What was the last movie you watched?

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The Black Tavern ( 1972 )
I was looking forward to this one because of all the mentions made to it on previous commentary tracks on other Shaw Brother films, where it was described as one of the goriest wuxia films ever made, and one of Shaws wildest films. Well... not really. It is not even within the top ten of the goriest wuxia films made at Shaw Brothers. Chang Cheh has at least twelve other wuxia films that are much gorier.  This was not a classic, but a fun little potboiler of a film taking place almost entirely on a single set. The film opens with Dean Shek as a ragged vagabond who claims he is a monk and is constantly begging for money and food.  And yes, that Dean Shek. Yet another actor you never knew worked for Shaw Brothers. But even more incredible, is that his constant co-star in films a half decade later, Jackie Chan, is also in this film. A very minor part as one of the guards escorting a government official. But this would be the very first film Chan made with Shek, even if Shek leaves the film just before Chan's character arrived. Chan would have made this around the same time he made he worked on Fist of Fury, perhaps in the weeks just before or after. Anyway, Shek tries to get some customers in a restaurant to give him money by singing them a song, where he says while staying in a tree for a night, he saw a passing carriage that stopped to fix a broken wheel remove a box full of treasure. It turns out that the restaurant is full of bandits, each who decide to track down this traveler, who they believe is a government official rumored to have taken a fortune in bribes, and steal his treasure for themselves. The problem is that there are several groups of bandits, each wanting the treasure for themselves. They all head to a lone tavern situated in the middle of nowhere, which is the only place the traveler can stop for the night. It turns out this is a black tavern, basically a trap set up by the owners to rob and kill wealthy travelers, and dispose of the evidence by turning their bodies into meat buns served to the other patrons. I don't want to give any spoilers away, so I will just say the rest of the films run time takes place in the courtyard and interior of the black tavern where various villains kill each other off.

The Poseidon Adventure ( 1972 )
The Towering Inferno ( 1974 )
Once again SNL is off for it's Thanksgiving hiatus, so another week of double features. Dipping back into my disaster movie collection, I decided to watch these two films tonight so I could once and for all determine which one was Irwin Allen's best film. And while they are both among the best disaster movies ever made,  The Towering Inferno easily wins.

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The Young Avenger ( 1972 )
One of my favorite Shaw Brothers films was The Delinquent from 1973, which aired on American Television in the 1980s as Street Gangs of Hong Kong. One of the many films crediting Chang Cheh as director, who most likely only acted as producer, and was really directed by Kuei Chih-Hung, who was best remembered for his horror films and his only wuxia film Killer Constable.  The Delinquent was among the Shaw Brothers movies released by Shaw Brothers Video in the 80s. It would have been released on VHS and would have been mastered from the World Northal television edit, as were all the other films released by Shaw Brothers Videos.  I should point out that many believe that Shaw Brothers Video was always a bootleg company, possibly begun by former employees of World Northal as the company faced bankruptcy. By the late 80s Shaw Brothers Video had legitimately become a bootleg company as the original releases were all being released by various bootleggers, usually using photocopies of the original clamshell box on the new clamshells. Around then I had begun buying Shaw Brothers movies, and to my disappointment, the movie inside the box was not The Delinquent, but a really cheap looking independent Kung Fu film.  Notorious martial arts film bootleggers Dragon Video was the first to take over when Shaw Brothers Video went out of business, and the other bootleg companies got their master tapes from their releases. Many suspect that Shaw Brothers Video was always a fake label for Dragon Video. But it was Dragon Video who was responsible for the film switch. Most likely the master for The Delinquent had either been accidentally sold, or was destroyed during the dubbing, and for some reason their master for the movie was lost when they still had the box cover. So just substituted some other movie. When you watch the tape, it opens with a cheap looking title sequence that could not have possibly been produced by Shaw Brothers, and the title is covered up with a screen that reads:

Street Gangs Of Hong Kong:
The Delinquent

after the opening credits, you get a very low budget martial arts comedy. I later found out the correct title for that film was The Young Avenger, released in 1980. I was able to find it due to the Ocean Shores watermark that turned up twice during the film, and then consulting the Ocean Shores catalog, finding a film that had both the same exact cast, but same synopsis of a Kung Fu master pretending he was a ghost. The Young Avenger was given a DVD release by Tai Sing, who released a number of movies originally released through the Ocean Shores label, which meant they were full screen pan and scans. As for The Delinquent, the rights were acquired by Harvey Weinstein for Dragon Dynasty, but was among the many Shaw Brothers films Dragon Dynasty never released. With this lates round of Shaw Brothers releases on Blu Ray by Shout! Factory and Arrow Video and a couple of other boutique labels, so far no one has released The Delinquent, or announced they were releasing it. That could mean someone has the rights and is holding off on releasing it on a future set, or no one wants to aquifer the rights.

That brings us to this The Young Avenger, which is not the 1980 comedy ( that one was the only film released by Fai Tan Films, a production company that didn't last beyond it's single production. ) Instead is an even more obscure wuxia film released by Shaw Brothers at the tail end of the late 60s wuxia film rage, and just as kung fu films were taking over as the dominant martial arts films. A very simple story about a girl who watches a villain sucker punch her father, giving him a fatal iron palm blow, then vows to return in ten years to finish off his family. Before he dies, the father sends his daughter to live with her uncle who will teach her to be a swordswoman. Ten years later she returns, becoming a typical wuxia hero who goes by the nickname The Young Avenger. She then protects the town against the returning villain and his army of thugs. A nice little potboiler, but not a classic.

Sex and Zen ( 1991 )
For the past few months I held off on buying any new movies other than the martial arts sets. A combination of the sets being expensive, and me wanting to collect them all before they went out of print and really got expensive on eBay. And me wanting to wait until 2026 to buy the 2025 releases. And because now that Christmas is approaching, as usual I am told not to buy anything because Santa may bring it this Christmas, which is usually something that doesn't happen, because the movies I am usually gifted on Christmas are ones I would never buy. Anyway, the game plan was to order three sets on Cyber Monday. Shaw Brothers Classics Vol 7 from Shout! Factory, Golden Harvest Volume 1: Supernatural Shockers  also from Shout! Factory, and a pre-order of Arrow Video's lates Shaw Scope release which was supposed to have a street date of December 1st, but was apparently changed to Dec 9th. Shaw-Scope Volume 4 was supposed to be mostly horror films from the studio, so my plan was to watch the Shaw Brothers Classics Vol 7 in the afternoon slot, Shaw Scopes at my night time movie slot, and only touch the Golden Harvest Volume 1: Supernatural Shockers on the nights Saturday Night Live was on hiatus. So, since the release of Shaw Scope Volume 4 was pushed back a week, and I will not be getting it until this Wednesday, I decided to take advantage of the fact the family was out Saturday night to see the latest Zootopia film, and watch what is basically a porno film. So the films on the Volume 1 set are:

Sex and Zen ( 1991 )
Erotic Ghost Story ( 1991 )
Erotic Ghost Story II ( 1991 )
Erotic Ghost Story III ( 1992 )
Doctor Vampire ( 1990 )
Robotrix ( 1991 )

I  already had two of these movies from way back in the early 90s when Fortune Star flooded the market with DVD imports of Hong Kong movies from the 80s and 90s and I collected quite a few. So I did get Sex and Zen back then because it was on a list of films in one of the Hong Kong movie guides that was so wild that it was essential viewing. A list that had the celebrated prison movie  Story of Riki and the serial killer film Untold Story. And I also previously owned Robotruix, but because I mistook it for I Love Maria, both films about female robots. Anyway, the title for this set is misleading. Supernatural Shockers sounds like you will be getting more of films like Boxer's Omen. But every film on this set is Category III, Hong Kong's equivalent of the X rated movie. And while some films earn 6their Category II rating from over the top violence, these all earn the rating for being pornographic. Oh, and not to nick pick, but  Robotrix is science fiction, not supernatural. And Sex and Zen has nothing supernatural in it at all. It is basically the story of a good looking scholar back in the Ching Dynasty who vows to have sex with as many beautiful women as he can. There are also other characters having sex. And, everything is over the top. The film is far more cartoonish that erotic. And has crazy stuff, like the scene where the scholar gets a penis transplant, replacing what he has with something donated by a horse. And there is the scene with the two lesbians and the flute they both use at the same time. And those are the least crazy stuff you will see in this film. When it came to Category III, the Hong Kong studios cared more about shocking their audience than getting them horny like American porno films do. This movie is worth seeing just to have a good laugh, which you will have. But completely fails at actually being erotic. At least not for me. Who knows what works in Hong Kong.  The reason I bought this set is because it is the first of what is supposed to be several volumes of Golden Harvest movie sets from Shout! Factory. Volume 2 came out last year, and has mostly 70s era Kung Fu movies. I am hoping for more volumes, so I can get releases of some more 80s era movies like Zu: Warriors of the Magic Mountain and Witch From Nepal, both that I would like to upgrade from Laserdisc, and a few other Golden Harvest films that have not yet been released on home video in the states. They haven't mentioned a Volume 3 yet, which is a bit discouraging. Hopefully they didn't abandon Golden Harvest.

