see a high-quality blu ray, with film grain and everything, of The Barefooted Kid. Amazing.

As others have said, the 36th Chamber of Shaolin remaster is a mix of qualities. Lots of shots are beautifully sharp, with good grain––and then others look pretty de-grained. These de-grained shots still look sharp around the edges, but you can tell something's amiss. And there are a lot of these shots, so far as I can see––but just the same, there are tons of absolutely great shots. Everything I saw of the final fight looks spectacular. What really comes through in this remaster is greater depth, and a rangier contrast and color palette. Most of the Shaw Bros. restorations have looked very bright, very high-key. This remaster of 36th Chamber has a wider gamut of different lighting, color and contrast than in previous versions I've seen, including the IVL Hong Kong blu ray. It's interesting to muse on whether the other Shaw movies could look like this?

Every disc I've looked at looks good-to-great so far, with a couple slight exceptions. Mercenaries from Hong Kong, Boxer's Omen and The Bare-Footed Kid look phenomenal. My Young Auntie looks very cinematic, with a lot of grain, as does Ten Tigers of Kwangtung. Mad Monkey Kung Fu looks solid, but not quite as spectacular to my eyes––maybe a little softer? I haven't watched The Kid With the Golden Arm or Magnificent Ruffians yet––honestly, I doubt I'm really going to see those, except maybe for the commentaries. Martial Arts of Shaolin is one that goes not look as good as you feel it should. The whole affair looks de-grained, with the thin, soupy-look that results when the dial is turned up too high on the noise reduction. The film is very colorful, but I can't help feeling like it's missing the mark. I've always thought of this one as an unbearably shrill and un-funny movie, so it's no big loss for me. It is full of wonderful settings, and a beautiful boat, and of course Jet Li moves like a madman in it. He acts terribly, though. I only quickly scanned the 36 Chambers sequels. Return had a very thick, grungy look at first, and the picture seemed intermittently soft––though there were lots of sharp parts. Disciples looks razor-sharp from frame 1.

It's already an amazing set, like the first one. I'm really looking forward to seeing Mercenaries from Hong Kong for the first time. Scrubbing through the disc, it looks really dynamic, and a lot more visually involving than in many of Wong Jing's later movies. And I'm curious to hear Frank Djeng's commentary on The Bare-Footed Kid. In his other Johnnie To commentaries, Djeng has insisted that To is making a statement that Hong Kong residents shouldn't be ashamed of chasing after money--he says this first in reference to the scene in Throwdown where Louis Koo and Cherrie Ying are running from the gambling joint, trying to grab all the money floating away, and he also says Life Without Principle has the same theme. I never ever felt these were the themes of that scene in Throwdown or in any part of Life Without Principle––to me it seemed To was extremely critical of the profit motive in his characters. But maybe I think this primarily because of The Bare-Footed Kid, which is so condemning of labor exploitation––or maybe it's the scene in The Big Heat where Waise Lee lets the loose dollars of the bribe the villain offers him slip away in the wind. Or perhaps it's...I don't know...all of Sparrow, which celebrates a nostalgia for a city and a vanished profession (the common street pickpocket) over the villainous pickpocket who's made it big, or maybe it's Election 2, where we watch Louis Koo mortgage every ounce of humanity to win the election, just so he can build a shopping center when it's all done. I don't know. Does anyone see any sense in what Djeng is saying there? Did I misinterpret what he was talking about? It seems to me that in movie after movie To keeps insisting that money is fleeting, that the chase for it rots the moral interior of virtually anyone who pursues it, and that it leads the profit-minded to treat their fellow humans horribly. I feel like that's the point of the scene in Throwdown––to show the moral depths Szeto has sunk to––and I'm sure that's the point of The Bare-Footed Kid. It would have been better for the kid and for everyone around him if he never coveted a pair of shoes in the first place. Anyway, to me The Bare-Footed Kid is a maybe the best of To's early movies (neck-and-neck with The Big Heat, I think). Even though it's street scenes are a little too tidy, a little too well-swept, this disc shows how rich the color is in the movie, underlining the sometimes storybook-like visuals. It's an exceptional movie, to my mind. And the set is packed with other great movies, like Mad Monkey Kung Fu and The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, My Young Auntie, 10 Tigers of Kwangtung...so cool.

[Mr Sausage]

Martial Arts of Shaolin is one that goes not look as good as you feel it should. The whole affair looks de-grained, with the thin, soupy-look that results when the dial is turned up too high on the noise reduction. The film is very colorful, but I can't help feeling like it's missing the mark. I've always thought of this one as an unbearably shrill and un-funny movie, so it's no big loss for me. It is full of wonderful settings, and a beautiful boat, and of course Jet Li moves like a madman in it. He acts terribly, though.

Shrill? Really? The movie where Jet Li minces around in a Pippi Longstocking dress and pigtails and throws squealing temper tantrums in the dirt?

It's interesting to watch these early Jet Li movies and see just how astonishing his martial arts skills were in his prime. Makes an odd contrast with his work even ten years later, where he seems to be doing fewer and fewer moves. It's really apparent in the new blus of the OUATIC movies how much he relied on doubles. I get he was injured in 1, so it makes sense he wasn't doing as much. But why was he relying on doubles so much for the sequels? Had he still not fully healed? The moves we see are for sure in his wheelhouse. Weird he never went the Donnie Yen route of doing most things himself.

