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| Images courtesy of Arrow Video |
The first time most western filmgoers ever heard of Shaw
Brothers or Shaw Scope was at the beginning of Quentin Tarantino’s
Chinese/Japanese kung-fu/yazuka mashup homage Kill Bill Vol. 1 which
prefaced the opening credits sequence with the famed logo and its original
cue. But thanks to boutique labels like
Arrow Video, Shout Factory, Eureka Entertainment, 88 Films and occasional side
labels like Diabolikdvd’s Cauldron Films or Neon Eagle, the general filmgoing
public understanding of what that Shaw Brothers logo and moniker means is
beginning to change if not grow more thoroughly informed. With all of the aforementioned labels putting
Shaw Brothers films out like no tomorrow, often difficult to keep up with, western
filmgoers went from lousy cropped and poorly English dubbed tapes and DVDs that
were hard to find to full digital restorations (usually in 4K or 2K depending) that
are widely readily available at their fingertips.
While the Shaw Brothers outfit began initially in 1925
between Runje, Runme and Runde Shaw, the company didn’t take shape until Run
Run Shaw and Runme set up what was officially dubbed the ‘Shaw Brothers’ company
in 1958. It during the 1960s that they
began shifting towards the wuxia film with such epics as King Hu’s 1966 Come
Drink with Me (released as a standalone Arrow Video disc) and Chang Cheh’s
1967 The One-Armed Swordsman which itself spawned a trilogy that spilled
over into the early 1970s. Having formed
the constructed the largest privately owned film studio in the world aptly
named Movietown, a number of period wuxias and martial-arts swordplay and
kung-fu films emerged at a breakneck pace with as many as up to thirty pictures
produced and released per year. However,
within the walls of Movietown and the Shaw Brothers empire, three of its
key executives Raymond Chow, Peter Choy and Leonard Ho broke away from the
company to form their own rival outfit Golden Harvest.
With the rise of Golden Harvest around the corner, the Shaw
Brothers company worked furiously to generate as many action films across the
map as humanly possible, resulting in a collection of films curated by Arrow
Video in their first volume of the aptly named Shaw Scope ranging from
1972 to 1979. Amassing a total of twelve
films all of which have been lovingly restored in 2K alongside both the
original Hong Kong versions as well as the reedited Americanized dubs as well
as two soundtrack CDs featuring an assortment of key tracks from the Shaw
library, ShawScope Vol. 1 first appeared on store shelves in 2021 in an
elongated rectangular hard box replete with an extensive multimedia book
package housing all fourteen discs.
While that set has long since gone out of print as the rights issues
over the Shaw Brothers libraries continue to shift through the corridors of
Eureka Entertainment or 88 Films, collectors able to procure it will have quite
the introductory feast to what the Shaw Brothers moniker and brand more or less
represents. With this, let us take a
look at the first of three major boxed-set releases from the United Kingdom
based boutique label.
The first film in the Shaw Brothers set from 1972 King
Boxer or Five Fingers of Death as it was entitled in the Warner
Brothers US theatrical release as fate would have it is the work of Korean
director Chung Chang-wha and with the help of the television show Kung-Fu helped
popularize the chopsocky subgenre in the West.
Penned by Chiang Yang and starring The 36th Chamber of Shaolin
actor Lo Lieh, it told of a budding martial arts student named Zhihao
(Lieh) in training under the guidance of Master Sun (Mien Fang) competing in a
tournament for the title of best fighter.
But when nefarious Meng Tung-Shun (Feng Tien) covets the title, he
enlists Han Lung (James Nam) to destroy the young competitor’s chances by
crushing the boy’s hands before having mastered the Iron Fist. Despite the injuries, Zhihao pushes on ahead,
culminating in a while finale replete with glowing red hands supercharged with
power. With overt influences and
references within Kill Bill Vol. 1 including but not limited to the Ironside
Theme and an eye-gouging martial arts technique as well as kicking off the
kung-fu boom in the US, King Boxer starts out the first ShawScope volume
with a bang.
