The One Armed Swordsman 1967 Chang Cheh

The awesomely named Jimmy Wang Yu stars as the awesomely named Fang Gang (not so awesomely pronounced "Fong Gong") in the high concept awesomeness that is One Armed Swordsman.  Jimmy Wang Yu plays the son of a servant who is getting his training in swordsmanship, but not really getting along with the other students at swordsman school, including the daughter of his swordsmanship master.  But he has more swordsman talent in his little finger than the rest of them combined, so he's sorta cocky.

He's not stupid, though, and he knows that the other students hate him, so he wants to leave.  And because when you're a student anywhere - grade school, high school, sword school - peer pressure is a bitch, he agrees to meet the other students, swordmaster's daughter included, in the woods at midnight.  He's just going to tell him that he wants to leave, but they pull him back in, by demanding that he fight each of them to prove he's better.  Of course, Fang Gang wipes the fake snow covered soundstage floor with them, but just when he's about to exit stage right, the teacher's daughter throws a tantrum and he goes back to soothe her ego.  Big mistake.  When he crouches down next to her, out come her feelings, and off comes his right arm.

He manages to stumble bleeding to the next soundstage where there is a footpath over a river.  There he falls into a passing boat which is being steered by Hsaio Man, the plain, hardworking farmer's daughter.  She nurses him back to health and gives him a manual on using your left hand for swords and things.  Fang trains his left arm to do all his old right arm stuff plus farm a little.  But then he finds out that Smiling Tiger and Long Armed Devil are looking to kill his old swordmaster and all of his disciples.  And just when his old swordmaster was going to appoint a successor to run his sword school!  What to do?  Stay on the farm. or use his new sword skills to warn his master about the approaching trouble?  Since it's not called The One Armed Farmhand, you can pretty much guess what happens next.

I hope I don't seem dismissive of this movie.  It's actually one of my favorite Shaw Brothers movies.  I'm a sucker for all of the handicapped kung fu movies, actually.  Well, except for Crippled Masters.  That one's just wrong.  Jimmy Wang Yu went on to star in the sequel to this movie, the imaginatively titled Return of the One Armed Swordsman, and then went on to start his One Armed Boxer series.  Those movies led to the greatest kung fu movie of all time, Master of the Flying Guillotine, which had one armed boxing and the greatest weapon in the history of cinema - the flying guillotine.  It's an embarrassment of riches, that one.  Check out One Armed Swordsman.  The story's great, even if the swordfighting might leave a little to be desired.

The Cave of Silken Web 1967 Ho Meng Hua

This movie is third in a series of four films based on the classic novel Journey To the West that were produced by Shaw Brothers in the 1960's.  It's also the only one that's been released on DVD in America so far.  Based on how fun this movie is, I wish someone would get around to releasing the other three ASAP.

For those that don't know, Journey To the West is the story of the Monkey King, and his journey to enlightenment.  The book itself is 100 chapters long, so for years filmmakers have been taking the best bits and making movies of them.  Stephen Chow had his own two part film A Chinese Odyssey, based on the exploits of the Monkey King, and Jet Li played another version of him in that godawful Forbidden Kingdom movie with Jackie Chan a few years ago.

In this one, Monkey King and his companions Tripitaka, Pigsy, and Sandy come upon a cave filled with spider demons.  The spider demons want to eat Tripitaka, and kill the rest of them.  The spider demons are also scantily clad attractive ladies.  They try to use their feminine wiles to lure Tripitaka to his doom.  Being a  pious monk, he is not easily swayed.  Not so for the half man, half pig Pigsy.  He's more than willing to let these spider ladies take a bite out of him for love.  It's up to the Monkey King to use his magic powers, swordsmanship, and trickery to save his companions and continue on his journey.

If I had seen this movie when I was 7 or 8, it would have been the greatest thing I'd ever seen in my life.  It's still really good, but it is a kids movie, basically.  Not an American kids movie, it's too smart for that...but if you have kids who love magic, monsters, and funny kung fu animals, you should definitely show them this movie.  Now if only they'd release the other 3 films.....

The DVD is unfortunately light on special features.  Just some trailers for other Shaw Brothers movies, and other random Hong Kong productions.

