88 Films Shaw Bros. Blu-ray Wrap-Up

Between Arrow, Eureka, and 88 Films, I get an awful lot of Shaw Bros. Blu-rays to review these days. There is only so much time in the day, so a lot of them fall through the cracks and into the ‘to-watch’ pile. I am invested in seeing as many of the studios’ films as I can, so they never fall into the ‘never-watch’ pile. Because Arrow and Eureka tend to release double-features and collections, I realize that I’ve been giving them priority over the solo-release 88 Films discs, so here’s a capsule wrap-up of six 88 Films Shaw Bros. Blu-rays that I missed.

To Kill a Mastermind (1979)

Blu-ray Release: September 10, 2024

Video: 2.35:1/1080p/Color

Audio: Mandarin LPCM 2.0 Mono

Subtitles: English

Run Time: 99:00

Director: Sun Chung

Be careful – no one is safe as long as the evil kung fu masters of the Qi Sha clan terrorize the land. Can they be stopped? The authorities have placed a spy in their ranks, but the clan and their mysterious, unknown leader won't go down without a fight. Or several… (From 88 Films’ official synopsis)

A product of the post-Venom Mob era, To Kill a Mastermind was penned by Ni Kuang, who wrote/co-wrote the screenplays for enduring Shaw Bros. hits, including Chang Cheh's Five Venoms (aka: Five Deadly Venoms, 1978 – the original Venom Mob movie), Crippled Avengers (1978), and Five Element Ninjas (1982), and Lau Kar-leung’s The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978) and Eight Diagram Pole Fighter (1984), two films with easily confused storylines. As the most overworked writer at Shaw Bros., Ni can be forgiven for repeating themes and rework plots. To Kill a Mastermind is a pretty standard-issue, school vs. school, Ming era period piece with a Five Venoms-esque undercover espionage twist.

But narrative subversion isn’t the goal of this particular film. Director Sun Chung (aka: Tung Ming-Shan) happily indulges in clichés and invests his effort in creating a lush world for them to play out in. It’s not an outrageously stylized film, but does favor moodier photography and hints at the fantastical via the clan’s eccentric fashion choices, their marginally surrealistic base of operations, and choreographer Tang Chia’s use of wires and trampolines during fight scenes. It often feels like a dry run for Sun’s more extravagantly decorative horror/kung fu hybrid Human Lanterns (1982), which was also scripted by Ni, choreographed by Tang, and photographed by Tsao An-Sung. To Kill a Mastermind isn’t as depraved or vibrant as Human Lanterns, but both films have an uncommon energy and embrace the artificiality of Shaw’s studio sets in really satisfying and unique ways.

Video/Audio

To Kill a Mastermind doesn’t appear to have ever been available on North American (or European) home video, but it could be imported from Hong Kong and was streaming in HD at some point (though not currently). The box states that the film has been remastered from its original negative, but I believe that, like all of the titles I’m going to be discussing here, it was supplied directly by Celestial Pictures, meaning the remaster would’ve occurred as far back as 2007. It is on the better side of the Celestial transfers with rich, bright colors and slightly muted black levels that create a nice contrast, in spite of the overall softness and purposefully diffused photography.

To Kill a Mastermind is presented with its original Mandarin mono in uncompressed 2.0 LPCM audio. There is no English dub option. Sound quality is sometimes harsh, but there aren’t any notable distortion issues. The score is credited to Eddie Wang, but is once again mostly made up of cues from the De Wolfe Library, including a few heard in George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978).

Extras

• Still gallery

  
  

Kid from Kwangtung (1982)

Blu-ray Release: November 12, 2024

Video: 2.35:1/1080p/Color

Audio: Cantonese and English LPCM 2.0 Mono

Subtitles: English

Run Time: 94:00

Director: Hsu Hsia

After an evil martial arts master (Hwang Jang-li) kills his own teacher, Jaiyu (Wong Yu) and Dezhi (Chiang Kam) realise that they might be next. But can the squabbling duo put their differences aside long enough to defeat him? (From 88 Films’ official synopsis)

Rising out of the same early ‘80s slapstick soup as Sammo Hung’s Encounters of the Spooky Kind (1980) and Yuen Woo-ping’s The Miracle Fighters (1982), Hsu Hsia’s Kid from Kwangtung  puts an absurd spin on common warring school tropes. Keith Li’s episodic script, though derivative, is refreshingly simple and leaves plenty of room for complex choreography and gags. It would be an understatement to refer to the low-brow, bug-eyed sense of humor as an acquired taste, but, as long as Kid from Kwangtung is engaging in acrobatic set-pieces, it’s a pretty worthy entry in the pantheon. Highlights include a competitive lion dance – with centipede and chicken costumes standing in for the traditional dragons and lions (similar to the opening sequence of Jackie Chan’s Young Master [1980]) – a mortuary prank interrupted by jiāngshī (hopping vampires), and a brutal, climactic screechy monkey vs. cat style showdown.

