NEED Help With NA Shaw Brothers Releases

[QueenBlast]

I have this friend who inherited a video rental shop from his retiring parents. They have a martial arts section, way out of date, like only 20 titles, half are Chuck Norris and the rest are Saturn releases, everything still on VHS. His parents never bothered to update that section because they said customers hardly ever rented from it. Once my friend got possession of the shop he immediately took all the old VHS tapes and put them on EBay, making sure he got DVD copies of the rarer videos first. I told him the reason no one rented the martial atys videos was that they all sucked, and his parents would have done a lot better if they had the Southgate Shaw Brothers releases or at least some of the Ocean Shores releases instead of "Super Dragons Dynamo" and "Dragon Force Operation".

I told him he needed all the Bruce Lee movies ( how could his parents not think of that??? ) and about how popular any film from the Shaw Brothers studio was. Since he will be starting from scratch I need a list of all the legal Celestial releases, the company that released them ( Such as Dragon Dynasty ), and a heads up on anything that has gone out of print, or is about to, so that we can get those titles first before they become hard to find. So far I only know that "Return to the 36th Chamber" was a legal release. Thank you.

[inframan]

http://www.kungfucinema.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6818

[remo]

I told him he needed all the Bruce Lee movies ( how could his parents not think of that??? ) and about how popular any film from the Shaw Brothers studio was.

Popular with who? If he's your friend you shouldn't mislead him... we might care about these old movies, but the average video store customer certainly does not. I'm sure Bruce still has some drawing power, but if you're expecting 70s Shaw flicks to fly off the shelves I think you're going to be sorely disappointed. Start small.

[Fang Shih-yu]

Start small.

I agree with this! A good Shaw DVD to begin with may be a title like King Boxer or The Five Deadly Venoms!

[greenfan]

Whatever you get, make sure they include English dubs. You should probably look to get the classic Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung films before you dive headfirst into Shaws.

[DeathFuMaster]

I would suggest you start with the modern releases from Dragon Dynasty or Tokyo Shock.

[QueenBlast]

I was well aware that there are already threads on the topic of the NA Celestial Shaw Brothers releases. You do realize that those threads are full of outdated links that no longer work. And they do not give me the relevant data I need which is what is available as an uncut release vs. releases that may have been redubbed and reedited, as what has happened with so many other HK DVDs released in the past few years, of any companies that may have released a substandard World Northal print rather than the restored Celestial print, and if there are any movies about to go out of print and we must get right away before they are gone vs. new releases.

Popular with who? If he's your friend you shouldn't mislead him... we might care about these old movies, but the average video store customer certainly does not. I'm sure Bruce still has some drawing power, but if you're expecting 70s Shaw flicks to fly off the shelves I think you're going to be sorely disappointed. Start small.

I was in no way misleading my friend. He wanted an "Old School Kung Fu" section for films made prior to 1985 that was separate from the action section which would have contemporary HK films and Asian actors in Hollywood studio films. His parents Kung Fu section, which was put there back when those films were still too new to be called old school, had not been added to since the 1980s and the boxes of the videos had turned purple and blue from old age. My friend is well aware any films added to this section can be considered nostalgic just the same as the section that has the Cary Grant movies. My friend specifically wanted to have a decent collection of classic movies on the shelves. In the past he has discovered that most of the classic Disney DVDs are out of print and only available as overpriced on EBay ( going between $100 and $700 ) and could not replace many of the old Disney VHS tapes. I am not sure what Celestial's policy is on shuffling movies back into the vault like Disney does, but I also know that if any one of these movies goes out of print that it may take years or never for them to go back in print. You realize it has been 20 years since the last legal release of a classic Shaw Brothers film on home video? My friend wants a huge selection of martial arts movies. The store has been there for decades now and is pretty large. And once all the old VHS tapes were removed and replaced with thinner DVDs he found out that he had two thirds of the storage area empty and half the shelves bare.

I agree with this! A good Shaw DVD to begin with may be a title like King Boxer or The Five Deadly Venoms!

