DVD Reviews

It’s no stretch of the imagination to state that Director Lau Kar-Leung’s Challenge of the Masters is a revolutionary statement of how martial arts movies ought to be done. The resulting film is an impressive feat, with strong character development for its main character and a training segment which would be tirelessly  ...

Clan Of The White Lotus is one of the Shaw Brothers finest efforts in comedy and in kung-fu. It is endlessly entertaining and full of some awesome choreography, thanks to the work of by the one and only Liu Chia-Lian, and a wonderfully strange performance from its director (Lo Lieh) as Pak Mei -The White  ...

Opening with a wicked duel to the supposed death between Tuan Changqing (Ti Lung), the Deadly Breaking Sword, and Lian San (Michael Chan), the Throat Piercing Halberd, The Deadly Breaking Sword is a wuxia for the ages.  It’s colorful with its strong production values and deadly with the art on display in  ...

It is no understatement to suggest that Bruce Lee’s return to Hong Kong, after America refused to make him a star, was the best thing for his career.  Lee was pissed off; frustrated by Hollywood’s inherent racism and refusal to put any faith in the idea that an Asian could ever carry a profitable film ...

In which the Shaw Brothers go gonzo for pulp fiction, combining a magical spider whose webs capture foes and then melt their faces right off their skulls!  Alongside some limited martial arts mayhem, The Web of Death is an entertaining fantastical journey as choreographers Tang Chia and Yuen Cheung-yan  ...

Don’t let those colored backgrounds fool you one bit. The cast - or half of it - might stand stoically as the credits roll in the beginning of Life Gamble, but this wuxia feels a bit odd after that. This film’s action is slow to boil, saving the best bits - which involve a parade of flags flying high against the brilliant  ...

And so arrives Hong Kong legend Derek Yee.  It is here, in the role of the third master as a 20-year-old, where the young actor absolutely delivers a memorable role as the greatest sword master in the world . . . even if he is in disguise as a lowly worker in a whorehouse due to the shame he feels about his  ...

Maybe I am getting a bit soft in my old age, but I was completely wrong in my original opinion of this direct-to-video sequel. The Man With The Iron Fists 2 does exactly what it needs to do in continuing the story of Thaddeus, the blacksmith blessed with some deeply mystical martial arts skills. It’s not better than what  ...

Maybe I am getting a bit soft in my old age, but I was completely wrong in my original opinion of this direct-to-video sequel. The Man With The Iron Fists 2 does exactly what it needs to do in continuing the story of Thaddeus, the blacksmith blessed with some deeply mystical martial arts skills. It’s not better than what  ...

Battles on (and below) bridges! Awesome swordplay in familiar Shaw Brothers’ sets! Nunchuck stabbings! And the fabulous Chen Ping kicking all sorts of ass as The Bloody Hibiscus! The Vengeful Beauty, director Ho Meng-hua’s follow-up after the smashing success of The Flying Guillotine, might  ...

In which the Shaw Brothers go gonzo for pulp fiction, combining a magical spider whose webs capture foes and then melt their faces right off their skulls!  Alongside some limited martial arts mayhem, The Web of Death is an entertaining fantastical journey as choreographers Tang Chia and Yuen Cheung-yan  ...

“In this world of guns and knives, Tang Lung is the one who walks the lonely road.” Mixed with a solid sense of comedy that Jackie Chan would later use in his films, Bruce Lee’s The Way of the Dragon is a non-stop barrage of unarmed fighting as he plays Tang Lung who has traveled from China to Rome to  ...

Meteor. Butterfly. Sword. For myself, any interest that I had in Hong Kong cinema began here. Killer Clans is a martial arts masterpiece which remains stunning in its use of the shawscope lens, proving to be both spacious and gorgeous to revisit on 1080p, and, storywise, absolutely obliterates souls with its  ...

What do Pam Grier, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin’s Gordon Liu, Dave Bautista, and legendary fight choreographer Corey Yuen have in common with the Wu-Tang Clan’s beatmaker the RZA? This film, my Chop Socky Brothers and Sisters, this badass film right here. The Man With The Iron Fists ... ...

