The Best Shaw Film You've Seen Recently Is...

[NoKUNGFUforYU]

I just wasn't that entertained by Sword of Swords. I liked From the Highway, and the fights were terribly done. It's not just the action.

I said, not a big Wang Yu fan. His character was a tool, basically, and he allowed a lot of bad stuff happen to his family. Anyway, different strokes.

[teako170]

Heroes Two actually began production a month before MFTM and were filmed concurrently.

[NoKUNGFUforYU]

Well the concurrent things make sense, especially with Shaws and Chang Cheh. Just film the scenes, don't even have to change outfits, etc.

[KyFi]

I watched HEROES OF THE EAST again (I couldn't even guess how many times I've seen it now) as I introduced my young niece and nephew to the world of Shaw Brothers. They were delighted, which was a big thrill for me. Now they (both study martial arts) want to see me show them how to use the three-section staff they saw in the basement! LOL Unfortunately, that's not something that I can do right now due to injuries I sustained in a car accident. When my niece asked when I'll be healed enough to do it, I explained that there's a possibility I won't ever be able to use that weapon again. My nephew said "No way Uncle Bob. You will be able to. Remember when Jet was hurt (in SHAOLIN TEMPLE, another film I just showed them), but he healed up and used them. And you're bigger and stronger than him!" I know I'm a big sap. But what can I say? The kid gave me both inspiration and hope with his naive comment. Shit, it can only hurt to try,right?

Great story, Bob! (And I'm envisioning a training montage of you trying to wield the staff, and dropping it in pain..and then you keep going back to it, and getting stronger and stronger until you're flipping it around like Jet Li. )

[Cold Bishop]

Heroes Two actually began production a month before MFTM and were filmed concurrently.

What about Five Shaolin Masters?

[teako170]

What about Five Shaolin Masters?

12 months after H2 began.

[NoKUNGFUforYU]

Checked out Twin Blades of Doom last month and liked it! Speaking of Shaws, I saw Gallants last night, and if you want to see a decent flick, check it out! Especially for the old dudes out there!

[Tex Killer]

Hidden power of dragon sabre was almost excellent. Plot was easy to follow( not case in every chu yuan movie) & interesting, fighting was great and so are sets. I think director got carried away with use of special FX, there is tad too much explosions and sword&palm blasts...

Well worth checking out.

[Chinatown Kid]

Disciples of Shaolin , Fu Sheng at his best!

[OpiumKungFuCracker]

Disciples of Shaolin , Fu Sheng at his best!

This is next on my watchlist.

[Chinatown Kid]

Hope you enjoy it man, nice action, acting and story. Good overall film.

[Cold Bishop]

Heroes Two actually began production a month before MFTM and were filmed concurrently.

To circle back around to this, I have to ask where you're getting production dates from?

I've heard it repeated so many times from so many different corners that Heroes Two was a rushed job to placate an impatient Shaw Bros., that I've accepted it as gospel. Certainly, looking at the films themselves, it would make sense.

I don't doubt there's plenty of misinformation floating about (nightmare images of Asian Cult Cinema come flying at me, like swirling newspaper montages in films of yore), but I'd consider it something of a find to correct this. Even Brian @ Coolasscinema puts this down as the second conceived of the Cycle:

Beginning with FIVE SHAOLIN MASTERS (1974), weather problems hindered that production so HEROES TWO (1973) and MEN FROM THE MONASTERY (1974) were sent into production.

[tantao3-son of tantao2]

"Beginning with FIVE SHAOLIN MASTERS (1974), weather problems hindered that production so HEROES TWO (1973) and MEN FROM THE MONASTERY (1974) were sent into production"...this is the kind of information I like...

[reason108]

Just watched Demon of the Lute. What a crazy, fun movie that is. It says that the movie is dedicated to kids and is sort of a kids movie. Or, perhaps the writer/director did lots of acid right before putting this film together. And, normally little kids annoy the crap out of me but this movie has one of the coolest kids I have ever seen in a film. No idea who the kid is though. But, this movie does have a charm to it that makes its way through the zany story and action.

[Tex Killer]

One of those movies I watch at least once every year. Almost flawless masterpiece, fu sheng gives his best performance ever as vengeful man. Ti lung is great as black eagle, storyline is exceptionally wellcrafted and while I usually don´t like flashbacks those really do their work well as watcher learns more about black eagles dark past...

Sets and costumes are good and choreography crisp. Tang Chia is the man. Sun Chung made excellent flick and one of best Shaw movies.

One tiny complain though. As movie has serious tone, unfortunately director did let fu sheng do bit comedy in restaurant scene. Unnecessary thing here.