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Crazy Nuts of Kung Fu ( 1974 )
The final film on the Shaw Brothers Volume Six set is the only one which is Kung Fu instead of Wuxia, and the first in the second wave of Shaw Brothers Classics releases. Up until now everything has been pure wuxia. Hopefully if Shout! Factory does a third wave of Shaw Brothers Classics, we will get a lot more Kung Fu and Basher films. It appears that for this wave, someone at Shout! sought out the most obscure of the Shaw Brothers films, or rarest as the commentary tracks call them. Crazy Nuts of Kung Fu is an example of this. Not among any of the studio's actual classics, but among the films that has up until now not been given a  home video release. At least some of the other rare films so far in the second wave had a previous release on VHS, and bootlegs still exist. This movie was apparently not even released on VHS, so has become one of the most sought after films by Shaw Brothers collectors. It is basically a pot boiler made by Shaw Brothers just so they would have a film to release in between their prestige film releases. Probably more notable for being a comedy, when the common belief was that Jackie Chan's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow ( 1978 ) was the first Kung Fu comedy. There were a few others prior to Jackie Chan, but it was Chan's comedies which broke box office records and made Kung Fu comedies dominant towards the end of the old school era. Crazy Nuts of Kung Fu just barely earned a profit. despite what the title suggests, the level of comedy here is not as wild as the Jackie Chan Kung Fu comedies, but more on the level of the comedy in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The plot has a con man and gambling cheat hire a tough fighter to be his body guard while he rips off gambling houses who themselves are running rigged games. About halfway through the film, the plot changes to the two men trying to rip off an army for money and ending up siding with rebels and fighting both the army and the Japanese who are selling them guns. Just a potboiler with patriotic themes thrown in to get the Hong Kong audience cheering. But entertaining.

Robotrix ( 1991 )
The plan was to watch the first movie in the Shaw Scope Volume 4 set. That isn't going to happen because the set I purchased as a pre-order on Cyber Monday is currently being held up at California by custom agents demanding one of Trump's tariffs be paid. Sure, they are Hong Kong films. But the set was manufactured in the United States, in Delaware. So how did it end up held up at a California port? Well, I was tracking the package this week, and it took a side trip to Japan. The weird thing is, that this is at least the fifth time a package I have ordered online has been shipped to Asia by mistake. And once it returns from Asia, it is subject to those tariffs, which neither the shipping company, nor the site that I bought it from nor Arrow want to pay. So, while that is being sorted out, Arrow is sending new copies to the company I ordered from, which will be shipped when they get it.... well, it is a mess. The stuff I ordered from Amazon arrived with no problem, mostly because they were ordered through a family member's Amazon Prime account. Which makes me wish I didn't try to save the two dollars and also order this from Amazon.

So, it was back to the Golden Harvest set if I wanted something new and not a martial arts film to watch in the evening. And since the first film on the Shaw Scope set was to be Infra-Man about a bionic cop, I decided to rewatch Robotrix which is about a robotic cop. Also, as far as I can tell, this is the least pornographic film in the Golden Harvest Volume 1 set. At least I didn't remember it being as pornographic as Sex and Zen. Way back in the early 00s the North American market was flooded with DVDs from Asia via Tai Seng, a company that I had previously bought imported Hong Kong Laserdiscs from, and had also manufactured a series of laserdiscs for the North American market featuring prominent Hong Kong films. Those Laserdiscs were just a trickle, and retailed for around $40. The DVDs were about $20, and they were a lot of the Hong Kong cinema from between 1980 through 2000. At that point I mostly knew about HK cinema via books written by Asian film historians and film enthusiasts who, before the flood of the DVDs, said the only way to watch these movies in the US were to go into your closest Chinatown and rent them from one of there video shops. Through those books, there were a lot of action and fantasy films from HK I wanted to see and perhaps own. One of which was I Love Maria which also went under the alternative name of Roboforce. A comedy about a female robot and two near-do-wells ( Tsui Hark & John Shum ) fighting a criminal gang with their own female robot. So when I was grabbing a bunch of new HK imports from Tower Records, I saw Robotrix and mistook it for I Love Maria/Roboforce. Not that I would not have eventually bought Robotrix as it was among the films those books suggested. But it turned out not to be the film I thought it was, and traumatized family members as I watched it thinking it would just have cartoon violence and nothing else objectionable. Yep, it has sex. Quite possibly this could have gotten away with an R rating if it had been submitted to the MPAA, but more likely an NC19.  The plot? It is the future. Which still has VHS video tapes and push buttons, but what the near future was imagined to be in 1991.  Robots/androids are a reality. And they come covered in skin, so they look exactly like humans. Also, they have sexual organs. Male robots with penis, females with vaginas and big breasts. No explanation is given as to why, but I am guessing so nerds have something to f*&k. A robot has kidnapped an Arabian prince, and in the process has murdered the female police detective assigned to protect him. A video tape is sent to his father the King, showing a mad scientist who once worked for him so their country would have an army of robots, commit suicide. The mad scientist had electrodes attached to his head, and another set attached to a male robot. It is explained that the mad scientist is transferring his intelligence into the robot, which can only be done after he had died. Now, he is an unstoppable robot, the same one who kidnapped his son, and he demands the King make him the leader of his robot army, or else. Since robots with human intelligence are supposedly too dangerous for normal police to stop, they decide to transfer the intelligence of the dead police woman into a female robot that has been given her face.  Meanwhile, the mad scientist robot has started going around Hong Kong and raping and killing prostitutes. So the female cop robot decides to capture him by using another sexy female robot called Ann as bait. This eventually leads to confrontations with the evil robot, and eventually a final fight at a scrap metal yard. It is a decent enough 90s science fiction film which would have worked even if they edited out all the gratuitous sex scenes. The only flaw being that the female cop robot is killed off prior to the final battle, leaving Ann and the female cop's human boyfriend to show up for the final confrontation.  The reason why Ann ends up fighting the mad scientist robot is because she is played by Category III star Amy Yip ( who was also the leading lady of Sex and Zen ) and I understand why the studio would want the biggest star in this film to be the final hero. But the plot had just established that only a robot with human intelligence could defeat another robot with human intelligence, which Ann does not have. And why bother setting the other female robot up as the main character, only to sideline her? Would it not have made more sense to kill off Ann instead, and cast Amy Yip as the female cop robot?