Unbeknownst to the Shaw Brothers and acclaimed director Lau Kar-leung (The 36th Chamber of Shaolin), The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter would be Alexander Fu Sheng’s final performance. Fu Sheng was one of Hong Kong's finest performers in the martial arts genre and his kung-fu films for the Shaw Brothers ...

An even better way to lose your head! That’s right, not content to let other production companies have all the fun with the flying guillotine routine, the Shaw Brothers put forth a copycat effort with yet another flying instrument of ...

Well, that’s one way to lose your head! While no one knows what the weapon at the center of this classic film can tell you what it looked like, The Flying Guillotine offers one possible and completely unforgettable design that continues to cause knees to knock. It’s little wonder that the company spent  ...

Ever wanted to watch someone fight with a bird cage before? If so, Monkey Kung Fu is the action spectacle for you! Flawed but absolutely gonzo with its wall-to-wall action sequences which involves chairs, bowls, a bed, and all sorts of interesting props, the film is energetic and absolutely off its rocker as two prisoners  ...

Beginning in the middle of the burning of a Shaolin Temple, Heroes Two throws the audience right into a fight sequence in which a whole lot of burning things becomes obstacles for our heroes Alexander Fu Sheng and Chen Kuan Tai to duck and dodge as they take on the oppression of the Manchurian  ...

It’s time to get spooky, Chop Socky fans! The Bride from Hell might be tonally inconsistent, running the gamut between horror tropes and comedy in a very clunky (but lovable) way, but it is damn revelatory in its take on gothic tropes as the Shaw Brothers tackle Hammer Studios-like atmosphere with ...

“The wall may be low, but the buddha is high.” The ultimate martial arts film when it comes to training, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin remains an amazing watch.  Here, we get an intense look at the steps in the Shaolin style of martial arts, which includes lightness, balance, arm strength, wrist technique, eyesight ...

Let the street brawls begin!  Cue the funk music because it’s time to kick some serious ass and look badass while doing it, too.  Man of Iron has arrived on sparkling blu-ray! ...

The Shaw Brothers made a lot of martial arts films covering Shi Nai-An’s The Water Margin,  the 14th-century Song Dynasty novel, but it is here, with 1972’s Chang Cheh adaptation (covering chapters 64 through 68 of the novel, if memory serves me correctly), where they struck gold.  The film is  ...

There are a lot of firsts involved with the legacy of The One-Armed Swordsman, which is now on blu-ray thanks to Nova Media.  Obviously, it’s the first in the trilogy of Swordsman films, but (and more importantly) for Hong Kong cinema, this was the first film to make a million bucks in its initial domestic  ...

Secret passageways!  Zombie-looking baddies!  Corpse worm pills!  Evil dungeons!  And Hammer Studio-like atmosphere galore!  Also featuring an impaling from a peg leg, The Devil’s Mirror is bananas!  It definitely puts the SOUP in the supernatural ...

Written by Ni Kuang, Chang Cheh and Chin Shu-mei, The Delightful Forest is actually a restaurant in a small town. It is also a place where gambling and prostitution is accepted. But, wuxia fans know it as the movie in which Ti Lung steals the show as Wu Song, a lone warrior who believes wine makes  ...

Written, directed, and starring Jimmy Wang Yu and made for Raymond Chow’s Golden Harvest (and not the Shaw Brothers after he left them), One-Armed Boxer takes its kung-fu leanings as seriously as it does its villains' row.  Recognizing this, Arrow Video presents the film in a special limited  ...

Cheng Pei-Pei is back in action!  This time she wields a whip instead of a sword and, as it is time for the Shaw Brothers to experiment with their brand of wuxia, one shouldn’t be surprised that its take of revenge comes across as paper-thin. ...

Decapitations!  Impalements!  It’s time to let the limbs fly!  Early on, it really feels like this wuxia is going to deliver something altogether different as a martial arts film.  There are a bunch of early highlights as the crimson charm gang is confronted among crypts, corpses, and a skull which seems to float into  ...

Brothers Five, directed by Lo Wei, is a definite early high water mark for the Shaw Brothers as the production design is absolutely through the roof and the locations are far and wide, making this violent story a beautiful canvas for a whole lot of bloodletting which is Wei’s specialty ...