Furious Swords and Fantastic Warriors may as well be Shawscope Vol. 4. It’s 10 movies all by Chang Cheh. Divided into four Furious Swords and six Fantastic Warriors, they showcase two sub-genres of martial arts.
The Furious Swords films are more traditional kung fu swordsmen movies. Men from the Monastery opens with a glorious gauntlet and includes a fight on poles which surely inspired future Yuen Woo-Ping scenes. In fact, a video essay explains the character Fu Sheng plays, Fong Shih-yu, is essentially Fong Sai-yuk and the Jet Li movie also had a lot of balancing fight scenes.
Shaolin Martial Arts has fighters training in new styles, but with a real twist on the genre. King Eagle and Iron Bodyguard are more traditional intrigue between warring clans.
The Fantastic Warriors add magic powers. Fantastic Magic Baby is a literal character in a film that also includes animals and trees (people in costumes). Guys in tree suits obviously aren’t as acrobatic but it’s so different it’s refreshing.
The Weird Man levitates oranges, weapons and benches and I don’t see the wires. I see them on people, but not on objects. Smoke comes out of a decapitated body and reassembles himself in a pool. Old school editing jump cuts convey teleportation. He even makes a mustache disappear.
The other four Fantastic Warriors don’t have magic, and they have just as much swordplay as the Furious Swords, but they’re four more strong martial arts films. Trilogy of Swordsmanship has a very progressive pro-courtesan subplot in the middle of the three. New Shaolin Boxers has an unfortunately rapey third act but otherwise is a strong Fu Sheng training and redemption tale.
Like Shawscope, these movies are beautiful on Blu-ray. Magic Baby has unique locations in the underworld and mountains with red and yellow smoke and coloring. King Eagle has one location that’s an outdoor lagoon and the third in Trilogy opens on a shore so these films include changes of pace from the usual Shaw studio sets and forests. Fu Sheng demonstrates Choy Li Fut in shadow and red light to open New Shaolin Boxers.
They’ve really got the full slate of martial arts experts doing commentaries. I’m glad to see my favorites David West and Frank Djeng on a few. But of course it’s against the law to have a martial arts set without a Mike Leeder and Arne Venema commentary so they’re well represented too. Now that I’ve seen all the movies perhaps I’ll have time to listen to their takes over the holidays, but at this point I know they’re going to bring insights the layman can’t find just by Googling.