[stethacantus]

Finally got the Shaw Scope Volume 4  in this week. Since it is mostly the science fiction and horror films made at Shaw Brothers, I have decided to watch the Shaw Scope set on Saturday evening, and watch Shaw Brothers Classics Volume 7 in my usual 3pm time slot where I keep the tradition begun in the 80s of watching martial arts movies on Saturday afternoons. On the weeks the Shaw Scope set has a wuxia/horror hybrid, I will watch it in the 3pm time slot. There has been such a glut of Shaw Brothers film sets released in the past few years that I am way behind in watching them. Hopefully by July I will be done. ( also getting hammered by the commentary tracks, which I am determined to listen to before going on to the next disc, so have to watch on week nights. While only some of the movies on the first wave set had commentary tracks, this wave has an average of two tracks per film, not including the tracks on the Shaw Scope sets and the rest of the Golden Harvest set 1. Which is eating up almost every second of my free time despite each commentator having rehashed the same Shaw Brothers historical facts many times over. ) Then again, there are the German sets I am considering getting despite them having no English dubs available. And of course Shout! could announce the release of Shaw Brothers Classics Volume 9 signaling another wave of four sets. By this time the wuxia genre at Shaws has been pretty much mined clean by Shout! and Arrow, so any further sets will get around to the Kung Fu films still not having been released in the U.S. Anyway, lets take a look at what is on both sets being begun this weekend:


Shaw Scope Volume 4
Super Inframan ( 1975 ) ( Previous Released by Image Entertainment )
Oily Maniac ( 1976 )
Battle Wizard ( 1977 ) ( Previously Released by Well Go )
Black Magic  ( 1975 ) ( Previously Released by Image Entertainment )
Black Magic Part 2 ( 1976 ) ( Previously Released by Tokyo Shock/Media Blasters )
Hex ( 1980 )
Bewitched ( 1981 )
Hex vs Witchcraft ( 1980 )
Hex After Hex ( 1982 )
Bat Without Wings ( 1980 ) ( Previously Released by Image Entertainment )
Bloody Parrot ( 1981 )
The Fake Ghost Catchers ( 1982 )
Demon of the Lute ( 1983 )
Seeding of a Ghost ( 1983 ) ( Previously Released by Image Entertainment )
Portrait of a Crystal ( 1983 )
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star ( 1983 )

Looking forward to Oily Maniac the most on this set. But only because it has been mentioned so many times on commentary tracks on past Shaw Scope and Shaw Brothers Classics sets. Also going to watch the often mentioned Hex films for the first time.

Shaw Brothers Classics Volume 7
Imperial Tomb Raiders ( 1973 )
Legend of the Bat ( 1978 ) ( Previously Released by Well Go )
The Shadow Boxer ( 1974 ) ( Previously Released by Image Entertainment )
The Spiritual Boxer ( 1975 )
Heaven Sword  and Dragon Saber ( 1978 )
Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber 2 ( 1978 )
Shaolin Hand Lock ( 1978 ) ( Previously Released by Funimation )
Swordsman and Enchantress ( 1978 ) ( Previoulsly Released by Well Go )
The Proud Twins ( 1979 )
A Deadly Secret ( 1980 )
Heroes Shed No Tears ( 1980 ) ( Previously Released by Well Go )

This set looking forward to The Spiritual Boxer,  one of the few Lau Kar Leung film I have never seen.  Now to the films I watched this weekend:


Imperial Tomb Raiders ( 1973 )
.With a title like this, you would think this is something similar to the Indiana Jones films. And for a while it seemed like this film was headed in that direction.  A group of bandits are after an old nanny, who is the only woman who knows the location of a  secret royal crypt. The Emperor's favorite concubine was buried there , allegedly with a valuable pearl placed in her mouth. So, most of this film takes place in a house in the mountains where the nanny is taking shelter and  the heroes protecting her  hold off the army of bandits trying to abduct her. We finally get to the tomb in the final fifteen minutes of the film, and it does look like a set you would find in an  Indiana Jones film. But there are no boobytraps, no secret doors, or anything fun like that. Just bandits killing each other over who will get possession of the pearl. Other than that letdown, it is still another entertaining potboiler from Shaw Brothers.


Super Inframan ( 1975 )
Probably could have watched this in the afternoon slot, considering there is a lot of Kung Fu fighting. But the cartoonish kind you would find in a Power Rangers episode. You don't really get good fight choreography when most of the cast is wearing monster costumes and the hero is wearing a robot costume. In this rip-off of the Japanese television series Kamen Rider, and evil dragon princess and her mutant monster army begin attacking all of Earth's cities. She demands that the humans  surrender and worship her, or she will destroy the entire planet. The world's leading scientist creates Inframan, a human with robot parts implanted into him who can turn into the Inframan robot at will. He has the power of flight, can shoot energy beams, has blades implanted in his hands that can cut through any monster which he doesn't use in this film, and a few other robot powers, but mostly has kung fu fights with the guys inn the ridiculous looking monster costumes.  And that is pretty much the entire film. Inframan and the musters hitting each other. This was released in the United States long before any Japanese shows with the same basic premise, so became an instant cult classic. But there is a reason why Shaw Brothers never attempted to make another Inframan movie. It was just more of the same that the Japanese were pumping out in bulk. And once those shows began getting international releases, Inframan seemed less unique.  At this point it is just passably entertaining.

[stethacantus]

Legend of the Bat ( 1978 )
The adventures of the swordsman thief Chu Liu Xiang continues with Legend of the Bat, which basically means that a film series that began in Arrow Video's Shawscope Volume 3 continues in Shout! Factory's Shaw Brothers Classics Volume 7. This time around, Xiang travels to the mysterious Bat Island to find a cure for the woman who nearly had him killed, and to confront the mysterious Bat King. Nope, nothing to do with Batman here. Just a fancy name the villain has. Others are also traveling to Bat Island, each who has their own agendas to keep track of. Not as hard of a story to follow as Clans of Intrigue, but with most of these late 70s wuxia films, it is all about complicated plots rather than then swordsmen mowing through armies of thugs.

Oily Maniac ( 1976 )
Not as wild of a film as it was made out to be in prior commentary tracks. In Thailand, a crippled lawyer ( Danny Lee ) who works for a corrupt district attorney,  is given a talisman which allows him to transform into a creature called The Oily Maniac, who is both powerful and indestructible, and  can turn into a mobile oil slick whenever it wants to chase after someone, or get into inaccessible places. This section of Thailand where the cripple lives is full of degenerate people who each deserve some sort of comeuppance for their crimes. So naturally, the maniac goes on a killing spree. A traditional style monster movie that uses John William's Jaws theme whenever the Maniac is about to attack a victim. But pretty much all it does is either coke a victim to death, or bash him over his or her head. The original plan this week was to take advantage of the SNL holiday hiatus and fit a third movie into the schedule. Most likely something off of the Golden Harvest set with the Category III films. But then, family members who didn't come on Christmas decided to come over this Saturday evening. So, some annoying Disney Channel sitcoms went on after Legend of the Bat ended, and stayed on the set until our guests left around 10:30. I nearly played Oily Maniac for them. I mean, it wasn't one of the Category III films, was it? Good thing I didn't. Just about every actress in this film has a full frontal nudity scene.

[stethacantus]

The Battle Wizard ( 1977 )
As per the game plan, anything on the Shaw Scope Volume 4 set which has enough martial arts to count as a martial arts film will be watched on Saturday afternoon, the time slot I have been watching martial arts films since 1981 when local television began airing Black Belt Theater. There was a pause with this in the late 80s when the station that aired the films was turned into FOX and the martial arts films ceased. When I began buying the films every Friday on bootlegs ( sold in various stores in Manhattan in those bootleg SB video boxes ) and another pause between then and the late 90s when Hong Kong films began to be sold on DVD, then another pause until the Celestial Shaw Brothers dump in the early 00s. Been watching martial arts films in the 3pm time slot every Saturday ever since. Now, I am not opposed to watching non martial arts Asian films in this slot. But now with both the Shaw Brothers Classics Volume Seven and Shaw Scope Volume 4 needing to be watched, and as Shaw Scope Volume 4 being most of Shaw Brothers special effects movies which are mostly in the horror genre, I decided to watch the horror/fantasy films in the evening, and any martial arts films on the set in the afternoon, alternating between the Shaw Scope and Shaw Brothers Classics sets. About five films in the Shaw Sope are a mix of fantasy and wuxia, of which this is one. Not going to bother summarizing the plot. It is an adaption of the expansive novel Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, which Shaw Brothers planned to adapt into three separate films, each following the three protagonists from the novel. This one following Duan Yu ( Danny Lee ), condensing his tale, cutting out sub plots and combining characters in order to jam his story into a 90 minute film. The second and third film were cancelled, although this film seems to have a plot hat is resolved.  Basically, villain with magic powers wants vengeance against the Duan family, Duan Yu obtains magic powers of his own, and it all ends in a fight where everyone is shooting energy at each other. Some impressive effects here which would have been far more exciting back when this film was released, just before Star Wars and Close Encounters, and the flood of effect driven fantasy films that followed in the late 70s and 80s.  There is use of weapons, but mainly from the characters who don't have magic powers.