We were thinking of starting with something else as both "Five Fingers of Death" and "Five Deadly Venoms" have been available for years. Although those copies were from bootleg sources and the new releases would be uncut, restored and remastered, we were looking more for classic Shaws that were not on the shelves of Blockbuster for the past decade, something like "The One Armed Swordsman" or "Five Element Ninjas"

Whatever you get, make sure they include English dubs. You should probably look to get the classic Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung films before you dive headfirst into Shaws.

My friend already has plenty of classic Jackie Chan action movies ( many with Sammo ) in the action section. We had a long discussion about the edited and redubbed Chan releases V.S. some uncut releases and if he wants to buy something with subtitles. It was agreed that he would rather buy from the Golden Harvest archives whenever there is an uncut original English dub release rather than buy a Disney release and then having to buy the same film twice when an uncut version becomes available.

UPDATE:

this is what my friend has so far in his old school Kung Fu section. I gave some suggestions but ultimately he decided based on if the catalog said widescreen and dubbed in English.

SHAW BROTHERS

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin ( Dragon Dynasty )

5 Deadly Venoms ( Dragon Dynasty )

8 Diagram Pole Fighter ( Dragon Dynasty )

Challenge of the Masters ( Tokyo Shock )

The Duel ( Funmation )

Heroes of the East ( Dragon Dynasty )

House of Traps ( Image )

The One Armed Swordsman ( Dragon Dynasty )

The Return of the One Armed Swordsman ( Dragon Dynasty )

The Return of the Five Deadly Venoms ( Dragon Dynasty ) Crippled Avengers aka Mortal Combat. Why the name change? It is not even a sequel.

Return to the 36th Chamber ( Dragon Dynasty )

GOLDEN HARVEST

Dragon Lord ( Disney )

Eastern Condors ( 20th Century Fox )

Enter the Dragon Special Edition ( Warner Brothers )

Last Hurrah for Chivalry ( Dragon Dynasty )

Magnificent Butcher ( 20th Century Fox )

Prodigal Son ( 20th Century Fox )

Shanghai Express ( Dragon Dynasty )

Warriors Two ( 20th Century Fox )

SEASONAL FILMS

Drunken Master ( Sony )

Secret Rivals ( Crash Cinema )

Secret Rivals II ( Crash Cinema )

Snake in the Eagles Shadow ( Sony )

INDEPENDENT

Incredible Kung Fu Master ( Wu Tang/Ground Zero )

Martial Arts 4 Film Favorite Set ( Warner Brothers ) Militant Eagle/The Prodigal Boxer/Moonlight Sword and Jade Lion/The Bloody Fists

Master of the Flying Guillotine Ultimate Edition ( Pathfinder Home Entertainment )

Urban Action Collection ( Warner Brothers ) Black Belt Jones/Black Samson/Hot Potato/Three The Hard Way

[masterofoneinchpunch]

I was well aware that there are already threads on the topic of the NA Celestial Shaw Brothers releases. You do realize that those threads are full of outdated links that no longer work. ...

Can you point to one link out of my thread posting that is outdated? They are all Amazon links (except for a couple of company thread postings) and should still work correctly. If you find one please tell me then I will fix it.

Actually did you see my posting? It has ALL legit R1 releases for Shaw Brothers including the release date and Amazon link.

All the R1 links in my posting are widescreen and from Celestial. In the future I will probably put which ones have English dubbing, but ultimately I'm an original language guy so it did not interest me.

[QueenBlast]

Can you point to one link out of my thread posting that is outdated? They are all Amazon links (except for a couple of company thread postings) and should still work correctly. If you find one please tell me then I will fix it.

Actually, the sticky thread I was talking about was Shaw Brothers films to be released on DVD in North America!!. Your list is in the thread All R1 Celestials...labels/titles/dates? which I had assumed would be a list of mostly foreign releases. My friend wanted to stay away from foreign companies like Tai Seng because their DVDs are missing the English dub and often have the inferior Media Asia prints. Back around 1995 Tai Sing had a few early Shaw Brothers movies and I wound up buying a substandard copy of Come Drink With Me with no English dub. I wanted my friend to have the authorized restored Celestial releases.

