The
Shaw Brothers Collection
Siren Visual
R4 DVD
Box Set
Web: http://www.sirenvisual.com.au
The Shaw Brothers started
making movies in
In many ways the Shaw
Brothers were the
In the west, Shaw Brothers
primarily became known for martial arts and Kung Fu films, but they actually
produced a bewildering number of films in a wide variety of genres.
In this unusual collection
of Shaw Brothers films we enter the world of eastern exploitation films. Films
which combine the martial arts, flying styles, bright colours
and Asian sensibilities with sexuality, perverse themes, monsters and horror.
This is a unique collection of films it that it really combines many of the
themes found in western exploitation and horror films but with a distinctly
eastern presentation. These films are marked by visually stunning costumes,
sets and designs, and feature amazing martial arts choreography and swordplay.
This
collection includes:
The Mighty Peking Man
Human Lanterns
Intimate Confessions of a Chinese
Courtesan
An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty
The Golden Lotus
Human
Lanterns
Human Lanterns is a beautiful yet dark
mixture of Asian sensibility and horror. It has the look of a classic martial
arts film and is filled with action, colour and mood,
yet is also has a strong horror element by having it’s primary motif as a
character whose means of revenge is making lanterns of human skin.
Chun Fang has been
defeated in battle and beats a scar to prove it. Yet he is vengeful and bears a
grudge, a long grudge. It is seven years later and now as a craftsman, his plan
begins to take effect. He sets two warring noblemen (Lau Wing and Chen Kuan-tai) against each other by
abducting their loved ones and peeling their skin, which he uses to create a
series of prize-winning lanterns.
This mixture of gothic
madman taking revenge and Kung Fu is really quite impressive and the horror
elements while subtle are quite powerful. The carefully choreographed fight
scenes are impressive and scenery and imagery superb. It is well filmed and the
widescreen presentation (Shaw Screen) certainly looks great on a large TV
screen. It has been very well restored and is pretty close to a faultless
reproduction.
The Mighty Peking Man
The Mighty Peking Man is the ultimate
Asian knock-off, Shaw Brothers were convinced that an “Asian” version of King
Kong would do wonders at the box office and so created one of the most
ridiculously funny cult films you can imagine. It is a cross between Jane of
the Jungle and King Kong. It is hard to summarize the number of “jungle events”
that they have packed into this 86 minute film. After the opening scene which seems
to use all manner of models and the Mighty Peking “Man in a Suit” the film
moves into total overdrive. It is as though they decided that it would make the
film more likely to succeed if they included every possible jungle disaster
they could think of. Stampeding Elephants, Quicksand, attacking leopards and
tigers, members of the team falling off clip faces, all occur within a short
space of time. The scene where one of the team wrestles a tiger is astounding
as we regularly seem to cut between a real tiger and a stuffed one. The
blatantly bad special effects just make this film even better, it is just so
utterly bad, it is good, really good !
Then we meet Jane of the
Jungle, actually called Ah Wei. She spends most of the film in a small, skimpy
jungle outfit which only just covers her right nipple. She can run, jump, hide,
even get slapped around and her outfit seems to stay in place – superglue ?? I am not sure.
She saves our hero, Johnny, whom the team have abandoned in the jungle during the dead of night
as they no longer believe he can deliver the giant ape. Johnny and Ah Wei then
experience a strange 1970’s love romp with disco music, strange dancing through
the forest and some of the most silly moments in
cinema – i.e. we see Ah Wei dancing romantically with Jonny with a leopard
wrapped around her head!!! There are lots of slow mos,
dancing, jungle animals being swung around like toys and more.
After a period of bliss,
punctuated by a snake bite melodrama, where Ah Wei is saved because the giant
ape shows Jonny what herbal remedy to use, Johnny somehow convinces her and her
friend Ah Wang (the giant ape !!!), to accompany him
into the city and onto
He meets up again with the
team who left him behind, but all seems forgiven, not even a harsh word (they
left him to die in the jungle for gods sake, but somehow this escapes the plot)
and they all decide to take a barge with the giant ape to
Along the way, they hit a
storm, Ah Wang the giant ape, breaks loose so he can push them off a rock which
is about to destroy the boat and they arrive in Hong Kong ready for the next
adventure,
This magnificently B grade
spectacular has so many holes in the plot it is amazing it can float, however,
be that as it may, it is so ridiculous that it succeeds where so many attempts
at cult films fail. I suppose it is because it is so damn serious. It was made
as a “real” King Kong rip off and hence the more serious it tries to be the
more hysterical it becomes.
The music is totally
inappropriate and over the top, the acting is outrageous and the special
effects seem to range from stock footage to stuffed toys, Tonka trucks and
miniatures to terrible models. Each scene seems to want to top the last and the
finale when they fill the water tanks on the top of the building with petrol
and blow Ah Wang up, setting him on fire with the finale being that he plummets
to earth like some sort of animal fireball is just too much.
This is cult cinema at its
very best, you have to see it to believe it !!
Once again the film has
been faultlessly restored (Why ? Why? You just may
ask), it is so clear it is scary, every special effects faux pa is now brilliantly
reproduced with such clarity that it makes this a truly spectacular cult film
classic!