Hsu was primarily an actor and worked with all the elite Shaw Bros. directors, going all the way back to King Hu’s Come Drink with Me (1966). He graduated to stunt coordinator on Ng See-Yuen’s The Invincible Armour (1977), collaborated with the Yuen Clan on Yuen Woo-ping’s Drunken Master, and made his directorial debut on Roar of the Lion (1981, co-directed by Chin Yuet-Sang). Here, he shared choreography duties with Tsui Fat and Yuen Tak (no relation to Woo-ping), a choreographer with a nominal Hollywood career who is still working in the industry today. You can see shades of Kid from Kwangtung’s whimsy in his career best work with Corey Yuen, especially Fong Sai-Yuk (aka: The Legend, 1993).

Video/Audio

Previous to this, Kid from Kwangtung was only available on Hong Kong DVD or, more recently, for purchase or rent on HD streaming. It’s another soft, but colorful Celestial-made transfer. Sharpened textures aren’t really necessary, because the photography is so smoky and diffused. That said, the grain has a noisy, chunky quality that leads to some rough blends. The disc has original Mandarin and English dub options, both presented in uncompressed 2.0 mono LPCM audio. Effects are slightly muted on the English track, but the overall sound quality is similar between dubs. The soundtrack is a particularly oddball and sometimes shrill mix of library tracks and stolen cues attributed to no one.

Extras

• Still gallery

• Trailer

Lady with a Sword (1971)

Blu-ray Release: April 22, 2025

Video: 2.35:1/1080p/Color

Audio: Mandarin LPCM 2.0 Mono

Subtitles: English

Run Time: 88:40

Director: Kao Pao-Shu 

When her sister is attacked and murdered, swordswoman Feng Fei-fei (Lily Ho) knows just what to do – find the culprits and slice 'em up. But her righteous vengeance is compromised when she learns just who her target is: the man her parents have arranged for her to marry… (From 88 Films’ official synopsis)

Going all the way back to King Hu’s studio-defining hit, Come Drink with Me – a film I’ll probably end up referencing in every martial arts review until the end of time – women warriors and powerful actresses had been a key component to Shaw Bros.’ success. Mona Fong was also a prolific producer at the studio, but very few of the hundreds of Shaw films were directed by women. From what I have gathered (largely thanks to this article here), the only exceptions were So Jing-Man (Puppy Love, 1985), Ann Hui (Love in a Fallen City, 1984), Mabel Cheung (The Illegal Immigrant, 1985), Angela Mak (The Siamese Twins, 1984), Angie Chen (My Name Ain't Suzie, 1985), Ivy Ling Po (Mei [1970], co-directed by Ho Fan), Huang Yu-shan (The Twin Bracelets, 1990), and before any of them, Kao Pao-shu.

After appearing as an actress in several of the studio’s features, Kao directed one film at Shaw, Lady with a Sword, which was also her debut, before moving on to make movies with Park Film. The screenplay was, once again, written by the overworked Ni Kuang, who took his well-tread revenge template and changed the protagonist’s gender and motivation. It takes on many rape/revenge tropes early on, but Kao tends to frame the salacious aspects of the story as operatic tragedy, instead of sensationalistic titilation. I can only imagine what avowed misogynist Chang Cheh would’ve done with the same script.

In some ways, Lady with a Sword resembles a ‘50s/’60s samurai movie, including a Lone Wolf & Cub-esque parent/child on the road dynamic one year before the first film adaptation of Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima’s manga. The action is designed to emphasize star Lily Ho’s brutally efficient swordplay and young supporting lead Yuen-Man Meng’s acrobatic skill. This leads to a bit of tonal whiplash during group fights, but choreographers Simon Hsu (Shadow Whip [1971], Vengeance of a Snowgirl [1971]) and Han Ying-Chieh (known for his work with King Hu) make good & gory use of their limited screen time. The real draw here, however, is Ho’s magnetic performance as the title character. It is a joy to watch her dispatch the cartoonishly cruel villains.