[colinr0380]

And I'm curious to hear Frank Djeng's commentary on The Bare-Footed Kid. In his other Johnnie To commentaries, Djeng has insisted that To is making a statement that Hong Kong residents shouldn't be ashamed of chasing after money--he says this first in reference to the scene in Throwdown where Louis Koo and Cherrie Ying are running from the gambling joint, trying to grab all the money floating away, and he also says Life Without Principle has the same theme. I never ever felt these were the themes of that scene in Throwdown or in any part of Life Without Principle––to me it seemed To was extremely critical of the profit motive in his characters. But maybe I think this primarily because of The Bare-Footed Kid, which is so condemning of labor exploitation––or maybe it's the scene in The Big Heat where Waise Lee lets the loose dollars of the bribe the villain offers him slip away in the wind. Or perhaps it's...I don't know...all of Sparrow, which celebrates a nostalgia for a city and a vanished profession (the common street pickpocket) over the villainous pickpocket who's made it big, or maybe it's Election 2, where we watch Louis Koo mortgage every ounce of humanity to win the election, just so he can build a shopping center when it's all done. I don't know. Does anyone see any sense in what Djeng is saying there? Did I misinterpret what he was talking about? It seems to me that in movie after movie To keeps insisting that money is fleeting, that the chase for it rots the moral interior of virtually anyone who pursues it, and that it leads the profit-minded to treat their fellow humans horribly. I feel like that's the point of the scene in Throwdown––to show the moral depths Szeto has sunk to––and I'm sure that's the point of The Bare-Footed Kid. It would have been better for the kid and for everyone around him if he never coveted a pair of shoes in the first place. Anyway, to me The Bare-Footed Kid is a maybe the best of To's early movies (neck-and-neck with The Big Heat, I think). Even though it's street scenes are a little too tidy, a little too well-swept, this disc shows how rich the color is in the movie, underlining the sometimes storybook-like visuals. It's an exceptional movie, to my mind. And the set is packed with other great movies, like Mad Monkey Kung Fu and The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, My Young Auntie, 10 Tigers of Kwangtung...so cool.

I'm still very much a Johnnie To novice, but I would agree with your assessment of the money floating away scene in Throw Down, mostly because from what I remember about that scene it is filmed in a rather comic manner where going on the run from the thugs at the gambling joint with money before dropping it all over the street leads to both Mona running back into danger to pick it up and the thugs abandoning their chase to start picking the money up themselves. Which leads to both sides edging closer together from either side (whilst the thugs shout threats but don't actually run at Mona; whilst Mona runs off then comes back again, at least until her partner (who himself is perhaps too casual about throwing money away!) finally manages to drag her away from the scene!) that reminded me a bit of the staging of the dogs eating that strand of spaghetti in The Lady and the Tramp!

So that scene never really struck me as seeming as if it is celebrating the mercenarily driven profit motivation of the characters but rather displaying it, and how much the society is in thrall to money even when it blinkers them and puts individual people in personal danger in their pursuit of it. And as you say runs the risk of morally corrupting the main characters (mostly shown through Mona's wandering aspiring actress character). But that's the only To film amongst those you talk about above that I have seen, so I am not yet in a position to be confident in saying that its a primary characteristic of his films, although you make a convincing argument to suggest that it may be.

[feihong]

Martial Arts of Shaolin is one that goes not look as good as you feel it should. The whole affair looks de-grained, with the thin, soupy-look that results when the dial is turned up too high on the noise reduction. The film is very colorful, but I can't help feeling like it's missing the mark. I've always thought of this one as an unbearably shrill and un-funny movie, so it's no big loss for me. It is full of wonderful settings, and a beautiful boat, and of course Jet Li moves like a madman in it. He acts terribly, though.

Shrill? Really? The movie where Jet Li minces around in a Pippi Longstocking dress and pigtails and throws squealing temper tantrums in the dirt?

It's interesting to watch these early Jet Li movies and see just how astonishing his martial arts skills were in his prime. Makes an odd contrast with his work even ten years later, where he seems to be doing fewer and fewer moves. It's really apparent in the new blus of the OUATIC movies how much he relied on doubles. I get he was injured in 1, so it makes sense he wasn't doing as much. But why was he relying on doubles so much for the sequels? Had he still not fully healed? The moves we see are for sure in his wheelhouse. Weird he never went the Donnie Yen route of doing most things himself.

Around 2002 I got to meet Sammo Hung because a group I was working with was screening Pedicab Driver in L.A., and I got to hang out with the younger members and hangers-on of his stunt team for a couple of weeks. They were all fiercely critical of Jet Li, not so much for the doubling, but for the way in his on-camera fights of the time, he often didn't come close to hitting the stunt guys he fought with (later a friend invited them to a screening of The 36th Chamber of Shaolin and they were trashing that film afterwards, too...this taught me a lot about the stunt-fighter's aesthetics of film––they were looking for the speed and accuracy of hits, without any real concern for the qualities of the movie overall). This was around the era of Kiss of the Dragon and Romeo Must Die (Sammo was ghost-directing The Medallion and getting screwed out of credit for it, which seemed awful at the time, but which turned out to be a good thing after the movie debuted), and it was clear in a lot of those scenes from the time Jet would flail his arms furiously but not really connect with the stuntmen at all. So Jet's peculiar "laziness" was a reputation he's had for other reasons as well (still, it was dispiriting to see him getting his ass handed to him in Jack Ma's disgusting vanity video––I hope he got a good paycheck for selling his legacy like that). I think the difference between Jet and Donnie here is that Donnie has been in charge of his later movies––as a star, he's had the ability to influence a lot of what has happened on the set, whereas Jet's career was far more dominated by strong filmmaking personalities like Tsui Hark and Wong Jing (and by triads as well), directors and producers with their own way of doing things––he was, I think, signed with Film Workshop, and then later signed with Wong Jing--so he was being sent to this set for this movie, that set for that one, told what he was expected to do, and then he had to figure out for himself whether it was something he felt up to or not. The back injury did apparently dog him for years––though that could have been his excuse to get out of doing something he thought was unsafe. I remember an interview with Anthony Wong where he was asked why, since he studied kung fu, he didn't do his own action on set. Wong said that, if the stunt crews knew he knew martial arts, they would have him do all his own action––and he found it all uncomfortably risky. Reuben Langdon, one of Sammo's stuntmen at that time, told me about how cavalier Sammo's more old-school crew was about safety––he had a story where he insisted on padding an actor they had rigged for wirework, and the crew didn't want to do it, and the wire ended up ripping through 5 layers of padding, almost cutting the actors' leg off. The picture I'm painting is one of safety concerns, danger from overwork, etc., are constant, in an environment where, even though you are the star of the show, there are still larger concerns at play, and the buck does not stop with you. So my impression is that, in that environment, Jet's reliance on doubles could be a way to protect himself, or control his surroundings somewhat. In that same era, Donnie was known as a brittle prima-donna, rather than the relentless professional we know him as today. There is a lot in interviews to suggest he was just as professional in the past, but I wouldn't be surprised if Donnie's attitude in the past was his own way of controlling what went on on the set, his own way to give himself some space and some autonomy in a crazy environment, full of competing concerns.