The Golden Lotus
The Golden Lotus is a very different Shaw
Brothers film. It includes no kung fu or swordplay and rather than focusing on
action, murder and mayhem is primarily a film about desire and corruption with
a strong emphasis on sexuality and eroticism.
The Golden Lotus is an
adaptation of the well-known Chinese novel Jin Ping Mei,
it is believed it was written in the late Ming Dynasty period. It describes the
exploits of Ximen Qing (Yueng
Kwan), a virile young man about town whose wealth and position give him access
to various wives and consorts. He is not a personal safely refused his objects
of desire.
The story opens with an
act of intrigue. Ximen
Qing takes a fancy to Pan Jinlian (Hu Chin), who is beautiful yet married. Her husband Wu Dalang
(Chiang Nan) is a pancake seller who is extremely short, even dwarflike and
rather ugly; he is regularly abused and teased by those who do business with
him. Ximen desires Pan and in a conspiracy with her
neighbor, seduces her and secretly kills her husband.
It seems Ximen has got away with his crime and he marries Pan, while
the whole township suspect what he had done nobody
will confront him due to his wealth and power. However, there is a hitch, a
very young Jackie Chan, who plays a local fruit seller, knows what Ximen has done.
After marriage, Pan finds
herself out of her depth. Rather than having a devoted husband in a household where
she is the centre of his affection, she finds herself in a world of many wives
and mistresses, all being mistreated and used by a man whose sole interest is
himself. Ximen becomes more and more cruel and slowly
but surely is driven to extremes to satisfy his lust for sex, wealth and power.
Sadly, Pan also finds herself changing as she needs to battle for her very
survival.
This is a highly erotic
film, filled with sex, intrigue, murder and corruption. It is a fascinating
tale which explores new territory within the Shaw Brothers canon. It includes
an honest depiction of the manipulation and use of sex as a form of power and
offers an impressive interpretation of a classic Chinese tale of passion, power
and desire.
Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan
Intimate Confessions of a Chinese
Courtesan shocked audiences when it was released in 1972 and is considered one
of the Shaw Brothers most infamous films.
The story centres around a lesbian brothel (Chun-i ) keeper you kidnaps young
women to staff her growing establishment. She kidnaps Ai Nu, a rebellious and
feisty young girl. While Ai Nu thinks she can outsmart Chun-I, she soon finds
out that Chun-I is also an expert kung fu expert and not above using any means
to make her girls get the job done.
Ai Nu is broken in through
a series of fairly confronting scenes by older and obviously violent men, four
wealthy and important officials are the most significant. These scenes are
filmed in such a way that they linger in the mind long after they are seen. Of
course this sets the stage for Ai Nu’s desire for
revenge on those who have degraded her.
She makes an alliance with
Chief Ji, who is trying to investigate a murder but
is finding that his investigation is being blocked by corruption. The climax of
the tale is how Ai Nu takes revenge on the four officials and she certainly
does so in a most brutal fashion.
This is an unusual mixture
of genres, on one level it is a rape-revenge film with the portrayals of her
abuse shown in a powerful way and her revenge even more brutal. Yet at the same
time there is also a crime-detective tale tucked in there as well, kung fu and
lots of the unique Shaw touches when it comes to customes,
sets, music and cinematography.
This is another unusual
Shaw Brother classic which stands out from their usual fare and hence has a
pride of place in this eastern exploitation series.
An
Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty
An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty is
another erotic Shaw classic which breaks the mould. The central character Yu
(Patricia Ha Man-jik) is an independent (even
liberated) woman in a time where women were either expected to be wives,
courtesans or concubines. She uses a sojourn in a Taoist monastery to make her
escape from the constraints of the “expected life” and teams up with a
wandering swordsman Tsui Po-Ho (Alex Man Chi-leung).
When Tsui
leaves, Yu goes back to the monastery with Lu Chiao
(Lin Kai-Lin), but is expelled for after a hot lesbian encounter. To survive
they decide to set up business alongside the many brothels in the township and
become famous for their parties. Along the way they have many and varied erotic
encounters. There is also some nifty swordplay and
action scenes including an especially impressive action sequence when bandits
try to attack their brothel and Tsui and his sidekick
Auyang (Chang Kuo-chu)
arrive just in time to save it.
This is a strange tale of
a Taoist priestess who in following freedom has to deal with the consequences
of her decisions and many of these become more and more difficult to justify.
While beautifully filmed,
it is a strangely edited film and seems to move between sex and violence
without a lot of explanation. Many of the scenes move quickly from one image to
another and it is very easy to get lost along the way. In many ways this is the
weakest of the eastern exploitation films from the Shaw Brothers, while it is
scrumptious to look at, filled with colour and
imagery, its lack of real plot and direction makes it harder going that the
others in this collection. This is not to say it isn’t an enjoyable film,
simply experience it as it is and don’t expect an especially meaningful storyline !
This is a lovely box set offering
superbly restored editions of these films, the vibrant colours
of the costumes, sets and designs cannot be faulted and the music and
soundtracks are perfectly clear.
All 5 DVDs are included in
their own cases and come with extras.
This is a real collector’s
delight.