When I said Furious Swords and Fantastic Warriors could be Shawscope 4, I had no idea what Arrow was planning. Turns out there’s a lot more to Shaw Brothers than martial arts. This came out in December and it took me all of holiday break to review in full. I was going to summarize them but they’re so fun I ended up wanting to watch them all.
Shaw Brothers horror movies are far more outrageous than the most flamboyant martial arts. They also include way more nudity than Hollywood counterparts. So you truly never know what’s coming next and that keeps you watching, no matter how long it takes.
Now that I’ve been through them all, Super Inframan seems quaint. Shaw Brothers did a superhero movie, and he does flips and kicks in that costume plus solme wire assisted flying. ‘70s sci-fi means lots of bright colord laboraties, quite a change of pace from the martial arts villages we see in Vol. 1-3. And that bright red suit vs. rubber aliens in modern day is a highlight of the Blu-rays.
The Oily Maniac has lawyers in offices. It looks like Shaw’s historical sets have been updated and redressed which is cool. There is unfortunately a rape for the oily maniac to prevent but it’s still an attempted rape, and there’s more in the trial. Now, that animated oil slick does not blend in with the live-action footage, but that’s part of the fun. This could be a double feature with The Greasy Strangler.
Battle Wizard shoots lasers from his fingers. There’s also a bone that shoots lasers, a claw along a chain, laser palms, fire breathing, a glowing snake and red python. So you’re beginning to see how far out there these movies go.
Black Magic is actually modern day and begins with a wild prologue where a wizard voodoo kills a fornicating couple. There is no martial arts, just sex and love spells with the usual monkey’s paw ramifications. It’s kinda the best one in this set. The sequel is just grosser and more gratuitous. There is a funny bit on a cable car with a very obvious projected screen on totally different stock with totally different lighting.
In Hex, a wife and her maid kill the man of the house and he totally deserves it. He’s drunk, abusive and misogynistic, but they’re plagued by visions of death that get grosser and grosser. There are shades of Diabolique but Diabolique doesn’t end in a really long naked dance, and she continues to roll around in blood and paint before they do calligraphy on her. Hex does.
Bewitched is another modern day magic tale with gratuitous nudity, runnign and bouncing on the beach and frolicking in the ocean. There’s a bathtub scene too. He’s cursed so every mundane thing goes wrong and gets outrageous when his daughter turns against him. The gore is not the least bit realistic, but it’s so ridiculous it’s hilarious how gratuitously they show it.
It gets somewhat repetitive (even titles are variations on Hex). People try magic and it backfires but the fun is how they explore it. Hex vs. Witchcraft is very slapstick and goofy. Hex After Hex is the first Shaw movie I’ve ever seen that isn’t in scope. Lucasfilm surely didn’t approve the Yoda and Darth Vader in this. It even gets meta with Shaw Brothers and some Drunken Master.
Bat Without Wings is a rapist that 24 of 26 martial artists died killing. Five years later an old man claiming to be Bat turns up. This becomes more of a traditional Shaw Brothers martial arts movie in their soundstages as a party ventures through a deadly magical forest looking for his bat sword but those set pieces are cool, especially an acid lake.
Bloody Parrot includes faces sewn into weapons and a naked woman in a hall of mirrors. The Fake Ghost Catchers of course encounter real ghosts. The decapitated ghost head effect works even with 1982 limitations. There are many other fun ghost tricks including reattaching legs at the end, plus more martial arts.
Demon of the Lute is a quest for the Fire Bow and Fire Arrow to defeat the demon and his lute. A female warrior has flying weapons which are cool even when you can see the wires. The child Ding-Dong joins the quest and pulls his weight. Attacking trees hold up with Evil Dead. A giant boulder a la Raiders of the Lost Ark becomes a disco ball. It gets a bit cartoony like an early Kung Fu Hustle.
Seeding of a Ghost is back to modern day with gambling and black magic. Unfortunately the gratuitous nudity here also includes a rape scene. It ends in a practical effects piece like a Frank Henenlotter movie. I’m not going to say it holds up with Sam Raimi or Peter Jackson but definitely Henenlotter.
Portrait in Crystal I did watch too late so I don’t remember well, but it’s also over very quickly. It’s a lean 82 minutes so it gets in and out with crazy imagery.
Finally, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is the most outrageous of the collection. Wild car stunts include crashed cars lifting off the road in a triangle. It’s a musical, on the Shaw Brothers lot, and a mad scientist drinks the hormones his lab monkey switched with his champagne. It has a Millennium Falcon flyover via a screen behind the actor, although they get closeups that aren’t from Star Wars. So they must have built their own model. Their Darth Vader is decidedly off brand compared to Hex After Hex, but they use the light saber sounds. Ther’es a lightsaber nunchuck. I’d say this movie has everything but so do all the other ones!
In bonus features they got Bruce Le for an interview. Of course he got roped into Brucesploitation after Shaw Brothers. They also found Twinkle director Alex Cheung. Commentaries include Frank Djeng, Ian Jane, Jonathan Clemente, James Mudge and Samm Deighan. Many films have critical analyses from the likes of Victor Fan and Grady Hendrix, often two on the same film. So if any of these films leave you with quetsions, Arrow did their best to provide answers.