In addition, Jet was being paid differently from a stuntman like Hung Yan-yan. Jet was contracted for a group of pictures, with obligations for the movies and the promotion of the movies, but not necessarily with the expectation he would do every stunt. Hung Yan-yan and the other stuntpeople were paid only for the stunts that made it to screen––so they had a much greater incentive to do crazy, risky stuff than Jet did. Jackie had his career built on the crazy stunts, and couldn't really get out of that once he wanted to. Donnie, I think, is the only one of them who really came into larger stardom with a certain amount of autonomy. Frequently Donnie does his own action direction, or gets to choose which action director he works with. He gets to produce his own films. He gets to set out the standards for how he works, and the aesthetics of how it all gets portrayed. So I think he's in a much different place from where Jet was when he was making big movies, and I think that Jet might have used his doubles as a sort of a backstop to keep from getting overworked or made to do stuff on set he didn't want to do, or just to back out of situations where he wasn't confident things were going to be safe. There were also different aesthetics of the action directors Jet worked with. Lau Kar-Leung liked to have performers in long shot, doing long sequences of moves uninterrupted. He didn't do a lot of aerial stuff, but he wanted these unbroken sequences demonstrating real skill and endurance. Yuen Wo-Ping, Ching Tsiu-Tung and Cory Yuen all worked more with doubles to begin with, cutting the action into sequences of quick shots, highlighting moves from different angles. I don't get the sense that Jet really liked Lau Kar-Leung's style in the first place––and I wonder if the interruption in Once Upon a Time in China when Jet hurt his back in the teahouse fight––followed by Lau getting replaced with Yuen Wo-Ping––wasn't because Jet wasn't working well with Lau Kar-Leung? That's my pet theory. I wonder if Jet wasn't even in 1991 thinking about how to get out of this career with his body still intact, and looking for ways to have more control over his environment.

[feihong]

I'm still very much a Johnnie To novice, but I would agree with your assessment of the money floating away scene in Throw Down, mostly because from what I remember about that scene it is filmed in a rather comic manner where going on the run from the thugs at the gambling joint with money before dropping it all over the street leads to both Mona running back into danger to pick it up and the thugs abandoning their chase to start picking the money up themselves. Which leads to both sides edging closer together from either side (whilst the thugs shout threats but don't actually run at Mona; whilst Mona runs off then comes back again, at least until her partner (who himself is perhaps too casual about throwing money away!) finally manages to drag her away from the scene!) that reminded me a bit of the staging of the dogs eating that strand of spaghetti in The Lady and the Tramp!

So that scene never really struck me as seeming as if it is celebrating the mercenarily driven profit motivation of the characters but rather displaying it, and how much the society is in thrall to money even when it blinkers them and puts individual people in personal danger in their pursuit of it. And as you say runs the risk of morally corrupting the main characters (mostly shown through Mona's wandering aspiring actress character). But that's the only To film amongst those you talk about above that I have seen, so I am not yet in a position to be confident in saying that its a primary characteristic of his films, although you make a convincing argument to suggest that it may be.

There's also the early sequence in Vengeance where Anthony Wong gets handed a big packet of money to kill Simon Yam's mistress, and then he, Lam Ka-Tung and Lam Suet go and kill the mistress and her lover as they sex each other up in bed at some ritzy hotel. The sequence is very alive with the moral compromise these characters have made for the money they're making. The reason To stages the assassination while the woman and the man are making love isn't exploitative in the traditional western mode, isn't just to throw nudity in the movie; it's to obliquely humiliate the three hit-men. Their job, their need for money, compels them to abase themselves in this way, killing these people in a moment of passion and vulnerability, killing them when they are naked and literally helpless. When Johnny Hallyday shows up and offers them a job with honor, a job that conforms to the romance of the code they believe in for themselves, they go to their deaths for him--because this job ennobles them once more. To makes it very clear that the money Hallyday offers is quite remote from their motivations. How will they take ownership of the Paris restaurant he offers them? They take the job because they don't care about the money, but they do care they are doing something they can live with.

Meanwhile, there's Life Without Principle––the title itself is a clever play on words, which seems to explicitly set up a contrast between principle as ethic and principle as cash. It can't be an accident that the three "winners" of that movie are the three people in the film who sit on their money while everyone else panics. They are, each of them, more concerned with something else besides money. Denise Ho just wants to get out of the job which is eating her soul––which is, not coincidentally, the literal selling and exchanging of money. Richie Jen is trying to solve crimes, trying to keep his marriage intact, even though his wife's desire for a posh apartment is threatening to rip his marriage apart. And Lau Ching Wan is interested only in honor, in doing right by friends. He is fascinated with the stock market––but only as a game, with a "tell" he becomes obsessed with tracking. The fact that he exits the movie rich as a result of playing the market is incidental to his finding the tell, playing the game to the end. His friend, Philip Keung, comes to a bad end, because he sees the stock market not as a game, but as money; he dies because he cheats at the game, rather than patiently finding the tell Lau Ching Wan's Panther eventually discovers.

Septet, To's latest and least movie (next to Chasing Dream, which is a dog's breakfast all its own), depicts a trio of friends meeting in a diner over several eras, trying to trade stock tips, winning big, only to get screwed again in the next economic downturn. The characters are hopeful at the end, desperate for profit...but it's interesting how bleak a picture this film paints. The trio of protagonists are like Jules, Jim and Katherine––except that they have no animating passions besides money. One appears to be the leading man, another the ingenue, another the comic relief––but all are too preoccupied with making money to play their roles, or to be brought to life, brought into any connection with one another beyond money. The hope to make it rich does seem to be a Hong Kong cultural value To is identifying in the film, but while the music is wistful as they walk on their separate ways at the end, one gets a sense of ambiguity here. These three have entirely failed to play roles that captivate or grab us. There is the sense that, while they dream of money, that the more intense and meaningful experiences of life are passing them by.