Come Drink With Me 1966 King Hu

I first saw this movie in 2005 at a Shaw Brothers Retrospective.  It was probably the best time I've ever had at the movies.  Watching it again now on DVD at home, it's not as good, of course, but it is still a great movie.  Cheng Pei Pei stars as Golden Swallow and she's been tasked to find her kidnapped brother and return him to safety, while at the same time bring in the outlaws who kidnapped him in the first place.  She's helped out in this by the town drunk, Drunken Cat.  It's a good thing too, because the outlaws are headed up by the fey but deadly Jade Faced Tiger and his right hand man Smiling Tiger.  Oh, and then there's the evil monk with superpowers towards the end.  He's pretty tough. 

The reason why there's an evil monk with superpowers towards the end of this movie is apparently because Run Run Shaw thought the movie wasn't that good, and a superpowered evil monk would be just the thing to save this movie.  Up until then, it's just been a really good, old school swordplay movie.  Here comes the evil abbot, and now it's a really good, old school swordplay movie with dry ice.  For the superpowers.  Visually.  It's dry ice.

I'm really just being nitpicky.  If you like swordplay movies, or if you want to see an old school Hong Kong Cinema classic, even if it's only to see all the ways it was referenced (cough, ripped off, cough) in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, give this movie a look.  You won't be disappointed.

The DVD put out by Dragon Dynasty is pretty loaded with special features.  There's a retrospective on the film by Bey Logan, an interview with Tsui Hark about King Hu (He produced one of King Hu's last movies, Swordsman, and actually fired him from that movie, but that's not mentioned), an interview with Cheng Pei Pei, an interview with Yueh Hua, who plays Drunken Cat, trailers, and a commentary by Bey Logan and Cheng Pei Pei.  The commentary is hilarious, because Pei Pei keeps correcting "Hong Kong Film Expert Bey Logan's" pronunciation of every single Chinese word and name he says.  And she does it in Mandarin and Cantonese.  Priceless.

The only drawback to this DVD is that it contains the single worst subtitle translation I have ever seen on a legally produced DVD ever.  The bad guys, Jade Faced Tiger and Smiling Tiger,  are called, respectively, "Sleek Face" and the astounding "Smiley Face Backbone Hu".  There are other classic phrases like "Shunt aside!" and "Why are you the bad people?", which take me back to the old days of watching bootleg VHS tapes of these movies.  It's kind of fun, but mostly annoying.  Other than that, this DVD is definitely worth picking up

The Love Eterne 1963 Li Han Hsiang

Here it is.  One of the most famous Chinese movies of all time.  Voted as one of the top 100 Chinese movies of the last century.  And it's a musical.  A cross-dressing musical.  And it's awesome.  Betty Loh Ti plays a young girl named Zhu Ying Tai.  What she wants more than anything is to go to school and get her learn on.  Her father is against it, because boys are bad, and girls should stay home.  Like any self respecting teenage girl Ying Tai locks herself in her room and refuses to eat until she gets her way.

Faster than you can say Yentl, she's off to school dressed as a boy with her maid in tow, also all boyed up.  On the road there, Ying Tai meets Liang Shan Bo, played by Ivy Ling Po.  With a name like Ivy, she's gotta be a girl.  She is, just not in this movie.  In real life, Betty Lo Ti and Ivy Ling Po are both women, but in this movie Betty Lo Ti is playing a girl dressing up as a boy, and Ivy Ling Po is just playing a boy.  In fact, this is the movie that made Ivy Ling Po a star, and as such she continued to play male parts in a lot of these movies.

So Ying Tai and Shan Bo become friends and stay at school for 3 years, during which time Shan Bo never figures it out, and Ying Tai becomes more and more attracted to him.  So it's really just a Chinese opera version of Just One of the Guys, except this time the girl wants to profess her love to the boy who's really a girl in real life, just not here.  So it's really a Chinese opera version of a lesbian love story...sort of.  Being an opera, it does have to get tragic, but I can't really give it all away here.  Just let me say that if you liked The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (and if you didn't, get the hell out of here you heartless bastard!) or Romeo & Juliet, or even gay marriage in general, you should check this out.  Mostly singing, no dancing, and lots of ladies looking longingly at other ladies make this a pretty fantastic movie.

