Shaw Brother's movie The Dragon Missile.

Watched a pretty good Shaw Brothers movie on Amazon called The Dragon Missile. Lo Lieh uses a bladed boomerangs to kill people. The quality of the youtube clip is okay but the Amazon verison is pristine.

Shaw Brothers Web Of Death (1976)

Watched the Shaw Brothers film Web Of Death. Decent superpowered kung fu vs the bizarre powers of the Spider Clan. It is on Hulu, although only dubbed, but worth checking out.

Fists Of Fire BBC documentary on the Shaw Brothers from 1975

30 minute BBC documentary from 1975 on the Shaw Brothers movie studio. Lots of great behind the scenes footage. Shows the foley sound effect work.Highly recommended.

Battle Wizard

I watched Battle Wizard last night and it is a crazy fun kung fu film. It stars Danny Lee, from The Killer, as a prince who journeys to the countryside to see if he can live without knowing kung fu. Along the way he encounters a Poison Clan, a snake charmer, a giant red python, a guy with lobster claw hands, and another guy with giant metal chicken feet who breathes fire. The final fight has Lee, who has become invincible by drinking the blood of the red python fighting a gorilla who knows kung fu, and then the lobster and chicken feet guys. Lots of fun fights packed into 72 minutes. There is a US disc of the film and you can rent it from Netflix.

TV from my youth

Here is a clip from a British tv from the early 1970's. The show is the Clangers and there are lots of clips on youtube.


And here is a clip from the first martial arts tv show I watched. It is a Japanese show based on a classic Chinese novel.


There have been many adaptation of the novel, most just deal with a chapter or two or focus on one character. Here is a trailer for the Shaw Brother adaptation from 1972.

Chemical Brothers Get Yourself using Shaw Bros footage

Several years ago the Chemical Brothers released the track "Get Yourself High". Although it was a good 6 years since I had really liked their music I bought the cd single because it contained the music video that was made using footage from the Shaw Brothers "Two Champions Of Shaolin".

Street Kings and The Condemned movie reviews

Street Kings (2008) Directed by David Ayer
For fans of James Ellroy's books, the plot of his original screenplay will be very familiar. There is no mystery as to why someone gets shot in a hold up and Keanu adds to his collection of clueless characters. That said his acting is not bad in the movie. The cast is full of familiar faces, and some of the non-actors take on different than normal roles, i.e. Cedric the Entertainer as a drug dealer. And to his credit I did not recognize John Corbett. Not a bad movie but it is one thing for Ellroy to reuse themes like police corruption, it is another for him to reuse a key scene from earlier works.

The Condemned (1976) Directed by David Chiang
This Shaw Brothers dvd has sat on the shelf waiting to watched for a long time. Now that the election is over and I don't feel the need to watch the news channels as much I can get back to watching movies. The dvd cover for this film has kept it from the top of the pile as I had bought it online thinking it was a kung fu movie and the cover shows David Chiang in modern clothing in a prison and the description was not encouraging.
The movie does have a surprising amount of kung fu and some special effects. In a move likely inspired by Sunny Chiba's Streetfighter we see x-ray renditions of blows, but done in a low budget way. Instead of using actual x-rays the film has clay skeletons against a dark background that snap and crumble as the blows land.
This is not the movie to use to convert people to the ways of the Shaw Brothers studio but it was much more enjoyable than I thought it was going to be.