I keep wondering if I have a Western socialist's outlook too deeply ingrained to see the To movies the way Djeng explicates them. But it seems to me that To's attitude towards money is rigorously consistent throughout his filmography, and that it's in contradistinction with Djeng's reading of To's philosophy. That, and I don't see any place where Djeng really explains his reasoning here. He just says "this is what the scene means; don't feel ashamed of chasing after money," and then he says that's the point of Life Without Principle, as well. There was a little dissociative skirmish in my brain when he said it, as my mind rebelled against what it was being fed. I think your read of the scene where the money floats away in Throwdown is right, and the Lady-and-the-Tramp illusion is very funny. It underlines the way To sees this pursuit of money as a game the characters are sunk too deep into. Ultimately, Cherrie decides to risk it all without the monetary support of her parents, and all of Szeto's lenders are happy to let the money ride so long as he does judo with them. In every instance I see, To is deliberately downplaying the importance of money, and playing up the human interconnections that make life worth living, and that the pursuit of money can obscure.

[Finch]

So, I worked my way through the vast majority of Vol 1 films and was wondering, on the basis of which films I responded to the most, whether Vol 2 would be worth getting eventually (I got Vol 1 at a heavily discounted price at Amazon a few weeks ago)?

The standouts in the first set, for me, were in order of their placement in the set:

The Boxer from Shantung
Executioners from Shaolin
Heroes from the East

Very good:

Five Shaolin Masters
Challenge of the Masters
Crippled Avengers
Dirty Ho

Good:
King Boxer
Shaolin Temple
The Five Venoms

Disappointed by:
The Chinatown Kid

Haven't watched as not really interested: Mighty Peking Man

I've already seen 36th Chamber a few years ago and didn't love it then but I want to revisit with an open mind, especially since I responded strongly to the other non-Heroes of the East films by Kar-Leung in Vol 1. Of the remaining set titles, I'm most curious about Mad Monkey Kung Fu and My Young Auntie. The overall selection strikes me as perhaps weaker compared to Vol 1 (I wasn't a fan of the opening 20 minutes of The Boxer's Omen, to be honest. Maybe one to watch with a midnight crowd instead of on your own? Mercenaries doesn't sound like something I'd re-watch annually).

[feihong]

I think the Venoms films in the new set (Invincible Shaolin, The Kid with the Golden Arm, Magnificent Ruffians) are on the whole weaker than in the first volume (Crippled Avengers, The Five Venoms, Shaolin Temple, Chinatown Kid). The best of these on the new set is Ten Tigers from Kwangtung, which is certainly worth your time. I've written up my take on 36th Chamber a few pages back, and I still find it pretty great. The 2nd sequel, Disciples of the 36th Chamber is also really interesting, casting revolutionary San Ta as the somewhat more orthodox figure, trying to hold an unruly young Fong Sai-Yuk back from using his kung fu to go crazy on the Yuan officials. The films aren't all related really, but I like the ways the various movies gathered around the burning of the Shaolin temple are fun to see in relation to one another. Shaolin Temple offers the most bird's-eye view of the legend, but the laymen come to study kung fu at the temple are recruited in 36th Chamber by San Ta, and the uprising at the end of Disciples of the 36th Chamber seems to precipitate the burning of the temple. Then there's Executioners of Shaolin and Five Shaolin Masters, that focus on the aftermath of the burning of the temple––along with Invincible Shaolin, The Men from the Monastery, Heroes Two, and a couple of other Chang Cheh movies. Each tell different tales, focusing on different characters and either writing out or considerably altering different characters, blending in fictional characters like Fong Sai-Yuk with real historical figures like Hong Xiquan. I like to think of them as varied legends, piled on top of one another in a Shaw-flavored gulash. But it's fun to imagine the various continuities that could be linked between the different films.

Mad Monkey Kung Fu and My Young Auntie are some of Lau Kar-Leung's best movies, and Martial Arts of Shaolin is not great, but it boasts a lot of impressive locations and really fantastic choreography in very large-scale kung fu scenes. The Bare-Footed Kid is a great movie, one of Johnnie To's best. Personally, I fall asleep every time I watch Boxer's Omen, but there are remarkable, grotesque visuals later on in the picture. It's probably really cool to watch if you're high. Mercenaries from Hong Kong looks fun, but yeah, probably not a rewatch at all. I've never seen Return to the 36 Chambers or Five Superfighters, so, yeah, it's probably a 50-50 set more than a 80% good-20% not sort of thing. For me it was worth it because Mad Monkey Kung Fu, 36th Chamber and My Young Auntie are movies I rewatch frequently, and the ones I haven't seen or haven't watched all the way through, really intrigue me.

I kind of hoped the 2nd box would branch out into some of the other Shaw filmmakers, like Hua Shan (Bloody Parrot, Portrait in Crystal), Sun Chung (Deadly Breaking Sword, Avenging Eagle, The Kung Fu Instructor, Rendezvous with Death, Big Bad Sis), or Chor Yuen (Killer Clans, The Magic Blade, Clans of Intrigue, The Sentimental Swordsman)––or even branch more into Chang Cheh's earlier, pre-venoms movies, like Vengeance, The Duel, Four Riders, or Blood Brothers. The Venoms movies specifically are so repetitive, that a second box feature them doesn't make great sense to me––especially when the best of the Venoms movies––House of Traps, The Daredevils, Legend of the Fox, The Rebel Intruders, Shaolin Rescuers, Sword Stained with Royal Blood, Ode to Gallantry––are not here. I kind of started this trying to convince you the 2nd box was worth it, but now I'm not so sure.

