Chop Socky Cinema

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  ...

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  ...