Black Magic ( 1972 )
A woman hires a black magic wizard to steal the man she is in love with from his wife with a love spell, then set a death curse on the wife. The black magic wizard is an evil sorcerer who kills a few people during the film with various death curses. A white magic wizard shows up to save the couple, and defeat the evil wizard once and for all. About halfway through watching this, something scary happened. My Blu Ray player suddenly shut down. The power went out, and it would not turn on. This after the lights in the house dimmed, signifying a brief brownout in the neighborhood, or perhaps some sort of power spike. But it did nothing to the cable boxes. After being unable to restart the player, I unplugged it, and gave it up for dead. To late to go to Best Buy and buy a replacement, and despite having a lot of devices that would play DVD, no other Blu-ray players in the house.  I realized I would need to buy a replacement next weekend, or perhaps on Sunday. Damn it, despite the after Christmas sales, I was betting a new Blu-ray during the tariffs would be expensive. But then, around Midnight, I decided to plug the Blu-ray player in again and give it another try. Not only did it go on, but began playing right at the point in the movie where it had shut down. Finished Black Magic, then checked the machine out, and it works as if nothing happened to it. My best guess is that whatever happened with the electricity caused a corruption in the software which could not be corrected without a system reboot, which required the player to remain unplugged until the residual electricity in it ran out. Anyway, did not have time to watch the Golden Harves set, so that is going to have to wait. But at least I don't need to buy or fix the player.

[stethacantus]

The Shadow Boxer ( 1974 )
This is one of a couple of Kung Fu films in this set. Once again, Shut! Factory has gone overboard with the wuxia films for their Shaw Brothers Classics sets. If there is a third wave of sets, let's hope we finally get those Shaw Brothers basher films that have not been released in North America yet. This is not among any of their classic films. It is basically a quickie rip-off of Bruce Lee's The Big Boss The hero of the film is among a group of workers building a road that is being oppressed by the company that hired them and are not paying them the wages they are owed. The company is owned by an evil rich family who's son who has the hero's martial arts master assassinated, rapes his girlfriend and causes her to commit suicide, and has his best friend murdered. Despite promising his dying master that he will never use his martial arts skills to fight, by the end of this movie the hero finally has had enough and goes on a revenge spree. Tossed in at the end is the hero having remorse for killing the evil bastards and stating that revenge has not made him happy, and wondering why so many get pleasure out of killing. Which seems like an odd message to stick on he end of a film that basically used the revenge plot as entertainment.

Black Magic Part 2  ( 1976 )
Released as a sequel but not actually a sequel. Most of the cast from the first is back, but now playing different characters. This time Lo Lieh plays the black magic wizard, who is over 80 years old but keeps young by drinking the milk of pregnant women he puts trances on. Ti Lung and Ni Tien are a married couple visiting from Hong Kong who are told by their friends that black magic is real, and the local hospital has been overrun with victims of death curses with symptoms that modern science can not explain. Since Ti and Ni are doctors themselves, they refuse to believe in superstitions, and decide to exhume the bodies of those recently killed by death curses to find some rational explanations of their deaths. Despite not being able to explain why the victim's blood has changed to that of a dog, or why it is filled with millions of microscopic worms, Ti refuses to believe in black magic. So accepts a challenge by his friend to hire the wizard suspected of the death curses, and have him put a love spell on his wife to cheat with his friend. If it works, then that should be proof that black magic is real. But the wizard realizes he is being investigated, and instead begins to put curses on the entire group. By the end of the film Ti is forced to admit that black magic is real, and ends up having to fight the wizard and his army of zombies using the talisman given to him by a dying white magic wizard.


Doctor Vampire ( 1990 )
What the f*&k? Okay, so every film in this set was supposed to be category III. Hong Kong's equivalent of X movies in this country. But this movie is not X rated. In fact, it could probably pass for PG in this country. There is sex, but with no nudity. Both The Shadow Boxer and Black Magic Part 2 had nudity. Despite the film opening with the hero finding a castle with an orgy filled party, everyone making out is fully clothed. Even the violence is not that bad. A doctor from Hong Kong  is visiting England when his car breaks down. There is a not too spooky castle nearby, so he drops in to ask to use a phone. It is here that they are having an orgy ( a PG version of an orgy ) and he ends up drugged by one of the girls who then has sex with him. All the girls in the castle are vampires who then share the blood of their victims with their master, a vampire called The Count. He likes the blood of the girl who bit the Hong Kong doctor, but she informs him that her victim has already left to return to Hong Kong. Back in Hong Kong the doctor slowly turns into a vampire. And, it is a comedy. The action finally picks up towards the ending when The Count arrives in Hong Kong to drink the remainder of the Doctor's blood, and he and his friends end up having an all out battle with him.  It is a fun little vampire film which, typical of most HK comedies, is not particularly funny, but picks up when the action finally sets in. But it is not Category III. This set makes absolutely no sense. Golden Harvest has other Category III they could have used to fill out this set, and some really classic vampire films they could have had on this set instead of this, like Mr. Vampire. Had I known how tame this film would be, I would have watched it earlier and saved Black Magic Part 2 for later.

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The Spiritual Boxer ( 1975 )
After years of choreographing the fights in Chang Cheh's movies, Lau Kar Leung left the director to direct his own films. What would follow was a string of martial arts masterpieces that surpassed Chang Cheh's films. The Spiritual Boxer was his debut as director, which you would think was enough for it to be released in the United States on home video. That, and because it was the first major martial arts comedy, released a full two years before Jackie Chan's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow. But to date, only it's sequel Spiritual Boxer II has been released in America. So, is this historic film a classic? No. Beyond this being an early attempt at mixing martial arts and comedy, Lau Kar Leung wasn't trying to do anything too ambitious with his first film. And pulling double duty as director and choreographer, he chose to limit the fights in this film. So you get a major fight at the end, and a lot of very brief fighting leading up to it. The opening, which guest stars Ti Lung and Chen Kuan-tai as spiritual boxers demonstrating their mystical fighting skills to the empress dowager. The scene appears to have been added to the movie in order to have both actors appear in the trailers to attract ticket sales. But it does establish what a spiritual boxer was, which were martial artists who claimed they could summons the spirits of dead martial arts heroes and deities who would possess them and give them their skills and powers. They would also claim to be impervious to all weapons, and demonstrate their skills by being stabbed by knifes and spears without the weapons being able to pierce their skin, and also showed the ability to be impervious to fire. However, this would in later years be revealed as magic tricks. After the opening scene of the film, the tone shifts as a master claiming to be a spiritual boxer enters a town to scam the local residents out of money. He ends up passed out drunk at a bar, and his student decides to perform the act on his own, ending up with a local martial arts master revealing his tricks, and him getting chased out of town. He wanders into a new town where he befriends a tom boy, and gradually builds a reputation as a powerful spiritual boxer. He eventually runs afoul of the town's crime boss, and ends up in a showdown fight with him and the martial arts experts he had hired. While not being among Lau Kar Leung's best work, it does show a lot of promise whenever there were fight. So basically a good film by a director who a few films later would be comfortable enough to load his movies with groundbreaking screen fights.

Hex ( 1980 )
Kuei Chih Hung was the director of such infamous horror films as Killer Snakes, Corpse Mania and Boxer's Omen. So I was expecting something very intense with this, the first of what would become a series of Hex films. Instead, I got something mostly tame. A Alfred Hitchcock style murder film with an avenging ghost. There are a couple of twists in this one I do not want to spoil. But none of the gore you would expect. There is unexpected nudity near the end of the film which seems to have been added on just so the two lead actresses would be completely nude. But nothing else hard core.