[Finch]

It is a bit more of a trickier proposition, this new set, isn't it? Other people who watched Five Superfighters were disappointed by it. I was quite happy that Vol 1 had three films that I'll be re-watching annually and another four that I got a great deal out of. I couldn't even finish Chinatown Kid; I was so bored by it. I find Alexander Sheng such a charisma-free actor and his boyish shtick got old for me well before I even got to his film as lead.

I agree with you that the Kar-Leung films are generally more all-round satisfying (and compassionate) than the Chang Cheh ones though the latter ones can sometimes be more exciting in the moment of watching them compared to Kar-Leung's more restrained (and perhaps more patient?) style, so KL's films would be the main attractions in Vol 2 for me as well. Thank you for your reply, feihong!

[What A Disgrace]

I couldn't pick between volumes 1 and 2, either, for most of the reasons listed above, but I do find the deviations from the kung fu formula in volume 2 more interesting than those of volume 1. The kung fu films in volume 1 just feel like they're from a more diverse stock, and as they dominate both volumes, I think I ultimately come down on the side of volume 1. The relative lack of early Chang Cheh films is the greatest oversight; The Boxer From Shantung is so much more fun and interesting than the Venoms, and it seems that the general consensus is that his earlier work is his best.

[therewillbeblus]

I still haven't made it past the first film in vol 1 (which I had already seen before, as well as a few films from vol 2) but I'm picking up these sets on principle because a) supporting releases like these giant boxes feels like a worthwhile project for longevity, and b) the price per film is so low if you get them at a discount, that why not? I've blind-bought enough of 88 and Eureka's output at over double the price point per film, to wildly inconsistent returns. Purchasing these sets feel like the easiest call for HK cinema blind-buys compared to everything else

[Orlac]

Chang Cheh is defeintly a filmmaker who sacrified quality over quanitity. Although the Venoms films are fun, they suffer from having too many characters with not enough characterisation between them.

[feihong]

I think with Chang Cheh, there are so many films that the quality comes back again and again for another round––and I keep finding films I like. Recently I got to see Attack of the Goddess of Joy, and it was different than any other Chang Cheh film I'd seen, and quite interesting––from a later point in his career than the Venoms films. And I enjoyed Shanghai 13. But I do get the sense that Chang's success ran ahead of his inspiration a lot of the time. There is the famous story of the Shaolin Temple movies, where he asked Lau Kar Leung if there was a story they hadn't done yet, and Lau gave him the story of the burning of the South Shaolin temple (often conflated with the North temple in Chang's movies, a kind of John-Ford-ian touch that seems appropriate as a comparison with Chang). But in those movies and the Jimmy Wang Yu films and the David Chiang/Ti Lung films, Chang is mostly driving the storytelling in the film, and I think what happens in a lot of the Venoms movies is that the Venoms themselves are driving the picture, so to speak. They aren't very charismatic guys––compared to the movie stars Chang worked with in the past. I think those films become dull and repetitive because of the lack of charismatic stars and Chang's frequent seeming to just be going through motions with some gimmick––a la Masked Avengers, Flags of Iron, Kid with the Golden Arm, etc. Still, every few movies Chang seems to come back with another gasp of inspiration. I feel like he had a higher average of that inspiration during the David Chiang/Ti Lung films––those films feel very guided from story beat to story beat. I feel like the Venoms movies sometimes just settle into endless slo-mo backflips. But I think you're right as well––not so many distinctive characters or situations. Even the Venoms films I really like, I can hardly remember the storylines (I think Legend of the Fox and The Daredevils are the most unique to me in that regard).

Still, the more vivid material of Vengeance, Have Sword Will Travel, The Duel, The Anonymous Heroes, The Heroic Ones, Chang's funk-tified Water Margin, Duel of Fists and The Angry Guest, and Four Riders just don't come through in the later work with such a sure hand. I think I'd probably rather see an earlier film I haven't seen, of suspect quality––like The Singing Killer or Young People––than I would a Venoms movie I haven't seen (not sure there's one of those left, though).

Finch, I find Alexander Fu Sheng a charisma vacuum as well; but I did see one film that adjusted that opinion a little bit, a lesser-known Lau Kar-Leung movie called Cat vs. Rat. That picture pits Fu Sheng against Zu Warriors' Adam Cheng, as opposing martial arts masters with an intense, almost Bugs Bunny/Elmer Fudd––level rivalry going. I normally don't enjoy much Hong Kong humor, but that film got to be so obnoxious, it actually passed back around to be clever again in my mind, and there was a kind of a folk-tale-like quality to the two characters––intensely incompatible, always outdoing and outsmarting one another in turn. Fu Sheng was very good in it––though I don't think he would have come across if it had been another actor opposite him, like Ti Lung or someone. Adam Cheng is exactly deadpan enough to make the situation very funny. There is also a Sun Chung film I think is kind of a masterpiece––Deadly Breaking Sword––in which Fu Sheng is quite good. He is also okay in Return of the Sentimental Swordsman, as an opponent of Ti Lung's titular swordsman, who hides a sword-arm covered in runes, which moves so fast and so mercilessly he has to constantly hold it in check. Last good Fu Sheng movie I can recall is a movie with a bunch of the Venoms called Life Gamble, which is sort of like a kung fu version of Casino Royale. Fu Sheng is the James Bond of the film, and surrounded by the far less charismatic Venoms actors, Fu Sheng actually shines pretty brightly. It helps that he seems to be taking the movie a little more seriously, as well. As for Chinatown Kid, I thought he was pretty awful. But seeing the longer release in the Arrow collection did really improve that movie for me––partly by seriously upping Sun Chien's role in the movie, and by giving Fu Sheng's character more of an arc towards being a cynical gangster *sshole. The ending is a completely different affair, in which, instead of Fu Sheng whining at Sun Chien to stay in school and not get into trouble, Fu Sheng just fights the other gangsters to the death to save Sun Chien (I think that's how it goes...I don't remember entirely). There are more differences between the two versions, and it really changes the complexion of the film entirely.