Second in the lineup and on disc two of the box is recurring
Shaw Brothers stalwart and magnifico Chang Cheh’s The Boxer from Shantung,
a crimson drenched kung-fu/gangster actioner concerning young drifter Ma Yung
Chen (Chen Kuan-Tai) making his way to Shanghai seeking money and power while
clashing with established gangster Tan Sze (David Chiang) and their mutual
rival Master Yang (Nan Chiang). Generating
a ragtag gang of miscreants for his own gangster clan, Ma pushes ahead with his
ambitions resulting in a cataclysmic bloodbath whose fights aren’t as frequent
as the previous offering in the ShawScope set but they still pack a
ferocious punch. Co-directed by Cheh and
Pao Huseh-li within only a month, featuring slick cinematography by Kung Mu-to
and Yuen Teng-bong with fluid camera movement and more polished battles, the
film’s only drawback is perhaps the running time, amassing two hours and ten
minutes roughly. Nevertheless, Chang
Cheh was a master film worker for the Shaw Brothers Studio and The Boxer
from Shantung is a solid martial-arts gangster flick.
Not even two years later, Chang Cheh was back in the
director’s chair with his unfolding Shaolin Cycle series beginning with
1974’s Five Shaolin Masters followed by its prequel film two years later
with Shaolin Temple. Concerning
Shaolin’s historic entanglements and confrontations with the Qing Dynasty, the
film focuses on five Shaolin patriot fighters who have narrowly escaped being
burned alive by Qing soldiers who have otherwise massacred everyone in the
temple. Reconvening over a sworn oath of
vengeance, the five disciples soon begin honing their own individual fighting
techniques with practice and training aiming to reclaim victory over the Qing
dynasty’s band of martial artists. Starring
David Chiang and Ti Lung as well as Wang Lung Weiwith action choreography by
Lau Kar-leung and Lau Kar Wing, the largely Taiwan-filmed actioner was one of
four (and the very last) features generated by Chang Cheh in collaboration with
Lau Kar-leung. In the prequel film Shaolin
Temple, the film reunited many of the cast members from the first film with
the crew sans Lau Kar-leung (Chang Cheh’s first without him) and as such
functions as one of the so-called Venoms Mob films. Much of the film is dedicated to overly
dangerous training the likes of which feel like elaborate booby traps where one
false move can impale you. The film is
comparatively more nuanced and mannered than Five Shaolin Masters,
making for a bigger buildup and payoff in the film’s grand finale which is more
than earned.
For anyone expecting the fifth iteration to continue in the
vein of Shaw Brothers’ kung-fu or wuxia offerings, the set makes a marked
departure into absurdist kaiju camp in Ho Meng-Hua’s Goliathon otherwise
more widely known as Mighty Peking Man.
Penned by Five Shaolin Masters screenwriter Ni Kuang and prominently
starring Swiss actress Evelyne Kraft as a jungle queen, Mighty Peking Man is
the Hong Kong response to John Guillermin’s much maligned 1976 remake of King
Kong and is the Shaw Brothers equivalent of King Kong vs. Godzilla with
a guy in a suit attacking miniatures.
Aping the plot of King Kong save for the wild scantily clad queen
and tamer of the hairy beast, the film was among the most expensive Shaw
Brothers productions up to that time at around 6 million Hong Kong dollars and
it took more than a year to finish shooting and editing all of the many visual
effects together. The result resembles
neither Toho’s legendary kaiju nor RKO/Paramount’s timeless giant gorilla and
has the patina of a Shaw Brothers production but still resorts to a guy in a suit
that reportedly largely was made up of real human hair stomping across
buildings and cars. Still, the film did
well in both China and North America where it was released in 1980 and once
again in 1999 under Quentin Tarantino’s home video label Rolling Thunder
Pictures.
After working on The Boxer from Shantung as a martial
arts choreographer, Lau Kar-leung soon began mounting his own film productions
as a director for the Shaw Brothers machine and joining forces with Mighty Peking
Man screenwriter Ni Kuang and led by Gordon Liu went on to make Challenge
of the Masters in one of many films chronicling the experiences of
real-life Chinese martial artist Wong Fei-hung.
Starring Liu as the legendary fighter in the prime of his youth before
undergoing extensive training that would make him into a kung fu master, it
follows the initially carefree trainee into his ascension towards honing his
technique into perfection in a journey under the tutelage of Lu A-Cai (Chen Kuan-tai)
to right the wrongs being done by a nefarious rival martial arts academy. Loaded with large period set pieces, costumes
and intense training sequences which take up a chunk of the film’s running
time, it works as a scenic widescreen martial arts period actioner with
elements of historical fiction, punctuated fight scenes and clever use of
artistic license.