BTW, I myself did not wait for the Celestials to be released in the U.S. When they first came out there was no press release for any American distributors, and I was worried that if any American versions did get released that they would be redubbed and reedited much the same way the Golden Harvest films had. So I began buying imports from Asia and playing them on my hacked all region player. Had I known that the American releases wold follow so fast and be uncut with the missing English dubs then I would not have done something so unnecessarily expensive as buying imports.

[kungfusamurai]

Those are some good titles you've recommended to your friend. You should also add:

7 Grandmasters (Tokyo Shock/Media Blasters)

The Master (Tokyo Shock)

Martial Club (Tokyo Shock)

My Young Auntie (Dragon Dynasty)

Heroes of The East (Dragon Dynasty)

Return of The Deadly Venoms was a Crash Cinema DVD release retitling. I'm not sure if it was ever shown theatrically under that title. Dragon Dynasty probably didn't think Crippled Avengers sounded cool enough, and Mortal Combat might be confused with the game-turned-movie of the same name.

And there's a number of Well Go USA titles like Delightful Forest worth adding.

How about Japanese action films, like the Sonny Chiba stuff or samurai flicks like the Lone Wolf & Cub films. Those might do well too. But they don't all have english dub tracks, although there are English dub versions of those LW&C flicks (Shogun Assassin, etc...).

KFS

[QueenBlast]

Those are some good titles you've recommended to your friend. You should also add:

7 Grandmasters (Tokyo Shock/Media Blasters)

According to the catalog that movie is only available in Cantonese and subtitled in English. My friend specifically wants English dub available on the discs for the finicky renters who only want English

The Master (Tokyo Shock)

I heard that title was out of print. It was one of the titles that were listed as out of stock in the catalog.

How about Japanese action films, like the Sonny Chiba stuff or samurai flicks like the Lone Wolf & Cub films. Those might do well too. But they don't all have english dub tracks, although there are English dub versions of those LW&C flicks (Shogun Assassin, etc...).

There was once an English dub letterbox release of "The Street Fighter", "Return of the Street Fighter", "The Street Fighter's Last Revenge" and "Sister Street Fighter" back when New Line finally released the uncensored versions on home video and laser disc. My friend ordered "Street Fighter" and returned it because it was the edited R Rated version which looked like it was taken from the original VHS release and artificially letterboxed. I guess no one released remastered versions of those movies on DVD yet. A lot of other Sony Chiba movies were dubbed in English but none seem to have remastered letterbox versions available on DVD yet. There was even a couple of Zatoichi movies dubbed into English that have never made it to American home video. None of the dubbed Babycart are available as proper remasters, but that would not matter. Those movies are major edits. Think two completely different movies in the series edited together to make one new film. And most of the blood and guts are gone, the whole reason for even watching those movies.

[Morgoth Bauglir]

The Tokyo Shock version of 7 Grandmasters has the English dub. Same with The Master with Chen Kuan Tai. Do you have to order from a catalog? Both of these movies are available for a decent price on pretty much any website that sells movies.

[Kwok Choi]

I was in no way misleading my friend. He wanted an "Old School Kung Fu" section for films made prior to 1985 that was separate from the action section which would have contemporary HK films and Asian actors in Hollywood studio films........ My friend is well aware any films added to this section can be considered nostalgic.......My friend specifically wanted to have a decent collection of classic movies on the shelf....My friend wants a huge selection of martial arts movies.

We were thinking of starting with something else as both "Five Fingers of Death" and "Five Deadly Venoms" have been available for years. Although those copies were from bootleg sources and the new releases would be uncut, restored and remastered, we were looking more for classic Shaws that were not on the shelves of Blockbuster for the past decade, something like "The One Armed Swordsman" or "Five Element Ninjas"

My friend already has plenty of classic Jackie Chan action movies ( many with Sammo ) in the action section.

