Original title: The One-Armed Swordsman / Return of the One-Armed Swordsman / The New One-Armed Swordsman / Lady Hermit / Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan / The 14 Amazons / The Magic Blade / The Sentimental Swordsman / Clans of Intrigue / Jade Tiger / The Avenging Eagle / Killer Constable / Buddah's Palm / Bastard Swordsman
Year: 1966 / 1983
Country: Hong Kong
Region code: B
Content: Blu-Ray
EAN: 5027035027166
Image: 2.35:1 (1080p)
HDR: -
Audio:
Mandarin - Original uncompressed monkey
Cantonese - Lossless monkey
English - Lossless monkey
Subtitles: English
Rating: -
Genre: Action
Cast: Feng Ku , Lung Ti , Shen Chan
Director: Yuen Chor , Cheh Chang , Kang Cheng , Chung Sun , Taylor Wong , Meng-Hua Ho
Synopsis:
Before Hong Kong's mightiest film studio mastered the art of the kung fu film, Shaw Brothers hit box office gold with a very different kind of martial arts cinema, one that channeled the blood-soaked widescreen violence of Japanese samurai epics and Italian spaghetti westerns into a uniquely Chinese form: the wuxia pian. With their enthralling tales drawn from historical myth and legend of sword-wielding (and often gravity-defying) noble heroes, the wuxia films housed in this next installation of Arrow Video's best-selling Shawscope series demonstrate the sweeping stylistic evolution of the genre, from the righteous stoicism of the late-60s Mandarin period, right through to the wild-and-weird anarchism of the early-80s Cantonese explosion.
The iconic One-Armed Swordsman trilogy, directed between 1967 and 1971 by wuxia cinema godfather Chang Cheh, made household names of stars ""Jimmy"" Wang Yu and David Chiang and set the gory template for many of the films to come. Contrary to Chang's tales of loyal brotherhood, many wuxia films focused on female protagonists, three very different examples of which we see next: Ho Meng-hua's Lady Hermit, with the great Cheng Pei-pei (Come Drink with Me) as a virtuous swordswoman called upon to stop a vicious warlord; Chor Yuen's scandalous Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan in which the titular lady of the night masters every deadly skill she can get revenge on those who enslaved her; and Cheng Kang's all-star epic The 14 Amazons, in which Shaws' finest starlets play the real-life women of the Yang dynasty, avenging their fallen menfolk in battle. Next, Chor Yuen adapted several beloved novels by accomplished wuxia storyteller Gu Long to the big screen, four of which are collected here: The Magic Blade, Clans of Intrigue, Jade Tiger and The Sentimental Swordsman, all starring the redoubtable Ti Lung. As kung fu overtook wuxia at the box office, the genre evolved into unexpected new directions, with its chivalrous knights-errant replaced by conflicted antiheroes, as seen in Sun Chung's breathlessly exciting The Avenging Eagle and Boxer's Omen goremeister Kuei Chih-hung's fatalistic masterpiece Killer Constable. Finally, just when it seemed the wuxia film had nowhere left to turn, Eighties excess reigned supreme in the special-effects-soaked, fourth-wall-breaking fantastical delights of Taylor Wong's Buddha's Palm and Lu Chun-ku's Bastard Swordsman.
Back with all-new exclusive restorations and hours of insightful bonus material, if you thought the previous two Shawscope sets showed the Shaw Brothers studio at its strongest, you ain't seen anything yet!
Additional features:
