After taking a year off, Arrow Video is back with Shawscope Vol. 3. While the previous two collections focused on the martial arts films from the legendary Shaw Brothers Hong Kong studio, this collection focuses on the Wuxia movies that involve battles with weapons. The big attraction to the set is the three One-Armed Swordsman movies. The first two starred Jimmy Wang Yu (Master of the Flying Guillotine) while the third has David Chiang (Shaolin Mantis) as a different fighter missing an arm. The other 11 titles include Lady Hermit, Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan, The 14 Amazons, The Magic Blade, Clans of Intrigue, Jade Tiger, The Sentimental Swordsman, The Avenging Eagle, Killer Constable, Buddha’s Palm and Bastard Swordsman. There are plenty of extras being lined up including more of Frédéric Ambroisine’s interviews with the Shaw Brothers stars and filmmakers.
Tech specs from Blu-ray.com
Looking forward to this - Jimmy Wang is the big draw but there’s not a duff one on the list although Intimate Confessions seems the odd one out because of the more sexual content and I do wonder if that is better off in a more erotic boxset, perhaps opening up room for Return of the Bastard Swordsman, which seems an odd omission as they try to keep series together.
I will wait for the price to drop but there’s talk of this not getting as big a run as the previous two (which did make repeated rounds of the sales).
Kino Lorber is on Film Noir 22 or something. I’m sure these sell decently enough to justify at least one or two more sets.
Shaw Brothers made around 1,000 films so they could be releasing them after I dead.
I’m hoping they continue with themed sets, I’m well up for a horror one, for example.
Yeah, but only if the market demand is there. The talk of a smaller run is what I was basing my comment on.
Ah right, it seems like the smaller run is because they made too many of Volume 1 and 2, so they are reducing the numbers. So demand was, apparently, lower than expected initially, rather than it is tailing off - if you bought the first two, then you’ll definitely want this.