This movie has never been released on DVD in America (shocker!), but if you have an all-region DVD player, you can find the Hong Kong release pretty easily.  It comes with a second disc of special features including a look back at the film  with Cheng Pei Pei from Come Drink With Me, where she talks to Ivy Ling Po about how the movie changed her life.  There's also an Ivy Ling Po music video, with clips from some of the Huangmei Opera movies she was in, as well as a short documentary about the director of the movie, and a documentary on the history of Huangmei Opera.  This movie won loads of awards at the Golden Horse Film Awards (Taiwan's equivalent of the Oscars), so this DVD is fairly loaded.  The Blu-Ray was just released as well, so if you have an all-region Blu Ray player, you should definitely pick this up.

Shaw Brothers Blogathon!

I just realized the other day that I have a ton of Shaw Brothers movies on dvd.  I haven't ever gotten around to watching most of them.  What to do?  Have a Shaw Brothers blogathon, of course!  I sorted them all by their theatrical release year ( Hey there, OCD! ) and I'm ready to go!  First up - the least kung fu-ey movie Chinese movie ever - The Love Eterne!

Unstoppable 2010 Tony Scott

Ready?  Here it comes - OOOOOOOHH!!!! Denzel!!!  I can't help it.  Every time I see a movie with Denzel Washington in it, some version of "OOOOHH, Denzel!!!" plays in my head.  In this movie, he is a crusty old train engineer, and he and the new guy (Chris Pine) have to stop an unstoppable train full of chemicals that Randy from My Name Is Earl let get away from him.  Can he do it?  You know he can!  OOOOOOHHH!!!!  DENZEL!!!!

Iron Monkey 2 1996 Yuen Woo-ping

First off, this is not really a sequel to 1993's Iron Monkey.  Donnie Yen's in them both, but he's playing different characters, the budget's bigger, the actors are better, the fights are better, etc....  So why should you watch Iron Monkey 2?  Well, you really shouldn't unless you love Hong Kong Cinema.  If you want to see a good kung fu movie, go watch the original.  If you want to see dodgy wire work, bad dubbing and godawful sets, this is your movie.  Donnie Yen plays the Robin Hood-like Iron Monkey and he has to contend with drug dealers, scared townsfolk, and blind beggars.  Then after an hour and a half of completely average early nineties kung fu-ness, the final fight is awesome.  The wire work is still terrible, but Donnie fights Billy Chow, the bad guy from Jet Li's Fist of Legend.  The fight's so good it almost makes you forget the rest of the movie.  The way Donnie and his pals dispose of the main bad guy at the end has to be seen to be believed, and serves as a reminder of just how awesome Hong Kong movies used to be.  In the end, if you don't have much experience with Hong Kong Cinema, stay away.  But if you do, enjoy at least the last 20 minutes.

Revanche 2008 Gotz Spielmann

It's about a guy who makes a bad decision, his girlfriend pays for it, and he wants to take revenge on those responsible for his current girlfriendless situation.  In layman's terms.  I could dress it up all flowery and tell you about the truths it expresses regarding human interaction and how, you know, we never really "know" one another, and how we should all be nicer to each other, because we never know what we might have done offhandedly to someone and how it hurts them for weeks, months, and years to come, but I won't.  Because I don't want to watch a movie to learn a life lesson.  I want to be entertained, or at least interested.  I was interested in this movie for about half of it's 2 hour running time, but I watched it because it's a Criterion movie, and mostly those are at least watchable.  This one is for a while, then you're just trapped in a moralistic prison of your own making, because you won't hit stop on the DVD player.  Do it.  It doesn't make you a bad person.  Do it.  You'll feel better.  I promise.

Saw 3-D 2010 Kevin Greutert

It's my own fault.  I've seen all the Saw movies.  I haven't liked one of them since Saw II, but I still watch them.  This is one of the better bad ones, but it's still bad.  It has Betsy Russell in it, who I've loved since I saw her ride a horse in Private School when I was 8 or 9, and Costas Mandylor, plus Sean Patrick Flannery and the return of Cary Elwes.  It's kind of like a reunion of failed 80's and 90's actors, so that's fun.  It's been 3 weeks exactly since I watched this, and I can't remember too much about it.  I'm sure the end was "shocking!", but whatever.  Bring on Saw 8.  I got a couple of hours to kill.

Criminal 2004 Gregory Jacobs

I watched this one night on Netflix Instant.  It's completely average.  It's not nearly as clever as it would like to be.  John C. Reilly is a career criminal who takes Diego Luna under his wing for a day to learn the ropes of being a criminal.  John C. Reilly is great, Diego Luna is bland, and I'm sure your mom or grandma would really get into this movie, but that's about all I can say about it - nicely.