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By: Martyn Pedler
Date: 11th Jan 08
Format: DVD
Mood: Nostalgic
What:
Shaw Brothers DVD Collections
When:
Out now
Where:
On DVD from Siren Visual
Watch the trailer to Web Of Death from 1976:
Here
The innumerable kung fu films of the Shaw Brothers Studios always promised honourable deaths, sudden betrayals, supernatural powers, the mismatched lips of post-sync dialogue and, most of all? Perfectly-choreographed one-dozen-versus-one fight scenes.
They produced more than kung fu, however. New DVD sets make their more pulpish, genre-busting work available. 'Exploitations from the Far East' collects titles like Human Lanterns, where a swordsman turns his victims’ skin into art, and the King Kong homage Mighty Peking Man. (Every country should have its own giant ape.)
‘The Wuxia Stories’ showcases their classier wuxia films of the ‘70s, like The Magic Blade and Clans Of Intrigue. Don’t worry: ‘classy’ is a broad enough category to include a magical spider that emits an air-raid siren sound effect and a deadly, disco-coloured Web Of Death.
Without the Shaw Brothers, there’d have been no Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. (Isn’t it a shame that a credible director has to rescue a genre from the gutter before it's respectable enough for critical attention?) More importantly, without them there’d have been no Big Trouble In Little China. And what kind of world would that be?
By Martyn Pedler