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Heaven Sword  and Dragon Saber ( 1978 )
Once again, an adaption of a multi-volume novel where every few minutes a new character  to learn pops in. Not much of a fan of these films. Imagine if HBO tried to tell the entire Game of Thrones in a two hour film instead of multiple seasons. Just the first thirty seconds of this film is a montage which I am sure is a condensed version of the first five chapters, which at first appears to be highlights from a previous film. After an hour and forty seven minutes the film stops, and a voice over tells you the story will continue in Heaven Sword  and Dragon Saber II, and this time included scenes from the second movie as sort of a trailer. The plot: there are two swords everyone wants...A young hero keeps accidentally learning different magical martial arts skills... a clan is framed by a villain so that every other clan teams together to wipe them out... and so on.


Bewitched ( 1981 )
A man takes a vacation in Thailand where he meets a girl, dates her for a few days, then dumps her. So she finds a black magic wizard and pays him to cast several curses against him. One which causes him to murder his own daughter. A detective investigating the murder begins to believe the man was cursed, as he witnesses him plagued with several other maladies which causes him to slowly rot, and goes to Thailand to find out who was cursing him. This causes him to become the target of the black magic wizard who places several curses against him as well.  This easily could have been called Black Magic III as it follows the same formula of that series.

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Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber 2 ( 1978 )
Perhaps a little background on this movie. It was based on the novel of the same name by Jin Yong, and was the third book in his Condor Heroes trilogy, the first two books which were adapted by Shaw Brothers as their Brave Archer series.  Despite being based on the third book in the series, The Brave Archer series would begin a year later. This was directed by Chor Yuen, a director who in recent years has been reevaluated by Western film critics as one of China's best directors, and who was best known for his adaption of  Gu Long wuxia novels. Much like the Gu Long adaptions, this is one of those movies with way too many characters all who have their own back stories and agendas. For most of this film I was confused as to what was going on. Apparently packing too much of an epic story into a couple of films was very popular in Hong Kong. It is explained by film historians  that the audience for these films had both read the novels, and seen the multi episode television adaptions, so knew what was going on when they saw this film. Imagin a  Game of Thrones movie that tells the entire story in two hours. It would be too confusing for anyone who had not seen the series and read the A Song of Ice and Fire books. So, I spent most of this film trying to figure out what the hell was going on. The good news is that next week is a convoluted Kung Fu movie which I had seen before, and has a plot which is easy to follow.


Hex vs. Witchcraft (1980)
Kuei Chih-Hung is Shaw Brother's king of horror. Another director who's career was reevaluated years later, mostly after the cult following of Boxer's Omen. You expect a lot of nauseating gore from this director. So it is a bit of a disappointment when you watch this,  the second film in his Hex series, and find out it is a goofy comedy. He was a director who did any movie Shaw Brothers assigned him, and despite some superior efforts like Killer Constable, was relegated to doing their exploitation films. This was originally supposed to be a simple sex comedy about a ghost, but at some point Shaw Brothers decided to retitle it so it sounded like a sequel to Hex. It has nothing to do with that film. The first twenty minutes is wasted as a comedy about a gambling addict who keeps loosing, and ends up owing the mob money. The second twenty minutes is the same gambler repeatedly attempting and repeatedly failing to commit suicide About forty minutes in we finally get a hint of something supernatural. An old man approaches the gambler and asks him to do something unusual. His daughter had been raped and killed by a gang of robbers ( yes, this is suppose to be a comedy, ) and because of her violent death, her spirit is restless. So the man wants to pay the gambler to marry the ghost of his daughter. He agrees to, but doesn't really believe he is marrying a ghost. All he cares about is the free apartment, and the millions he was being offered to do it. Finally, about halfway through the film, when the gambler goes to a prostitute, she is possessed by his ghost wife, who then beats him up for cheating on her. An attempt to drive the ghost off by a priest fails when the priest is possessed. Through the possessed priest, the ghost wife makes a deal with the gambler to sexually satisfy him, and does so by possessing a stewardess who lives in the apartment below. The gambler enjoys it, as does his ghost wife. But because  the stewardess is mostly out of town, the wife begins possessing anyone else she can find to have sex with her husband, including the old lady who is the building's landlord, and a cross-eyed male janitor. The final twenty minutes of the film flips to yet another story. Having lost most of the money he got for marrying a ghost at a casino, she agrees to return with him to the casino and help him win by possessing the dealer, then using ghost powers to make all three dice constantly land on three sixes. The owner of the hotel suspects that supernatural powers are helping the gambler win. And he just happens to have a female dealer in the back room who is a witch. Unable to possess her, she possesses her husband and attempts to manipulate the dice from his body, while the witch attempts to use her powers to manipulate the dice herself. This five minutes of the film is where the actual Hex vs Witchcraft takes place. The movie ends with the ghost wife dumping her husband for venom mob member Lo Mang in his brief guest appearance in this movie. This is a terrible fil, and the only reason why it is included in this set is the insistence over the years of Kuei Chih-Hung fands in America wanting home video releases of the entire Hex trilogy, based mostly on the bootleg release of the first Hex film. So here you guys go. Be careful what you wish for. Next weekend will be the third film in the Hex series, or basically the third film the Shaws  retitled as a Hex film, and it is also supposed to be a comedy.

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Shaolin Handlock ( 1978 )
The Shaolin Handlock is a ridiculous looking technique where you do a backflip over your opponent so that you are standing behind him,  then grab him in a sort of choke hold, then lift your knee and shove it into his back, cracking his neck. To go with this is a sort of theme music each time someone does the handlock, which is the sort of music you hear in comedies when someone falls off of something. It goes along with a potboiler film. A kung fu master has invented the handlock and taught it to his son and daughter.   While they are at the market, someone visits the master and murders him using a secret weapon hidden beneath his sleaves  where knives pop out from his elbows, killing him while he attempts the handlock. The children end up tracing the killer back to Bangkok and hatching a revenge plot against the crime boss who hired him to do it. An interesting enough revenge plot, but with that ridiculous handlock technique, and a bunch of revelations about which character is related to other characters   that goes a bit too far. This was released on home video in North America twice, first by Funimation which were Shaw films selected by martial arts film historian Ric Meyers, then again for this Shaw Brothers Classics set. And yet, it is not among their classic films. Sure, it was directed by Ho Meng Hua, one of the studio's best directors who was responsible for such cult classics as Flying Guillotine and Black Magic. But this was a quickie he made in order to complete his contract with the studio so he could leave to direct independent films. And so many classics have yet to be released on home video in this country yet.


Hex After Hex ( 1982 )
Speaking of  Shaw Brothers films that should not have been released here when so many legitimate classics had not, is this. At least Shaolin Handlock was entertaining. This was just another failed comedy that drags on and on until it finally ends. This was part of the Hex film franchise, or the Hex trilogy, or basically Hex was a stand alone film, and the next two films were comedies that had nothing to do with it. So for all you fans of the cult film Hex who were demanding the next two films in the series also get restored and released, be careful what you wish for. Spoiler here, but there was no ghost in Hex, just a murder plot then revenge plot where a haunting was faked. Hex vs Witchcraft released a few months later was a comedy about a down on his luck looser who is paid to marry a real ghost. That film ended with a cameo by venom mob member Lo Mang where we find out the ghost has decided to divorce the looser so she can marry Lo Mang.   Originally shot as a comedy called Black Spell, it was hastily retitled Hex vs Witchcraft when Hex became a surprise hit. Hex after Hex is a direct sequel to Hex vs. Witchcraft which begins exactly where the previous film left off, whit the father of the deceased girl who is now a ghost asking Lo to marry her. I am almost tempted to think this was shot at the same time as Black Spell, or right after, and held back from release for two years. But there is some  recasting of characters. And a scene where Lo is selling Rubix Cubes on a street corner and being told the Rubix Cube fad is over. Which would not have been the case in 1980. I am not even sure anyone planned for Black Spell to have a sequel, or why they even bothered to bring Lo Mang back to make a sequel. So basically, the father of the ghost asks Lo Mang to marry his daughter, and he turns him down despite the money being offered because he is afraid of ghosts. So the daughter's ghost deliberately causes the loser from the first film to crash his car, killing his passenger, who is Rosie, the stewardess from the first movie. ( Both characters being recast. ) She then possesses her dead body, or something like that because later in the film the loser returns and tells Lo that Rosie had died in the crash, which suggests her body was buried. Also, the possessed Rosie can change her appearance,  turn invisible, and do other ghostly stuff. Unaware that the sexy stewardess in the building had been killed in an auto accident, Lo Mang eagerly becomes her boyfriend once she seduces him, and she in turn begins to help him out by haunting his enemies. The film only gets interesting when it makes cultural references, like Lo Mang having Arnold Schwarzenegger posters on his wall ( From Pumping Iron. This would have been made prior to Conan The Barbarian or any of his other popular films. ) . Or scenes with Star Wars characters, such as the haunting where construction workers are attacked by Darth Vader. Or even the self references to Shaw Brothers Studios. Otherwise, this is another irritating Hong Cong comedy that wears out it's welcome within minutes of the credits ending.