Video/Audio

Lady with a Sword is another Shaw title that wasn’t released on US home video, but was available on Hong Kong DVD and, for a time, it was rentable via HD streaming. A lot of sequences were shot in outdoor locations, making it slightly more lush than later generation Shaw pictures. The colors aren’t vivid, but are clean and attractive. Again, strong black levels help differentiate shapes in spite of the overall textural softness. Note that there are a lot of stretched and skewed frames here, mostly due to anamorphic lens effects.

The only audio option is the original mono Mandarin in uncompressed LPCM 2.0. The sound quality is definitely more condensed and quiet than the other films I’m covering here, making the vocal performances and effects quieter than expected. The score is credited to Fu-Liang Chou

& Fu-Ling Wang, but is, yet again, mostly De Wolfe material.

Extras

• Commentary with David West – The author of Chasing Dragons: An Introduction to the Martial Arts Film (I.B. Taurus, 2006) discusses the state of Hong Kong cinema in 1971, the wider careers of the cast & crew, and similar films from the period (including some from Japan).

• Still gallery

Lady of the Law (1975)

Blu-ray Release: May 20, 2025

Video: 2.35:1/1080p/Color

Audio: Mandarin LPCM 2.0 Mono

Subtitles: English

Run Time: 90:25

Directors: Chiang Shen & Stanley Wing Siu

A dangerous criminal escapes captivity – but luckily crime-busting super swords-woman Leng Rushuang (Shih Szu) is on his trail. However, she has doubts about his guilt and she's not going to stop fighting until she's sure the right man is being punished. (From 88 Films’ official synopsis)

You may have noticed that a lot of Shaw Bros. films have ‘lady’ somewhere in the title. Well, joining the likes of Lady with a Sword, Lady of Steel (1970), The Lady Professional (1971), Lady Assassin (1983), Lady Exterminator (1977), and Lady is the Boss (1983), comes the old-fashioned wuxia melodrama Lady of the Law.

Written and directed by Chiang Shen with uncredited co-direction from Stanley Wing Siu, Lady of the Law is a fugitive-on-the-run adventure couched in the context of a martial arts period piece. The swift pace and familiar structure almost implies that this is merely one of a franchise’s worth of movies built around the title character, who is portrayed by Shih Szu one year after she had appeared in the Shaw/Hammer crossover Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974). In this latest adventure (technically her only adventure), our intrepid Lady of the Law is set upon a falsely accused, underdog fugitive, played by Lo Lieh, who she had saved as a child and who she will eventually team-up with to unravel a larger political conspiracy.

Stunt coordination is credited to Cheng Hsiao-tung (aka: Ching Siu-tung) and Liang Hsiao-Sung. Liang was a Shaw Bros. mainstay with lots of stunt and fight instruction credits to his name, while Cheng became one of the New Wave era’s best directors, having made the Swordsman and Chinese Ghost Story trilogies with Tsui Hark. Lady of the Law isn’t a fantasy piece, but does feature quite a bit of the graceful, supernaturally-powered wire work Cheng was later remembered for. Highlights include a massive scale battle between Rushuang and a gauntlet of colorfully clad concubines (some of which are very clearly male stuntmen) and an extended, occasionally balletic confrontation between our two heroes and a restaurant full of goons.

Video/Audio

Lady of the Law is yet another Shaw title that was only available via Hong Kong DVD and another transfer derived from a Celestial HD scan. This is one of the better transfers I’ve seen from the wider Celestial collection, which makes me wonder if it was produced later than 2007. Either way, like Lady with a Sword, it benefits from lots of lush outdoor shots, but exhibits particularly a rich color quality and clean dynamic range. Again, textures are a bit smooth. The only language option is the original Mandarin dub in uncompressed DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono. The scope of the sound is limited, but levels are consistent and there’s little in the way of distortion.

Extras

• Commentary with David West – West returns for another retrospective look at the production (apparently, the film was shot all the way back in 1971) and the wider careers of the cast & crew.

• Still gallery

The images on this page are taken from the BDs and sized for the page. Larger versions can be viewed by clicking the images. Note that there will be some JPG compression.