Carrying over the writing-directing team of Challenge of
the Masters but setting its sights on an altogether different famed martial
arts legend, Lau Kar-leung’s Executioners from Shaolin zeroes in on Hung
his Kuan (Chen Kuan-tai) the Chinese martial arts legend who lived during the
Qing Dynasty. Co-starring Lo Lieh and
Gordon Liu, the period martial arts flick begins with a Shaolin temple being destroyed
in a multi-generational plotline of vengeance spanning many years, poised
against the founder of kung fu Pai Mei (Lo Lieh in a character later played by
Gordon Liu in Kill Bill. Vol. 2).
Featuring the feminine Crane style and masculine Tiger Style forms of
kung-fu, Executioners from Shaolin is a bit of a departure from the
usual Shaw Brothers fare with a far more feminist leaning including dramatizing
married family life in all of its ordinariness.
And once again, Gordon Liu rises to the occasion of pulling off some astounding
physical feats for the sake of the camera.
Making sure viewers don’t forget the prolific director, ShawScope
Vol. 1 jumps back in with Chang Cheh’s Chinatown Kid co-written by
James Wong and again Ni Kuang.
Prominently starring Sheng Fu of The Proud Twins as well as the
aforementioned Venom Mob, Chinatown Kid moves the action to the modern-day
period where violent and deadly gang wars have overtaken the streets of Hong
Kong. Tan Tung (Sheng Fu) is a young
martial arts street fighter who manages to defeat nearly all of his opponents
with exception to the grandiose underbelly of Hong Kong’s Triad. Fleeing to the United States and taking refuge
in San Francisco, Tan Tung once again clashes with gangsters roaming the
streets but this time around succeeds in fighting his way to the tom of the
White Dragon gang commandeered by Hsiao Pai-lung (Philip Kwok from John Woo’s Hard
Boiled). Torn between fighting the
gang war or helping Yang Chien-wen (Sun Chien), it turns into a something of a
tragic debunking of the American dream through the energy of San Franciscan
Chinatown’s crime wave. While poorly
received in Hong Kong including some scenes being censored with three different
endings alternating, it became a cult favorite in the United States and helped
secure the international success of Sheng Fu and Sun Chien.
Next in the lineup is the first in a long-running (nineteen
films) series of movies directed by Chang Cheh featuring five recurring characters
known as The Five Venoms. Between
1978 and 1981, the quintet of characters typically comprised of Centipede (Lu
Feng), Snake (Wei Pai), Scorpion (Sun Chien), Lizard (Philip Kwok) and Toad (Lo
Mang) with student Yang played by Chiang Sheng frequently fought and acted
onscreen together as a Hong Kong/Taiwan martial arts entourage. Frequently penned by Ni Kuang and Chang Cheh,
the first film in the series follows the student Yang tracking down the titular
Five Venoms (also known as Five Deadly Venoms) and take out any
that have turned towards evil per their mutual dying master with each Venom
fighter practicing combat styles in the form of the Five Poisonous Creatures of
Chinese folklore. Up to this point the grisliest
and most gruesome ShawScope offering in the set yet including some brutal kills
with oversized hooks and spikes, The Five Venoms feels closer to a Mario
Bava film than a martial arts flick with a nebulous air of clouded unease and
the animalistic nature of the Venom fighter styles. Though a bit of an outlier in the set, The
Five Venoms nevertheless is an important starting point to what would or
wouldn’t become an armada of films featuring a wholly original murderer’s row
of Hong Kong action stars. Also for
those who are really listening, the soundtrack opening the film will be
familiar to some staunch Monty Python fans.
Showing no sign of slowing down, Chang Cheh and co-writer Ni
Kuang were at it again with ostensibly the third Venom Mob film The
Return of the 5 Deadly Venoms or as its more widely known Crippled
Avengers for short. Starting off
brutally as Iron Fisted martial arts master Dao Tian-du (Chen Kuan-tai) is
besieged by a vengeful enemy clan who chops off his wife’s legs, killing her,
before chopping off his son Dao Chang’s arms.
Incredibly, the boy survives and after years of training the boy with
newly outfitted impenetrable prosthetic arms, Tian-du and the now adult Chang
(Lu Feng) unleash a new onslaught of terrorization on the sons of the clan that
dismembered his son. Four of the Venom
Mob members are among the victims who are injured, maimed or rendered
blind, deaf, dumb and/or mute. Soon
however, this damaged foursome of Crippled Avengers comprised of Philip
Kwok, Lo Mang, Sun Chien and Chiang Sheng will limp their way back towards
their seemingly indefatigable adversaries in an all-out stunted stilted battle
of damaged but determined fighters.
