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The Wuxia Stories: Heroes of Ancient China (DVD box set) (1970)
Now that Siren have a large catalogue of releases from the celebrated Shaw Brothers studio in Hong Kong, they’ve started boxing them up into box sets, all the better to tempt you with. Wuxia Stories is the first one, showcasing five films from Shaws’ prolific swordplay director Chu Yuen and one from Cheng Kang, father of action director Ching Siu Tung.
For those readers who aren’t aware of it, wuxia refers to a particular genre of Chinese film and literature, … (read more)
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Trail of the Broken Blade (1967)
The Trail of the Broken Blade is a relatively early swordplay film for both its director, celebrated king of masculine action films Chang Cheh, and its leading man, Jimmy Wang Yu. Wang Yu went on to play his signature roles of the antihero in Golden Swallow and the one-armed swordsman in, er, The One-Armed Swordsman, and this movie foreshadows many of the elements in those later films.
Jimmy Wang Yu plays Li Yueh, the scion of a noble family … (read more)
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The Twelve Gold Medallions (1970)
Yueh Hua was a stalwart of Shaw Brothers swordplay films for many years, after two quite prominent roles in his first two films; The Monkey King in Monkey Goes West (a story familiar to Aussie fans of the Japanese Monkey TV show) and Drunken Cat in Come Drink with Me, King Hu’s classic wuxia film. In The Twelve Gold Medallions, he plays the lone swordsman Miao Lung, fighting to prevent a traitorous minister’s plot to stop a general’s … (read more)
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