DVD Reviews

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  ...

Secret passageways!  Zombie-looking baddies!  Corpse worm pills!  Evil dungeons!  And Hammer Studio-like atmosphere galore!  Also featuring an impaling from a peg leg, The Devil’s Mirror is bananas!  It definitely puts the SOUP in the supernatural ...

Written by Ni Kuang, Chang Cheh and Chin Shu-mei, The Delightful Forest is actually a restaurant in a small town. It is also a place where gambling and prostitution is accepted. But, wuxia fans know it as the movie in which Ti Lung steals the show as Wu Song, a lone warrior who believes wine makes  ...

Written, directed, and starring Jimmy Wang Yu and made for Raymond Chow’s Golden Harvest (and not the Shaw Brothers after he left them), One-Armed Boxer takes its kung-fu leanings as seriously as it does its villains' row.  Recognizing this, Arrow Video presents the film in a special limited  ...

Cheng Pei-Pei is back in action!  This time she wields a whip instead of a sword and, as it is time for the Shaw Brothers to experiment with their brand of wuxia, one shouldn’t be surprised that its take of revenge comes across as paper-thin. ...

Decapitations!  Impalements!  It’s time to let the limbs fly!  Early on, it really feels like this wuxia is going to deliver something altogether different as a martial arts film.  There are a bunch of early highlights as the crimson charm gang is confronted among crypts, corpses, and a skull which seems to float into  ...

Brothers Five, directed by Lo Wei, is a definite early high water mark for the Shaw Brothers as the production design is absolutely through the roof and the locations are far and wide, making this violent story a beautiful canvas for a whole lot of bloodletting which is Wei’s specialty ...

Get those fists ready!  It’s time for some hand-to-hand combat as one family is absolutely brought to its knees due to an Emperor’s secret mission. Shaolin Mantis, distributed from 88 Films, opens with David Chiang shadow fighting against ...

Lady of Steel features one of my favorite fight sequences as its co-headlining stars - Cheng Pei-Pei and Yueh Hua - “fight” each other to determine just where their allegiances lie.  The set design of this village is cool.  From balancing on the top of a bridge to running on water and flying to rooftops ...

Snake pits!  Swordplay!  Cheng Pei-pei having great fun with a secret clan of deadly women!  Also featuring a lively song and dance number from Pei-pei herself, one would think The Golden Sword would constantly be one of the most energetic Shaw Brothers productions out there.  It’s not.  In fact ...

The Flying Dagger, written and directed by Chang Cheh, takes its homage to filmmaker Akira Kurosawa quite seriously and opens with a monochrome romp in the reed fields as two lovers take some time to enjoy each other.  It’s tastefully done, but - because this is a wuxia film - is interrupted  ...

Jumping right into the 20-year drama of this family saga, Dragon Swamp opens with an attack from a group of angry monks who want the Jade Dragon Sword returned to their monastery.  To say they are annoyed by the thieving ways of The White-Faced General, Tang Dachuan (Huang Chung-Hsin) ...

In which, a watermelon becomes a dangerous weapon!  Or at least its seeds do!  All joking aside, The Invincible Fist is a wonderfully realized wuxia flick that deserves to be recognized.  If not for the incredible use of leafy, green reed fields, then for the fight choreography which has Lo Lieh battling it out  ...

A female-led wuxia film is nothing new.  I know a lot of people want to give that credit to Ang Lee, but history suggests otherwise.  Just because popular American cinema failed to notice what Asian cinema was doing (for a long time!!!) doesn’t mean that it wasn’t happening.  Just look at 1966’s Come  ...

Opening with a gloriously brutal raid on a village, Killer Dart sets the stage for this multi-layered revenge story with gusto.  It is bold with its drama, dynamic with its action sequences, and strong with its characters.  And it is no wonder why, especially when you consider just who is behind the camera ...

And, just like that, the coin-targeting trickshot is introduced!  Now, a lot of people have complained and bellyached about what you have to sit through in order to get to the brutal killing in The Sword of Swords, but - come on, now - the bloodletting begins early on and it never stops, splashing gallons  ...

The blood spatter!  The fearless faces of the warriors!  The sparks as the swords slam together!  The brilliant choreography!  Fighting on top of trees!  The Jade Raksha, directed by Ho Meng-Hua (Killer Darts) has it all!  And, quite honestly, it makes Crouching Tiger, Hidden  ...

Chang Wei Fu (Chang Yi) never should have given Yang Kang (Ku Feng), Ying Tien (Tien Sheng), and Chief Tao Ching Lung (Lam Kau) the directions they needed.  Fu is a simple woodcutter.  He lives by nature’s rules with his family in an isolated location, outside of the nearest  ...

Golden Swallow (Cheng Pei-pei) is just not having it when a mysterious agent from her past returns and starts framing her for some serious heinous activity! She’s ready to take matters into her own hands in 1968’s Golden Swallow (aka The Girl With The Thunderbolt Kick) ...

Meet the meanest and most lethal karate master ever to rule the streets. He's Sonny Chiba, one of the greatest martial arts actors to ignite the screen. In The Street Fighter, Chiba stars as Terry Tsurugi, a mercenary who has been hired by both the yakuza and the mafia to kidnap a wealthy  ...

She’s a one woman army! There are a lot of differing opinions on The Thundering Sword.  Released by The Shaw Brothers in 1967, this martial arts classic (as its Cheng Pei Pei’s first starring role!) flips the script on the whole sword-killing machismo that was dominant in the martial arts ...

This is the story of a working-class hero.  Seriously.  Sure, he may have a top-knot hair style and a shiny blade at his side, but Jimmy Wang Yu is nobody’s sucker.  The Assassin is a blood-soaked suicide letter and, thanks to the talent behind the camera, it comes across as almost effortless in its  ...

When the “YES” men start telling you “NO”, you are probably approaching the trash-lined gutters along Sunset Boulevard.  Hollywood is clearly sending you a message.  You are no longer needed . . . or are you?!?!  Well, if director Billy Wilder has anything to say about it then go on and second ...

I mean, look, The Third Man is a damned classic.  Scripted by Graham Greene and featuring some incredible performances from its leads, Carol Reed’s film is a masterpiece that never falters in its step to wedge paranoia straight down your throat. Holly Martins (played by Joseph Cotten) is thrust ...

“Do it first. Do it yourself. And keep doing it.” When it comes to gangster pictures, there is no better film than Howard Hawks’ Scarface. From the single shot opening in which Italian immigrant gangster Antonio "Tony" Camonte (played ...

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is the tale of a madman told through the eyes of another madman; a film so daunting it’s horrifying. Yes, here it is: the very first horror film and still its influence is felt. There is no argument there. It is also, with its exaggerated backgrounds and sharp angles, German  ...

“At first glance, everything looked the same. It wasn’t. Something evil had taken possession of the town.” Oh, to travel back to the 1950s.  If I could, I would just sit myself in a drive-in theater with a big ol’ bucket of popcorn and watch flick after flick of whatever science fiction schlock ...

"Nine times out of ten, if you follow the money you will get to the truth." Infidelity made private investigator and war veteran Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) the man he is today.  We know this having seen the excellent Chinatown, but Gittes admits as much in the opening line of The Two  ...