Erotic Ghost Story ( 1991 )
SNL is on hiatus again, this time for the Winter Olympics. So it looks like I can fit in the Erotic Ghost Story trilogy and get rid of the Golden Harvest Volume One set, which as I pointed out, is mostly Category III films that can not be watched when most of the family is awake. A Chinese Ghost Story made by Tsui Hark's Film Workshop, was a huge success, leading to two sequels, and a lot of rip off films by other studios. Tsui Hark himself would rip it off with Green Snake These films all followed the same formula. The ghost, or demon, is a beautiful girl who lives in an abandoned temple and seduces any men who enter. A young scholar takes refuge in the temple for the night and both he and the ghost or demon fall madly in love. A Taoist priest shows up, tells the scholar  that he has fallen for a ghost or demon, and attempts to send the ghost or demon to hell.  Then the real villain of the film, a powerful demon who is the master of the beautiful girl, attempts to eat the soul of the scholar, and both the priest and the girl combine their powers to defeat him.  Realizing the beautiful girl ghost, or demon, has repented, the Taoist priest allows he and the scholar to continue their romance. Erotic Ghost Story follows the same basic formula, only this time  it is three beautiful sisters who are actually demons who form a quad with a scholar. So it is basically the Chinese Ghost Story plot with sex scenes every few minutes. Sometimes between the scholar and one of the sisters. Sometimes with two of the sisters making out with each other. And sometimes with the scholar and all three sisters at the same time. This starts to get tedious. But then in the final act of the film, the formula is subverted in a way I did not see coming, and we close on an exciting demon battle I thought the film would never get around to.

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Here are where things get a bit complicated. So when Arrow announced Shaw Scope Volume 4, they said that this time it would exclusively feature the sci-fi, fantasy and horror output from the studio. Well, I had been falling behind on these sets with a Shaw Scope being released once a year, along with the eight sets of Shaw Brothers Classics from Shout! Factory. Haven't been able to watch much of the releases of classic martial arts from other studios released in the past few years. Or any releases of recent films. Back in the 80s the local FOX station would air martial arts films on Saturday afternoons at 3:00pm. While that ended in 1987, it had become a tradition to watch martial arts films on Saturday afternoon. Which I went back to when the Shaw Brothers films were being re-released on DVD in the early 2000s. Whether a Shaw Brothers film, or a Steven Seagal film, or Chambara like the Zatoichi series, or something as dopey as Gymkata, as I gradually built my home video collection of martial arts movies, each would be watched Saturday at 3. Okay, there were a few weeks some other Asian film was watched during that time slot, like the Godzilla films, or Train to Busan. This was before the unprecedented dump of classic Hong Kong films on the home video market in recent years. Before that, those films came out at a trickle. Which was why there were weeks I filled my collection with the lamer American films like The Last Dragon or anything Chuck Norris. So, with Shaw Scope Volume 4 being mostly fantasy and horror, I decided to watch those films on  Saturdays at 8pm. Add to that the Golden Harvest Volume I which was category II films which I have little choice but to watch after midnight Saturdays when younger members of the family are asleep. The only reason I bought that one was because Shout! had released two volumes of Golden Harvest sets, and I was going to get all of them, and they have not yet announced Volume 3, which will suck if they end at Volume 2 because that studio had just as many classics as Shaw Brothers. Okay, here is where things get complicated. A lot of the films at the back end of Shaw Scope Volume 4 are actually martial arts. I mean, they could have included such horror classics on the set as Heaven & Hell, Corpse  Mania and Killer Snakes, instead of more Chor Yune films just because they were slightly spooky. A lot of these films are unfamiliar to me, so I can not tell for sure if they are martial arts or pure horror.  I have seen Bat Without Wings before, so knew that one was Wuxia, and Seeding of a Ghost, so knew that one was pure horror. The others I am not to sure of.  I am taking a guess that The Fake Ghost Catchers and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star are both fantasy or horror, and the rest are martial arts. So basically I will be cutting back and fourth between two different disks in the set for the next few weeks.


Bat Without Wings ( 1980 )
Yep. Definitely wuxia. A villain who calls himself The Bat Without Wings has been going around  stealing, raping and murdering, and it takes just about every master in the martial arts world to capture him. About 20 of them confront The Bat Without Wings at a temple, and he kills all but two of them before being killed himself. However, five years later, the supposedly dead Bat Wings suddenly reappears, and wipes out an escort company. This is the beginning of another complex Chor Yune wuxia mystery where everyone is after the villain's two swords which when put together, tell the location of his treasure. Apparently the two masters who had killed The Bat Without Wings in the battle five years prior each took one of the swords. Now one of those masters has gone missing and is presumed to have been murdered. This is pretty much as far as I can recap the plot here without any spoilers. So lets just describe The Bat Without Wings himself. Every review of the films describes his makeup as being the same as Gene Simmons of Kiss, which aside from the mustache, really is identical. The costume has a cape which resembles wings, which makes little sense because of his name. Also, yes, I had seen this film before. I bought the DVD about fifteen years ago, and remembered nothing about it other than the villain's costume and that it had sword fighting. That's the problem with Chor Yuen wuxia films. They jam so much story and characters into a 100 minute running time that there is nothing memorable.

The Fake Ghost Catchers ( 1982 )
So... this is a martial arts film. Well, mostly a horror comedy about con artists who pretend to be psychics who end up finding a real ghost who wants to hire them to battle an evil ghost. But there is also a fair share of fight scenes, including one with veteran Shaw Brothers bad guy Johnny Wang Lung Wei. Alexander Fu Sheng is in this, but surprisingly does very little fighting. This was around the time he was Shaw Brother's biggest star, so they made sure he was in a lot of films, usually in smaller parts so he could shot multiple films at the same time. So probably didn't have the time to do the fight scenes. So, there was a lot more of the ghost exorcism stuff than fights, and the final fifteen minutes is all about the exorcism of the evil ghost, with the fight with Lung Wei having concluded the scene before. So technically, this is a horror film with some martial arts added in.

Erotic Ghost Story II ( 1991 )
After the film opens with a long recap of the first movie and a montage of the scenes from that film, it pretty much abandons those characters and goes on to a brand new plot with different characters. Even though the demon from the first film was killed, the voice over says he simply reincarnated into a new body ( portrayed by a different actor, this time Anthong Wong ) which feels a lot like they had a completely different story about a completely different demon that they decided to claim was the same one from the first film. This demon had fallen in love with a human, but after their brief romance, some Taoists decide the romance is forbidden, and burn her at a stake. The demon decides to take his rage out on a small village, forcing them to sacrifice a virgin to him every ten years, which they do out of fear. A lot of the first half of this film is just one sex scene after another with very little plot. And, it gets tedious. It picks up in the second half with the heroes battling the demon, and  genuinely emotional ending. And it does have one outrageous scene where the sex demon is having intercourse with one of the villagers, and while humping her, rips her bottom half off. Instead of complaining, she complains that she can no longer feel the sex and demands hi give her back her bottom half.  So, half boring and half entertaining, with a cheaper budget than the first film.