[dwk]

Per an MVD leak, Arrow is going to be breaking up the first set into three smaller releases:

Shaw Brothers Presents Four Films by Chang Cheh
Five Shaolin Masters / Shaolin Temple
The Five Venoms / Crippled Avengers

Shaw Brothers Presents The Basher Box
King Boxer
The Boxer from Shantung
Chinatown Kid

Shaw Brothers Presents Four Films by Lau Kar-Leung
Challenge of the Masters / Executioners of Shaolin
Heroes of the East / Dirty Ho

These are every film in the first set except Mighty Peking Man.

[Matt]

DiabolikDVD has some "dinged" copies of Shawscope 1 at $60

[ryannichols7]

Volume 3 announced on Friday

[Finch]

Box art and all 14 titles have leaked. 13 2k restorations by Arrow and 1 4K restoration of one major title.

Spoiler

One-Armed Swordsman trilogy
Lady Hermit
Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan
The 14 Amazons
The Magic Blade
Clans of Intrigue
Jade Tiger
The Sentimental Swordsman
Killer Constable
The Avenging Eagle
Buddha’s Palm
Bastard Swordsman

[therewillbeblus]

Glad to see the terrific and OOP-Killer Constable in the clan

[Mr Sausage]

I just saw Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan a couple days ago. As a piece of style, it's sumptuous, with beautiful compositions, costumes, sets, and the like. It's also hysterically trashy at the same time, full of sex trafficking, rape, torture, sado-masochism, vengeful Lesbian madams, and bodily dismemberment. There's a lot of fun to be had seeing a 70s exploitation flick filmed in such a handsome style. It should look terrific on blu.

[feihong]

This is what I hoped the second box was going to be, with an emphasis on the fantasy films and the later wuxia titles, and a lot of Chor Yuen. He's a director with his own very distinct brand (you can see him as the leering villain in Jackie Chan's Police Story, and I believe he plays one of Cherie Cheung's suitors in Patrick Tam's movie Cherie). The emphasis is on a kind of loopy, modernist take on wuxia fiction, with a sort of low-key psychedelic visual approach and some of the atmospheric elements of European horror movies. The films themselves are frequently adaptations of wuxia serialist Gu Long. Chor's first few attempts at this are all quite distinct from one another––a lot of those are featured in this set. His later work gets repetitive, and there are quotes from Chor acknowledging that he's eventually getting sick of directing Gu Long adaptations (though he goes on to do a couple more in Taiwan apart from Shaws). Chor peaks early; his initial work is full of innovation, and his first films for Shaws––Duel for Gold, the populist comedy House of 72 Tenants, The Lizard, Sacred Knives of Vengeance, and Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan––indicate a talent that could go far, in almost any direction. Then there is Killer Clans, his very successful Gu Long adaptation, and his talent gets funneled for the next 10 years into interminable Gu Long adaptations (and also a few Jin Yong ones––his two Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre films are pretty good, but there is something in Chor's work that just fits Gu Long's more sweaty, lurid style better). Probably his last really affecting picture for Shaws is Swordsman and Enchantress, which borrows the score to Richard Lester's Robin & Marian in what seems to be its entirety, and in which the villains try and gaslight the heroes into thinking they've been shrunk down and put into a tiny model city for part of the picture. The best elements of Chor's work are these sequences where the visual is groovy and strange, and the atmosphere is one that feels as if anything might emerge from the darkness. "Anything" is usually just some other swordsman who gets defeated quickly by a few backflips from Ti Lung's stunt double, but I think it's to Chor's great credit that you keep feeling as if anything might manifest.

Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan is unlike any of Chor's other movies in its emphasis on grindhouse salaciousness, and its exceptional central roles for Lily Ho and Betty Pei Ti. The film begins, unexpectedly, as a murder mystery, and it expands into a story of exploited women, suborned into sexual slavery, who learn to subvert the system and get revenge for their honor. The film is striking even today for its lesbian romance content––as in Chang Cheh's Vengeance, where one man's love for his "blood brother" proves stronger than the film's rote het romance, the fully sexualized relationship between Lily Ho's courtesan and Betty Pei Ti's brothel madame––though clearly understood to be one of vile exploitation––proves a stronger romantic attachment for the courtesan than the wan theatrics of her attraction to the male constable who keeps subconsciously clearing her of the murders of her clients. The film is clever, suspenseful, sometimes filled with passion, and often blood-curdling, with surprising helpings of action and one of Chor's most inventive and active narratives.

Meanwhile, The Magic Blade was clearly made because of the worldwide success of Sergio Leone's "Man with No Name" movies. Ti Lung plays a bladesman in an uncharacteristic rough poncho, who fights with a curious, short, underhanded blade. He's after revenge. This picture and Clans of Intrigue become the template for the years of Gu Long titles, but these to are particularly charming and specific compared to later ones. I know, for instance, that I've seen Jade Tiger––but I have not one single memory of it. The Sentimental Swordsman is my favorite of the Chor Yuen/Gu Long pictures. Made when the wheels were already falling off the formula, and stinking of desperation in a search for something new, this picture happens to boast one of Gu Long's better premises for a story––although the story's development is not too different from the other pictures in this cycle, introducing one quirky adversary after another in sequence after sequence of confrontations before an ending full of fairly unambitious twists and betrayals. Still, the premise carries the picture very far, and Chor's use of snowbound settings gives the film quite a different patina than most in the cycle. The participation of actor Derek Yee (David Chiang's younger brother, later director of C'est la Vie, Mon Cherie and a lot of other movies) as a sort of secondary hero is also an interesting addition to the formula. This one follows a famous swordsman turned wandering drunk. Years ago, in the search for the elusive Peach Blossom Bandit, his best friend saved his life. Whereupon the grateful swordsman repaid the friend in the most extravagant manner every put to film: he became a slovenly drunk, driving his lovely fiancee into the arms of said friend. When they married, he gave the couple his ancestral manor as a wedding gift. Now he wanders the land, in the grip of very theatrical alcoholism, still a master swordsman, living only with his memories and his melancholy, and a devoted servant. As the Peach Blossom Bandit seems to return, the sentimental swordsman gets swept up in a series of assassinations; falsely accused of the crimes, he resolves to capture the Peach Blossom Bandit for reals this time––even if it means surrendering the last thing that matters to him––his sentimental nature. This one has some themes to it, and that makes it, to my eyes, the most enjoyable of Chor's Gu Long adaptations––even though some aspects of it are very derivative by this point int he sequence.