Jumping back to director Lau Kar-leung for the last two
films in the set, both starring Gordon Liu, Heroes of the East shifts
gears by dramatizing a Chinese-Japanese arranged marriage that turns to
conflict when Chinese Ho Tao (Gordon Liu) and his Japanese bride-to-be Yumiko
Koda (Yuka Mizuno) begin locking horns over which nationality has better
martial arts presence on the world stage.
After hand-to-hand combat demonstrations on one another, Yumiko leaves
for Japan but the smitten Ho Tao makes a last-ditch effort to woo her back with
a love letter, something her trainer and former beau Taneko (Yasuaki Kurata)
intercepts and doesn’t take kindly to.
Curating a group of some of Japan’s finest martial artists, Taneko and
crew return to Shanghai en-masse to meet Ho Tao’s challenge of Chinese versus
Japanese martial arts, the film soon explodes into an extensive, borderline
gargantuan forty-minute spanning action battle montage that shows off numerous
techniques including but not limited to Ninjitsu. In what feels like a live show, largely
staged outdoors, it offers a welcome return to the more humorous side of the
ShawScope empire and contrary to other Hong Kong films depicting Japanese
characters before in a demeaning light, this one is surprisingly humble about
its subset of opponents.
Lastly but not least is Lau Kar-leung, Ni Kuang and Gordon
Liu’s action-comedy thriller Dirty Ho, a period martial arts flick
prominently featuring wheelchair-bound martial arts combat fighting. 11th Prince of Manchuria, Master
Wang (Gordon Liu) lives a comfy lifestyle enjoying jewelry dealing, art and
wine yet he also secretly harbors martial arts expertise. Trying to maintain his ruse as heirs to the
throne are banding together plotting his assassination, he turns his attention
to jewel thief Ho Ching (Wong Yue) nicknamed Dirty Ho for protection and
infiltration of his adversaries. Taking
Ho under his wing as a pupil and subjugating the youth to intensive combat
training, the twosome eventually venture over to Peking to thwart bounty
hunters and the nefarious General Liang (Lo Lieh). Largely fighting from the wheelchair
including the two working together moving the chair around while another
delivers kicks and punches, it marks one of the most astounding fight sequences
in the entire ShawScope Vol. 1 set if not the Shaw Brothers catalog as a
whole. At once highly amusing and
playful as well as intensely climactic, Dirty Ho is the perfect capstone
to an extensive and winding journey down the annals of Hong Kong martial-arts
based action, comedies and thrillers and a signature Kar-leung/Liu
collaboration that all but sets the standard for which the Shaw Scope empire aspired
to.
Rounding out the set at the end of twelve films, each disc
comes with extensive extras including numerous audio commentaries, video
essays, interviews, alternate sequences/versions, detailed liner notes in the
deluxe package and two CD soundtrack albums with excerpts of music from the
films. The first of eventually three
comprehensive volumes of Shaw Brothers offerings from Arrow Video in between
some standalone offerings from themselves and rival boutique labels 88 Films
and Shout Factory, ShawScope Vol. 1 represents an integral monument of
kung-fu martial-arts action-adventure escapism as well as historical
fiction. An eclectic assortment of
titles demonstrating the creative ranges of the Shaw Brothers company as well
as the recurring directors, writers and actors playing out across the
collection, the now sadly out-of-print first volume and first real domestic
cracking open of the Hong Kong film giant’s cornucopia represents one of the
most ambitious efforts still yet attempted by the boutique releasing
label. Those who have picked up this set
awhile back but are still looking at it residing on their shelves are strongly encouraged
to break these films out into the open and to get into this smattering of
ShawScope titles that will give you a broad if not introductory understanding
of what the Shaw Brothers moniker really means.
--Andrew Kotwicki
For those who missed out on ShawScope Vol. 1 you'll be happy to know Arrow Video released three curated sets dedicated to The Basher Box featuring King Boxer, The Boxer from Shantung and Chinatown Kid. As well as that, they've included four films per set dedicated to directors Chang Cheh and Lau Kar-leung which are still available for purchase.