[OpiumKungFuCracker]

One of those movies I watch at least once every year. Almost flawless masterpiece, fu sheng gives his best performance ever as vengeful man. Ti lung is great as black eagle, storyline is exceptionally wellcrafted and while I usually don´t like flashbacks those really do their work well as watcher learns more about black eagles dark past...

Sets and costumes are good and choreography crisp. Tang Chia is the man. Sun Chung made excellent flick and one of best Shaw movies.

One tiny complain though. As movie has serious tone, unfortunately director did let fu sheng do bit comedy in restaurant scene. Unnecessary thing here.

Thank you, I will add this on the top of my watchlist. Can't wait to pop this one in!!

[teako170]

To circle back around to this, I have to ask where you're getting production dates from?

I've heard it repeated so many times from so many different corners that Heroes Two was a rushed job to placate an impatient Shaw Bros., that I've accepted it as gospel. Certainly, looking at the films themselves, it would make sense.

I don't doubt there's plenty of misinformation floating about (nightmare images of Asian Cult Cinema come flying at me, like swirling newspaper montages in films of yore), but I'd consider it something of a find to correct this. Even Brian @ Coolasscinema puts this down as the second conceived of the Cycle:

I acquired all the beginning (and ending) productions dates directly from the Shaw Brothers studio. Like Brian, I have all the magazines of that era as well but this data comes directly from the source.

Beginning with FIVE SHAOLIN MASTERS (1974), weather problems hindered that production so HEROES TWO (1973) and MEN FROM THE MONASTERY (1974) were sent into production.

To further comment on the above quote you provided. Yes, weather did hamper production in Taiwan. This was well documented in CC's Memoirs and he even admitted he was not ready in the infancy of his Changgong. So he stayed in HK and shot H2, MFTM and others before production finally shifted to Taiwan (in June '74). The dates (1973 and 1974) are of course "release dates" and have no bearing on when a film was actually shot or in what order.

The production data is based upon SB's remuneration to the cast and crew. Pre-production of course is an entirely different animal. No doubt CC was over in Taiwan before the whole entourage flew over in June 74 getting things set up, planning, etc. But due to the weather had to opt to work on those other films in HK before he could do 5SM in Taiwan.

Not sure when CC had his first idea for 5SM but he was definitely "planning" it well before he started it. Look at Chinatown Kid. When was that lensed? 1977. But when was it conceived? 1975. And here's a fun factoid on that film... why did CC and Fu Sheng do such quickie shots in SF and not film more there? CC felt his life would be in danger if he did.

[Tex Killer]

Thank you, I will add this on the top of my watchlist. Can't wait to pop this one in!!

You should definitely check it out soon. You are likely aware some footage is missing on the ivl disc:cry:?

[Chinatown Kid]

Hey T, why was Chang afriad for his life in SF ? The Triads? I'd like to know considering Chinatown Kid is one of my favorite Shaws of all time.

[Drunken Arts]

I, too, have Avenging Eagle high on my wishlist to buy/see. Keep hearing sooo much good stuff regarding it.

But past two nights i watched The Water Margin and Intimate Confessions of A Chinese Courtesan...

ICOACC being the best out of the two for me, i loved it, dont think there was any thing in it that put it down/pissed me off etc, i felt for alot of the characters, and the ending was awesome. 5 Stars for me.

Water Margin was ace too, it was a shame there was very little Ti Lung/Wu Song, as im a big fan of Tiger Killer/Delightful Forest, but i really got into it, cant wait to watch All Men Are Brothers next

How much Ti Lung in comparison to Water Margin has All Men Are Brothers got in it? Cheers

[Cold Bishop]

It's been a while since I've seen it, but I think he mostly pops up in the end. But it's quite the "heroic bloodshed" moment.

[massa_yoda]

FOUR RIDERS (1972)

I took a (life) gamble on this because it sounded interesting and the trailer looked solid. Got it on itunes with a few other titles. I'm glad I took the chance. Great film. Starts very serene and calm. As if the world is at peace. Then you meet the 'four riders'. There is a brief commentary on the mistreatment of soldiers after war (ten years before First Blood!) as the plot involves a group of bad guys using ex-soldiers to deliver drugs. Yasuaki Kurata is one of the main thugs. He considers these soldiers as basically trash and expendable. Anyways, the intensity of the movie steadily increases until reaching an action-packed finale in a gymnasium. Lady is the Boss, this isn't though. Huge ending.

Only gripe is the anachronisms. This is supposed to be 1953, but they didn't even try here. Everything from the cars, the costumes, the long-haired American soldiers...it screams 1970s. Cold Bishop mentioned earlier that this was intentional...but why? Were they not allowed to make this a present day film? Even with this, though, I loved the production values that the location shooting brought to the picture. When they are driving around in the beginning there's no fake-looking background. The actors are actually at the locations driving around. Excellent!

Spoilers ahead...