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Bloody Parrot ( 1981 )
The hero is confused. We're confused. The plot is easy to follow at first. On screen text tells the legend of the Bloody Parrot, a creature created by demons who grants three wishes to whoever sees it, but only as long as that person is alive, after which the wishes evaporate. A swordsman has been escorting treasure for the Emperor, and it has gone missing. While searching for it the swordsman see's the Bloody Parrot, and wishes for the treasure to be found. It immediately reappears in the palace, but shortly after that the swordsman finds out his son was killed in a riding accident. His second wish is for his son to come back from the dead, after which his son's coffin begins shaking. Everyone in the palace is convinced his son is returning as a zombie, and while trying to prevent him from opening his son's sealed coffin, the swordsman is stabbed to death. The coffin stops shaving, and the treasure disappears again.  And from this point on the film becomes hard to follow. We have a hero that everyone wants to kill, a constable he becomes instant friends with who is immediately killed by the Bloody Parrot, and as a dying request, asks the hero to take his body back to his home town, so that for the rest of the film the hero is bringing a coffin around with him. Also, the prostitute he immediately falls in love with who is being looked after by a witch, who wants the hero dead. And a lot of other characters that show up and either try to kill the hero, or get themselves killed by the witch or parrot. And then everyone ends up trapped in a cavern with poisonous snakes and a zombie. This all leads to a Scooby Doo ending where we find out there never was anything supernatural going on, just a way too elaborate plot to steal the treasure.

Seeding of a Ghost ( 1983 )
Reviewed this a couple of times here already. But basically, the wife of a cab driver has been cheating on him. She gets into a fight with the man she is having an affair with and walks out on him, only to get raped by two thugs who then cause her to fall off a roof and die. When the police refuse to arrest the rape suspects or man she was having an affair with, the husband hires a black magic wizard to unleash a powerful curse called "Seeding of a Ghost". Another Black Magic style move, but this one ends with one of my favorite scenes in a Shaw Brothers horror film. The man who the cab driver's wife was cheating with has a wife that gets pregnant, not realizing she is actually pregnant with a demon ghost from the curse. A large group of friends are gathered at their house when she goes into labor, including a friend who is a doctor and decides to deliver the child in the house. It does not go as planned. Her belly explodes, killing her,  and the placenta shoots onto the floor. The doctor investigates, and some slime shoots out of the placenta, covering his face, he peels it off, but whatever it was has begun melting his face. Meanwhile, tentacles have emerged from the placenta and have begun killing their friends. Then the head of the raped woman with a long neck, demon eyes  and razor teeth emerges and chews off a chunk of the man she was having an affair withs flesh. By the time the demon spawn is finally stopped, everyone in the house is either badly injured or dead. Better than any scene found in a Cronenberg movie. Check it out.

Erotic Ghost Story III ( 1992 )
And, with this I have finished Golden Harvest Volume 1. The next one is called  Golden Harvest Volume 2: Shining Stars with action movies this time, and I have every film in that set. Many only on laserdisc though, so could use the upgrade. Still no word on a Volume 3, and there are a lot of Golden Harvest films I would love to have upgrades of ( some which I only have as bootleg VHS! ) Still have no idea why Shout! Factory chose a Cat II theme for the first set. Or why if they were going to do that, didn't bother to include the other two Sex & Zen films, but did go to the trouble of including the entire Erotic Ghost Story trilogy. This film is the bottom of the barrel of the Cat III movies. It is in no way a sequel to the other two. The only thing it has in common with them is there are demons, and no ghosts. A swordsman seeks shelter in an abandoned temple with a Taoist monk, and decides to go into a mural to visit some pretty looking women. He immediately begins having sex with one of them, which goes on for a good twenty minutes. It turns out this is the gateway to Hell, and the mural is the world in between where the demons are kept. They trick the swordsman into killing the guardian of the gateway so they can escape into the real world, and then there is a battle between him and the lead female demon, aided by the Taoist priest who shrinks himself and climbs into the demon's vag$#@ to attack her from within. Nothing interesting or memorable happens during the sex scenes as in the previous films, and the demon battle is pretty much paint by numbers, so this is a pretty weak film.

This was the second worse Category III film I have ever seen, the first going to Raped by an Angel 2: The Uniform Fan which is the only Laserdisc I have ever thrown out. I got that one for a really stupid reason. Back in the 90s when Hong Kong movies were just starting to be released in the United States, among the films I was interested in owning was a cult classic called Naked Killer, which as far as I can tell never got a Laserdisc release in North America. It would show up on DVD in the early 00's though. A lot of Hong Kong cinema I knew of from books and Ric Meyers articles, and from one book knew that the sequel to Naked Killer was called Naked Killer II: Raped By An Angle. So Raped by an Angel 2: The Uniform Fan was the third Wong Jing film in the series. So snatched it up when it got it's release. ( I should also point out that whenever Tai Sing or any other company made Laserdiscs for North America, they were usually  low printings with very limited supplies, and quickly out of stock if you didn't buy one on release day. So as a collector back then, I had to get them before supplies ran out. )  It turns out, all the films are unrelated. Raped by an Angel 2: The Uniform Fan was a horrible comedy about a doctor who was addicted to raping women in uniform, so after chloroforming women patients who were waring a uniform on their visit, would rape them in their sleep. An then he sees a young girl in a school girl uniform and rapes and kills her. The rest of the film being her older sister taking revenge. And it was still supposed to be a comedy? Watched it once, and into the trash it went.

Category III films are supposed to be disturbing. But in a fun way. Like the over the top sex in Sex & Zen, or the over the top violence of Story Of Riki. The category was invented in 1988 as part of a newly invented ratings system. Actually, both Bloody Parrott and Seeding of a Ghost would have probably qualified as cat III had the ratings system existed back then. Both contain grotesque violence and gore, and gratuitous nudity. While considered the X rating of Hong Kong, many R rated films from America have gotten Cat III when distributed in Hong Kong, including the Chucky films and Scream films. And then sometimes acclaimed films like John Woo's Bullet in the Head and Jackie Chan's Crime Story receive a Cat III rating. They are worth seeking out just for how crazy they are. But be warned that you will risk watching some that are in very bad taste, so consult the reviews on IMDb first. ( which did not exist back when I was buying Laserdiscs. ) This set? Ehhh. Golden Harvest has some way better Cat III films, including Story of Riki which is as fun as you can get with pointless violence ( and the source of  hundreds of popular memes. ) So it makes no sense why these films, why only six films, and why Doctor Vampire, which is not a Category III film, was slipped in.

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Demon Of The Lute ( 1983 )
So, the film opens with animated characters in the titles which a chorus of kids sing about as if they are well known characters familiar to Chinese children. So I was suspecting I was in for a kids movie before the credits ended on a live smiling baby, and a title popped up saying: "A Wuxia Film Dedicated To Children" Oh-oh. I get why many Shaw fans wanted this released as it was among the Shaw films that were not released on home video, had a couple of the Venom Mob in lead roles, and was apparently remade a decade later as the popular Bridget Lin fantasy Deadful Melody. But a kids film? Basically, a weapon called The Demon Lute has been found by two brothers who battle to the death against each other to possess it. The weapon is indestructible, and when played, cant kill any opponent just by playing it. The only thing that can destroy it is the Thunder Bow and Arrow, which a bunch of heroes unite to locate. Both the heroes and villains include very colorful characters, one of which is a young boy. Fortunately, not a bad film. At least not as bad as a lot of American made Kids films are. And you still get a lot of martial arts fights, many which have blood.

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star ( 1983 )
And.. here we have a bad film from the same year. One of Shaw Brother's many failed attempts at comedy. Called a sci-fi comedy, it has barely any actual sci-fi. A U.F.O. abducts a girl. When a famous scientist confirms her story, she becomes a popular celebrity. Meanwhile the scientist has accidentally ingested a formula that occasionally turns him into a type of Mr. Hyde. It is one of those films that seems to make itself up as it goes along, switching from a slapstick comedy about two goofy detectives, to a musical, to social commentary on fame, and so on. Much of the film abandons the U.F.O. plot, then finally gets back to it in the third act when one of the goofy detectives is abducted himself and ends up having a light saber fight with a knock off of Darth Vader. None of the humor works, and much of the film drags. Only the finale with the light saber battle ( which includes a nunchuk  saber ) is entertaining enough that this film isn't a total waste. This is the film that closes out Shaw Scope Volume 4, which is a shame, especially if Arrow does not release any further volumes. You would home they ended on something strong rather than something only sought after for being obscure. But I still have one more film left, as I have been watching this out of order. The one remaining Wuxia fantasy will be watched next Saturday afternoon, then it is back to the Shout! Factory Shaw Brothers Classics set.