UPDATE:

this is what my friend has so far in his old school Kung Fu section. I gave some suggestions but ultimately he decided based on if the catalog said widescreen and dubbed in English.

SHAW BROTHERS

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin ( Dragon Dynasty )

5 Deadly Venoms ( Dragon Dynasty )

8 Diagram Pole Fighter ( Dragon Dynasty )

Challenge of the Masters ( Tokyo Shock )

The Duel ( Funmation )

Heroes of the East ( Dragon Dynasty )

House of Traps ( Image )

The One Armed Swordsman ( Dragon Dynasty )

The Return of the One Armed Swordsman ( Dragon Dynasty )

The Return of the Five Deadly Venoms ( Dragon Dynasty ) Crippled Avengers aka Mortal Combat. Why the name change? It is not even a sequel.

Return to the 36th Chamber ( Dragon Dynasty )

GOLDEN HARVEST

Dragon Lord ( Disney )

Eastern Condors ( 20th Century Fox )

Enter the Dragon Special Edition ( Warner Brothers )

Last Hurrah for Chivalry ( Dragon Dynasty )

Magnificent Butcher ( 20th Century Fox )

Prodigal Son ( 20th Century Fox )

Shanghai Express ( Dragon Dynasty )

Warriors Two ( 20th Century Fox )

SEASONAL FILMS

Drunken Master ( Sony )

Secret Rivals ( Crash Cinema )

Secret Rivals II ( Crash Cinema )

Snake in the Eagles Shadow ( Sony )

INDEPENDENT

Incredible Kung Fu Master ( Wu Tang/Ground Zero )

Martial Arts 4 Film Favorite Set ( Warner Brothers ) Militant Eagle/The Prodigal Boxer/Moonlight Sword and Jade Lion/The Bloody Fists

Master of the Flying Guillotine Ultimate Edition ( Pathfinder Home Entertainment )

Urban Action Collection ( Warner Brothers ) Black Belt Jones/Black Samson/Hot Potato/Three The Hard Way

It will be a good idea for your friend to post some info on the forum as well this would make it a lot easier for us to help because we could then make recommendations from both perspectives.

[QueenBlast]

The Tokyo Shock version of 7 Grandmasters has the English dub. Same with The Master with Chen Kuan Tai. Do you have to order from a catalog? Both of these movies are available for a decent price on pretty much any website that sells movies.

Basically he gets his movies from a distributor. This distributor sells movies to rental stores for dirt cheap wholesale prices, provided they agree to buy lots of movies a month from them. The distributor was also able to get movies that were not easy to find on the shelves of stores, like the Kino Video and Criterion releases. Admittedly Amazon has made these distributors obsolete, but my friends store has been serviced by the same distributor since the 80s. And besides, there is a money back guarantee policy if the movie does not live up to standards. I remember trying to get Amazon to refund my season one box set of the Kung Fu television series because it contained edited for syndication episodes that were also cropped to look letterboxed and not the original uncut episodes. Instead of a refund I was offered credit minus a restocking fee, and on top of that would have to pay for the return shipping. That's another thing my friend's distributor takes care of, free shipping and return shipping. My friend gets a thin catalog each month of new upcoming releases, and a huge thick phonebook sized catalog every December that has every movie the distributor can lay his hands on. The catalog mentions if foreign films are dubbed in English and it did not mention that 7 Grandmasters was anything other than subtitled. That misinformation would have come from Tokyo Shock and whatever was in their catalog.

It will be a good idea for your friend to post some info on the forum as well this would make it a lot easier for us to help because we could then make recommendations from both perspectives.

The only relevant recommendation needed is which Shaw Brothers movies he should be getting first based on which ones are about to go out of print, or have already gone out of print and becoming harder to find. Start with those ones first. He will eventually get everything, but as per my suggestion should start with the ones that are on their way off the shelves first rather than find out next year that something like "House of Traps" is no longer available. That happened with Warner Brother's Amsterdam Connection release, and that film is not even close to being a classic.