After King Hu left Shaw Brothers, Cheng Pei-Pei continued to be one of their box office stars. But the pictures she made felt much more stolid and slow than Come Drink with Me, and the plots were incredibly corny. The directors most often paired with her at the time were Lo Wei and Ho Meng-Hua, both of whom were known for working well with actors, but not really challenging them. In general, Ho Meng-Hua films move at a lugubrious pace, until his 70s black magic pictures. But The Lady Hermit is an exception, a fast-paced film where Cheng gets a dramatic, intense role full of action, and gets to face off repeatedly agains a young Shih Szu in the bargain. I remember this picture as great fun––pacy and pretty and imbued with a certain gusto absent from movies like Dragon Swamp and the wretched Five Brothers. The film has style to spare, unlike the promising but awkward The Shadow Whip. It is, to my mind, Cheng Pei-Pei's best star turn after Come Drink with Me and Hong Kong Nocturne.

14 Amazons is a fascinating movie, calling back to an earlier era in which Ivy Ling Po was a huge star, and the films played more like pageants. Ivy was the star of some of the most successful Huangmei operas, like The Love Eterne, Lady General Hua Mu-lan, and The Mermaid. 14 Amazons does not, to my memory, have any singing. But it movies with the stately pace of the opera films, and it trucks in a kind of grandeur and scale which was already almost gone from Shaw Bros productions, even in 1972. The picture seems to boast a cast of thousands, and it features what were nearly brand-new sets for the time, dressed in gorgeous style. A sort of a sequel to the events of Eight-Diagram Pole Fighter, this follows the women of the Yang family as they lead a military campaign to avenge their fallen father and brothers. The picture does a kind of double-duty for its stars, providing a more mature role for Ivy Ling-Po as she coasts towards middle-age, and also giving emerging starlet Lily Ho a striking, energetic role as the surviving, rambunctious male of the clan. The film is focused on giant battle scenes, full of war weaponry (lots of spears and lances), and the scale of it, in terms of people on-screen, is really unlike anything Shaw Brothers was making at the time, or thereafter. That said, it doesn't quite feel like an action movie. There is a line in sententious melodrama that isn't entirely unappealing, and there are a few moments of standout comedy or suspense, but this is much more an historical pageant, in the vein of the Huangmei opera films, than any of the movies Shaws made contemporaneous to it. As a sequel to Eight Diagram Pole Fighter (last film in Shaws initial production run), I find it kind of fascinating.

The One-Armed Swordsman movies are justly famous, sort-of. They augur a kind of intense violence which is very new in the films' moment, but which will become de rigueur for Shaw Bros movies going forward. That said, the first film has a curious sort of pessimism to it which is more fully and effectively teased out in Tsui Hark's 90s remake, The Blade. Jimmy Wang Yu is the ascendant star of these pictures, and he is what makes the movies much harder to appreciate in the modern era, I think. Wang Yu is a pretty weird guy; a decent comparison might be if you decided to make a young Frank Sinatra into a kung fu star. Wang Yu is pretty diminutive in these movies, and he does what I think now comes off as a sort of drag performance of ultra-masculinity, bringing what seems like a lifetime of resentments and misplaced aggressions to his roles. That said, he's a stiff actor and he's very unconvincing in his action scenes. His boyish looks––which carried him through his initial movies––remain boyish even into old age, and the result is that he quickly loses his initial box office draw and makes this fatal plunge into unconvincing machismo from then on. He was apparently also a pain on sets, and had a penchant for playing gross pranks on his leading ladies. Other people will probably defend Wang Yu––I think his principal quality as a male action star is being sort of the first guy through the door at the time when these movies were starting to become visceral and intense. Other male stars of Wang Yu's era––like Lo Lieh and Yueh Hua––are more versatile actors, with, I would say, richer dramatic careers. They are more physically convincing in fight scenes, they go on to play all kinds of roles––but they also remain something less than box office draws themselves, more often falling into ensemble roles or playing heroes as sort of stand-ins for a more demonstrative leading-man. The immediate next generation of stars take the kind of machismo Wang Yu and Chang Cheh were reaching for and turn it up a notch, making their own star power way more credible in the process. I'm talking here about David Chiang and Ti Lung. In a way, these two between them possess most of what Wang Yu wants to communicate in his roles; David is charming, and can appear effortlessly adroit and resourceful. Ti Lung is sort of the real-deal machismo Wang Yu always fronted––a genuinely handsome guy, a commanding, compellingly macho presence (without always seeming like he was within a hairs-breadth of hitting a woman, the way Wang Yu often seemed in romantic roles). All of this is prologue to the disjointed "trilogy" that makes up these films, and the transition we see between the first two, which star Wang Yu, and the third film, which re-stages and recontextualizes the story of the first film with Chang Cheh's next pair of discoveries, David Chiang and Ti Lung. Of the first two films, I actually prefer the second one. The One-Armed Swordsman is a very awkward film, with an early drama that gets functionally dropped for the rest of the movie. The action is painfully slow and awkward––Wang Yu isn't good at this anyway, and he is obviously severely hamstrung by fighting with one arm stuffed into his sleeve. The films is clumsy all the way up to the final fight, where one of Shaws' patented "old guy" actors brandishes a bullwhip and tries to take on Wang Yu. That part is pretty decent, but the film is a drag, and Tsui Hark's remake is a genuine masterpiece made with the same ingredients, so...as for The One-Armed Swordsman Returns, that movie sees Wang Yu in a role he might have imagined for himself, as what seems to be the leader of his own martial cult. The film is mostly just him and his cult walking towards a town where the villain is supposed to be. Wang Yu loses cult members all along the way. Midway through the trip, his wife announces what we've known all along; she's pregnant. At the end, Jimmy fights Tien Feng on a bridge, and it's pretty cool. There is no especially moving denouement for this particular one-armed swordsman after this film. Instead, we get New One-Armed Swordsman, a Japanese anime-style reworking of the same elements into a new drama. In this film, David Chiang becomes the next one-armed swordsman. Losing his arm, the young sword prodigy mopes around an inn as a busboy, until brash swordsman and ideal boyfriend Ti Lung rides into town and notices how dextrous his server is with only one limb to show for it. The two of them f*ck again and again with just their eyes (Chang Cheh has discovered something here, which he will never really own up to, but which will inform most of his movies going forward––the bond these two actors are able to create goes beyond the real, straight into the realm of fantasy desire, in a way Chang clearly wants in these pictures, regardless of whether or not he will admit it), and then when Ti Lung runs afoul of the local villain (Ku Feng appears, young and very handsome, but always the odd-man-out in this would-be-could-be threesome) and gets killed, the mysterious one-armed guy has to get revenge for the beautiful, young, virtuous man who came and brought joy back into the new one-armed swordsman's heart. He fights the villains literally to a standstill. Most of this movie, and the much more rewarding earlier films, Have Sword Will Travel and Vengeance, proves just a dress-rehearsal for the charged partnership between them that unfolds over the next few years. Four movies which immediately follow New One-Armed Swordsman in 1971, which feature the two of them, are far more engaging pictures. Here I'm talking about The Duel, The Anonyous Heroes, Duel of Fists, and The Deadly Duo. The next year after features my stupid favorite, The Angry Guest, the funky Water Margin they do together, Trilogy of Swordsmanship, and the genuinely awesome anti--Vietnam-war movie, Four Riders. These are all just better movies to me than New One-Armed Swordsman––which is possibly a better movie than the other two One-Armed Swordsman movies with Wang Yu. The indelible image than ends the series is David Chiang standing, noble and upright, on the battlement of the castle which was about to be used for 14 Amazons. Ku Feng gives the order to halt the attack against him, as Chiang stares steely-eyed at him. Ku Feng's assistant asks why they should stop fighting with the new one-armed swordsman. "He's dead," says Ku Feng, and gets up to clean up the hundreds of bodies Chiang's hero has left in his wake.