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Portrait in Crystal ( 1983 )
With this film we come to the end of the Shaw Scope Volume 4. A wuxia-fantasy-horror film, which like most of the films in this subgenre, ends with a Scooby-Doo ending where we find out the monster wasn't real. while an artist is sculpting a statue of a woman out of crystal, his assistant reads from a book that says that the particular crystal being used will come to life if it gets a drop of blood on it. When the statue is completed, the artists feels like it has no soul, and decides to cut a finger and drip his own blood on it. Soon after, a mysterious woman who looks like a crystal statue begins killing martial artists. The artist is blamed for creating the monster, and when he attempts to prove his innocence by producing the statue he made and demonstrating it had not come to life, he discovers it is missing. The surviving martial artists blame him and put out a hit on him, giving him little choice but to find the missing statue and prove that someone else is framing him. I had always assumed Wuxia died out after Chinese Boxer and Bruce Lee made the fists and kicks Kung Fu movies more popular, with a scant few Wuxia films being made after. Actually, Chor Yuen made Wuxia popular again in the mid 70s by basically rebooting the genre as supernatural mysteries. And I am surprised at how many of these Shaw Brothers made. For decades the mid 70s through 80s Shaw Brothers films that got the most attention here in North America were Chang Cheh's Venom Mob films, and the Kung Fu films of Lau Kar Leung. With both the Shaw Scope sets released by Arrow, and the Shaw Brothers Classics sets released by Shout! Factory, I have seen dozens of these later era Wuxia which until now I had only heard of mentioned by title, and it seems like the output was bottomless. Wish these films were not so hard to follow though. Will there be a Shaw Scope Volume 5? An announcement probably will not be made until late October. But there are still a lot of Shaw Brothers movies still not released by either company, some I am still hoping for a release of.


Paradise ( 1983 )
With the Shaw Scope Volume 4 set completed, I can now move on to the superhero films. Each January I buy the superhero films released on home video in the previous year. But first, there is always the Christmas gifts. I don't know how many times I try to convince our friends not to do a gif exchange, and how many times when one of them do it anyway, they think they are helping me by giving me a brand new movie to add to my library. The library currently being stored in boxes. Usually it is from a friend who thinks there is some sort of artsy film I should own. This year, the one gifted blu ray came from a friend I had not seen in years.

Okay. Lets go back to the 1980s. There is this thing called Blockbuster. You go there to rent VHS tapes with movies on them. Some of those films star Arnold Schwarzenegger, or some other film that was huge in theaters a few months earlier. Some are popular films from a decade or two ago. And some are those films everyone rents because they heard of one dirty scene in it. Blockbuster does not have an adult film section. Not like those other rental stores from the early 80s that had a section only anyone 18 or older was allowed in, yet every 12 year old snuck in when the owner was talking to another customer. Blockbuster may not have rented porn, but they had a lot of other films that did the trick. As long as your parents didn't realize why you rented the film. Paradise was one of those films. Made the same year as Fast Times At Ridgemont High, it was a perfect follow up to Phoebe Cates pool scene from the same movie. In Paradise she is in a nude shower scene. There was also the rest of the movie, which no one ever really watched. Just fast forwarded the movie until the shower scene started and watched it a few times. There was probably an ending to the film too, but no one ever bothered going that far to find out.  So, cut to the 00s and this movie has not been released on DVD. So it becomes one of those movies that everyone keep complaining is not on DVD. Just on VHS in full screen, and on rental tapes mastered a decade earlier and worn out from multiple viewings, if you could find them on eBay. Som yeah, we complained about it. And then we forgot about it. Phoebe Cates had not made a film in over six years, so we gradually no longer cared about seeing her nude.

It was completely off my radar when I got a gift from one of my old friends, with a Christmas card that said "Finally on Blue ray dude!" Opened the wrapping and saw what it was. Oh yeah. That movie. A bit of nostalgia for the days when we were so immature that we would rent a film for a single scene. And when there was still a Blockbuster. But otherwise, now I have this Blu Ray taking up space in my library, and no idea if the movie is any good. And I am pretty sure the scene has dated. A few months ago I rewatched Fast Times at Ridgemont High and wasn't really turned on by the pool scene the way I was when it was in the theaters. I'm just not into Phoebe Cates any more, and probably wasn't that into her back then either. It's just that she did these sort of scenes in films when other actresses I was really into, like Jennifer Beals, had no nudity clauses on their contracts. You didn't have Michelle Pfeiffer or Kim Basinger removing their bikinis in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, you had barely legal Phoebe Cates. So you were limited to what actresses would do these scenes in films, and wished the ones you were really into would do the same.

So, now that I no longer care about the shower scene in Paradise, it's only value is the actual film, plot an all. It was made in the wake of The Blue Lagoon ( 1980 ) with Christopher Atkins and Brooke Shields as two teenagers who were marooned as children on an island, who pretty much do nothing but have sex with each other once they hit puberty ( that's the entire plot ). The Blue Lagoon was a huge hit, so was bound to be ripped off. This one being a reverse of the concept. Instead of being marooned on land surrounded by water, they are marooned on water surrounded by land. In other words, two teens stuck in various desert Oasis just as they hit puberty. Written and directed by Stuart Gillard who would later direct Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III ( yes. That TMNT film, ) it basically amounts to an hour forty minutes of "When will this be over?" Not bothering to begin with the couple as children, it begins with teenage Phoebe Cates as a member of a desert caravan of white people journeying from Bagdad to Damascus in 1923. Phoebe is spotted by an Arab sheik who goes by the name of The Jackle, and she is apparently so beautiful that he desires her. When his offers to buy her are rejected, The Jackle attacks the caravan when it is in the desert and kills everyone but Phoebe, her guardian, and a boy  who was traveling with his missionary parents. And that boy is played by.... Willie Aames. Oh god, really? I mean, I get Phoebe Cates as a substitute for Brook Shields. Both actresses had a similar background at being popular teenage models before becoming actresses.  But Willie Aames as a substitute for Christopher Atkins? The guy got the role only because he had name recognition from Eight Is Enough, but this is the equivalent of casting Dustin "Screech" Diamon in the role. They all manage to avoid The Jackal by hiding in a well, then a few days of wandering in the desert, luck out when they find a cave with a spring. The spring that Phoebe takes a nude shower in. This is the point in the film most people don't bother watching past. Which was a good decision, considering what follows.  The Jackal catches up, the guardian is killed, and Willie and Phoebe make their escape across the desert where they lock out and find another oasis. This one they spend a longer time at, perhaps even a year or two, during which they are joined by two chimpanzees. At this point the film alters back and fourth between scenes where Willie and Phoebe gradually discover each other's bodies and slowly fall in love, and scenes where the chimpanzees do a bunch of sight gags. I think 90 per cent of the film's budget went to training the chimpanzees to do stuff like play hopscotch, or one trying to shoot an apple of the other's head with an arrow. Then the Jackel, who is still searching the entire desert for Phoebe because she is that desirable, catches up to them again, and once again they escape, and once again find an oasis just as they are about to run out of water. After finding a few other oasis, Willie finally decides to have a standoff with The Jackel, which ends anticlimactically. The Jackal dead, they wander a few more miles where they finally find civilization. And just in time, because Phoebe is pregnant. We then get the closing credits with the song "Paradise" being sung. No, not Coldplay's "Paradise", a completely different Paradise song listed in the credits as being sung by Phoebe Cates. And then finally the torture ends. This is a bad film that first made some cash as a Blue Lagoon rip-off, then more cash on home video as a Phoebe Cates cash in. For those of you who are still Cates fans, there is more nudity past the shower scene. Although minor nudity. Mostly just side boob, her in a wet see through dress, and a couple of fully nude scenes of her, but swimming under water, where you will also see Willie Aames penis, which I certainly didn't want to see. About the only good thing I can say about this film finally getting a blu-ray release, is that now Rifftrax can do it.

God. Why did I ever complain that this wasn't released widescreen on DVD?