In an early scene, Chen Kuan Tai reads from the bible about the four horsemen of the apocalypse. They go all out here and show actual images of the horsemen shooting arrows and killing people. So what's this all about? What is Chang Cheh trying to say here? Obviously, we have four people called 'riders' in the title, but I can't seem to make sense of how they could represent the four horsemen in any way. To me, it more has to do with the "end of the world" for these characters. How they face the end of their lives. Or perhaps how "the horsemen" is really just the evil that people do to each other (conquest, war, famine, death). So our righteous heroes fight against the horsemen, or basically evil, and lose. You also have the final shot of the movie, showing four people in the distance, which seems to reiterate (to me anyways) how this is more about the simple forces of evil that are lurking in the distance, beyond our view, behind the peace and calm of the world...

[Cold Bishop]

I jotted down in my Chang Cheh notes that it's an "apocalyptic work". It came at the start of a rather grim period in Chang's filmography, followed by the socio-economic suicide of The Delinquent and the disintegrating brotherhood of Blood Brothers. I don't know if Chang Cheh was in a downbeat mood or if that's just how his film slate lined up, but these three films take the typical tragedy and violence of Chang's film and strips away the usual romanticism. The result are unusually pessimistic, if not nihilistic.

I don't think the opening is "serene". It's empty, barren, lifeless. The only stirring of life being the figures frantically running in the distance and the flower growing amidst the emptiness (a rather blunt metaphor for our four heroes, and one that doesn't quite hold up). Common sense tells you that its a "flash-forward", that the four people running are our four heroes. You expect the film to wrap back around, and that our heroes will eventually end up on the run in the same countryside later in the film. Yet that's not what it is. Rather unusual for a Shaw film (and really, most commercial cinema the world-over), it's a completely metaphorical scene. It's not suppose to be read as happening in the "reality" of the fiction, but as an embodiment of some idea that informs the film. When we return to the same landscape at the end, now completely frozen over, all life (the flower) being completely snuffed out, its clear Chang is making a statement about a world that's gone to hell, perhaps irrevocably.

This is where we get back to the "deliberate anachronism" of its period setting. There's no way Chang and co. wasn't aware how out-of-place much of the film was. Seoul in '72 is a far cry from Seoul in the fifties, and there's no reason to shoot on location if they wanted to even attempt to capture the period. It would probably be cheaper not to. It's an odd reference point, but the film does remind me of M*A*S*H*, another Korean War films that deliberately flubbed period detail. The reason: its the only way to make the Vietnam War palatable to audiences. I really feel Chang was doing something similar, trying to capture the bleak mood in Southeast Asia in the era of Vietnam.

HK's mainstream films of the period do such a good job of scrubbing out political ideas that its easy to forget that the Vietnam War was raging just across the South China Sea. While Hong Kong itself was insulated from the warfare, the entire region were still deep into a "Red Scare". Most of the "free" countries in the region were essentially military-state dictatorships (including South Korea and, while Chang would never admit it, Taiwan). Many other countries regularly saw the evidence of war on its way towards the Indochine Peninsula, and many hosted bases or the R&R leaves of American soldiers. Even Hong Kong, one of the more democratic hubs of the region and one that managed to stay away from the conflict, was a colonial state still reeling from the severe anti-leftist repercussion from the '67 riots. I think what Chang Cheh was trying to do was not make a film of the Korean War but an examination at militarized, capitalist Asia under the shadow of the Cold War. The plot may say '53, but there's not getting around that the film portrays '73.

I agree that the "Four Horsemen" analogy is a bit confused (how can someone be both flowers and harbingers of doom), but I think it's there to underscore the "apocalyptic" overtones of the narrative. I also think the film is something of a throwback: the film's mix of red-light districts and military police really resembles the Japanese Film Noir of the 1960s. Considering Chang (and most Chinese filmmakers) were acutely aware of Japanese cinema, I wouldn't be surprised if this was deliberate.

I highly recommend this blog post on the film. Intriguingly, I didn't come to it until after jotting down the "apocalyptic work" note, but it does a good job explicating the film's bleak atmosphere.

[Tex Killer]

I just wasn't that entertained by Sword of Swords. I liked From the Highway, and the fights were terribly done. It's not just the action.

I said, not a big Wang Yu fan. His character was a tool, basically, and he allowed a lot of bad stuff happen to his family. Anyway, different strokes.

If that bothered you, do not check out "shadow boxer". Main character is complete fool when watches people(including himself) suffer and die around him, he has only chinese symbol "patience" in his mind.

[paimeifist]

I watched Avenging Eagle again a week or so ago, it remains one of my favorite movies, and possibly my favorite at times, haha. I also watched Life Gamble, which was a fun movie, but a little light on the fighting and Fu Sheng and Lo Meng were basically wasted. I'm thinking of getting in to some venoms tonight.