Director Kuei Chih-Hung is best characterized as a prolific director of primarily exploitation films––he does The Boxer's Omen, Corpse Mania, Hex, Bewitched, Spirit of the Raped, several episodes of Shaws' docu-exploitation series The Criminals, The Bod Squad, the infamous Bamboo House of Dolls, and The Delinquent. Early in his career he does the fun Lily Ho assassin movie The Lady Professional. Killer Constable, from this set, is a very weird diversion from his usual fare, an attempt to bring more modern, HK New Wave-style filmmaking to Shaws aging period action formula. The film is shot with David Hamilton-style soft-focus, which contrasts with its brutal violence. The picture is very redolent of the revisionist westerns which arrived all throughout the 70s. Another picture I recall strongly in relationship to this one is Witchfinder General, which gives us a very similar experience of violence, following a man we come to hate as he uses his position of authority to do oppression throughout the countryside. Chen Kuan-Tai plays the increasingly isolated constable, ever more violent in his quest to...to...get some gold back, or something. Chen Kuan-Tai was Shaws first serious martial artist star, recruited not for his acting chops, but for winning a martial arts competition. He always moves wonderfully (even in much more recent movies like Dragon Tiger Gate and The Final Master); this is the first movie where he also gives a thoughtful, well-considered performance.

The Avenging Eagle is, to my mind, the least of Sun Chung's revisionist wuxia pictures. It plays out like an 80s Nintendo game, with two martial artists ever advancing towards a final boss. There is an incredibly obvious twist coming, in relation to these two martial artists, who happen to find each other on the road, and one of them just sort of seems to join the other in a mission of vengeance. You can see it coming a mile away. The music is nice, and there are some fun visuals, including Ku Feng's crazy eagle talons he fights with. But for the real experience of Sun Chung, mystery director who coulda-shoulda-woulda transformed Shaw Bros on its way into the 80s, Deadly Breaking Sword, Rendezvous with Death, and Big Bad Sis are unmissable movies. With those others in my collection, Avenging Eagle is always a pass for me.

I remember Bastard Swordsman only vaguely. I think I fell asleep in it. That could have meant it wasn't very good? The fact that it starred Norman Chu also speaks to that likelihood. Once in a while I just slept through some of these movies when I first saw them. Buddha's Palm, however, I remember as being filled with special effects, with Derek Yee shooting lasers out of his hands everywhere. I see that Kara Wai is in this, which speaks well to it, but I don't remember anything except the thought that the film was too reliant on special effects.

So I think there are a lot of good movies in this set, and a number of movies which, though they might not be too good, are still compellingly watchable. I think the Chor Yuen films are the standout of this box. I can't wait to see Chor's brilliant color lighting rendered in 1080p, with film grain and everything.

[Peacock]

Incredible write-up. Thanks for sharing, very excited to see these now!

[Mr Sausage]

The two of them f*ck again and again with just their eyes (Chang Cheh has discovered something here, which he will never really own up to, but which will inform most of his movies going forward––the bond these two actors are able to create goes beyond the real, straight into the realm of fantasy desire, in a way Chang clearly wants in these pictures, regardless of whether or not he will admit it),

Even Return of the One-Armed Swordsman has maybe the gayest shot in any action movie, a moment where one guy is ostensibly killing himself and the guy behind him, that's shot to look like one is topping the other, complete with O-faces and a blood-spurt money shot coming from just below frame. It's crazy how blatant it is and how Chang never copped to any of it.

I haven't seen enough of the Lung/Chiang films to see the longing gazes, but I do remember one of the Venom Mob movies (Kid with the Golden Arm?) had Philip Kwok and someone else gaze heavily into each other's eyes while talking about touching each other's spears for the first time. It's wild.