Customer Reviews

Shaw Martial Arts Legends

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

where do i begin..

i got this as a birthday present, as my friends know i'm a huge shaw bros. fan. this 10 movie pack is awesome at first glance, but when you watch one of these movies you'll be very dissapointed.

i suspect someone was trying to cash in on the recent re-discovery of peope liking shaw bros. the quality is that of a bad vhs. the ones that are subtitled are 'hardsubbed' with both chinese(i think)

and very bad english translations(can't is spelled cann't numerous times and so on). also note the lack of any visible shaw bros. logo, shawscope logo, and beginning/ending credits. also i searched my ass off on imdb trying to find info on the titles. out of the 10, i found 4 or 5, this included title searching and cross-referencing actors and basic plot summaries. like my title says, two thumbs down.

The movies contained are not even Shaw Brothers films, but rather films that star Shaw Brothers alumni. The video quality is awful, very poor audio/video quality, Many films are double-cropped-- they take a cropped full screen print and then crop off the top and bottom to make it look "widescreen", and then stretch it anamorphically, leaving you with about 25% of the original picture. This is made very annoying when you can HEAR fight scenes but not see anything, aside from a random neck/hand popping in from time to time. If you want some REAL Shaw Brothers films, you can find them for a good price on amazon. This box set is destined for the $1.99 close out bin. Please, save your money!

This is obviously a poor attempt to make money off the Shaw Brothers name. We ended up throwing this set in the trash. It was awful and almost impossible to watch.

Here's how I break my 2star rating down:

The negatives are clear. Many of these movies are an insult to the name of the Shaw Brothers. Cheezy 80's backyard lame choreography and awful storytelling. One disk had practically no sound, except for the menu screen.

The *positives* are that if you can appreciate "Engrish"... as in poor translations into English, the subtitles will at the very least amuse you. The grammar! The cheezy factor is at a premium here to the degree that the aforementioned negatives become positives in context of the absolute hack job of this package. In BEGGAR OF NO EQUAL that was digitally filmed off of a bad VHS tape (what, there are no clean copies available on the planet?) there was static and the tracking hopped around... as if some kung fu geek replayed these action scenes too many times and wore down the tape.

If you look at it like you found this in a pile of discount movies at an old video store that was going out of business, and aren't looking for some sacred lost archive, you'll get your fifteen bucks worth.

Gordon Liu with 80's hair!

So... if I was looking for Shaw Brothers quality filmmaking, 1-star. But I wasn't, really... so, 2-stars. Some of these I'll actually watch again!

Oh, and the kid bathing with his father as mentioned in another review was not obscene. If you've ever seen "My Neighbor Totoro", you'll realize how innocent this is in the Asian culture.

... and these disks played fine on my Macintosh.

I will try and talk about the badness of all of these before I die. Seriously, I am starting to hurt all over again just thinking about this collection.

INVINCIBLE SUPER GUY- IMDB says this movie has Brigitte lin in it. I was hoping to see the start of her acting career but she wasn't in it. it is a weird one with lung fei fighting people on a train. i couldn't make it to far through it so I went to the insta-action, and all the fights sucked. I have seen worse, but not by much.

WARRIOR ON FIRE- spliced up godrefy ho type movie where the chinese film stock they used has Chi Kuan-Chun and he doesn't fight, at least no kung fu. And the americna version has a chinese girl. Not worth talkign aboout.

BEGGAR OF NO EQUAL-only movie worth wathcing. Lo Lieh looks pretty freaking tough at the start of this and it would have been really nice to see it. The picture quality is unwatchable. And I ruined my eyesight the entire movie trying to read the subtitles, just to find out I need to see a remastered copy cause some decent fu the whole way but the finale sucked. I would have really liked to watch this movie, especially since it is the only one even close to being good in this horrible "collection".

THUNDERINGN NINJA-Another spliced up movie, and I would like to know what footage they used. The chinese street fight scenes with wang yu were almost exciting and I would really like to see the movie that this was taken form . But since it is a godfrey ho film, it ends with the red ninja against the white ninja.

IRON FIST ADVENTURE-The other of 2 movies that you may make it more than 5 minutes through. There are a lot of guns and it actually had 1 good fight scene. But it is a d-grade "beach of teh war gods" movie.

RAIDERS OF BUDHIST KUNG FU-worst moview ever. I made it to the last scene(by fast forwarding) and am very unhapp that I did. I made it through a minute of that thing. Question to people who have seen this----was master killer's family kidnapped and he was forced to do thsi movie? What Happened!?!?!?!?!?!

CHALLENGE OF MASTER KILLER, GUNS OF MASTER KILLER, WHITE LOTUS TRIO. I will group all of these together. WLT has Beardy in it and him and gordon fight for almost 25 seconds. No point to watch this except for approxiametly 6 minutes of action. Also a great part where all the cops show up to bust Beardy and they all have bulletproof vest on and gordon has like pajamas on!! Wonderful. One of the other gordon coip movies has him with a mustache and no action. So these 3 combined give you about 10 minutes of the good stuff. Also teh picture quality is very good for these. proabably becasue they never played it in the movie theater and video asia is the first one ever to show these so the only chance they had to damage them was during the recording. And they almost did a good job. Anywho...

SHAOLIN QUICK DRAW-only one I didn't see, chang yi is one of my favs, but so is gordon liu, wang yu, and Kuan-chun, and I can't watch my favorite guys in the worst movies anymore.

I challenge anyone to find a worse 10 movie collection.

I grew up watching "Kung Fu Theater" on TV on Saturday afternoons and loved it. I'm a big fan of good martial arts movies.

A few years ago, I asked for this 10 Film Set for my birthday. Don't get fooled by the pictures or names on the cover of the box set like I did (e.g., seeing "Master Killer" in the film titles or the words "Shaw" and "Legends" in the 10 Film Set Title).

It's horrible and is no where near the quality of the movies from my "Kung Fu Theater" days. When I refer to "quality" I am not referring to the resolution/voice dubbing. I'm not trying to compare it to high definition. The content is truly lacking.

It was my mistake for not doing the research on the films listed. I just assumed I would be getting a Shaw Brothers' bargain. Please note that my friends, who also enjoy good martial arts movies, refused to sit through these movies as well. I really should toss this set but keep the set around to remind me not to make a similar mistake again.

The other reviews here are pretty accurate.. I was expecting it to be bad and I was still pretty dissapointed. Two other things I would like to point out is that these dvd's are inexplicably ecrypted (meaning you can play them on a dvd player but not your pc) and also that Guns of Master Killer has a rather disturbing sequence featuring a young boy stripping down to full frontal nudity, slapping gordon liu on the butt in the shower, and then crawling into a bath with him. The dialogue during this sequence is kinda creepy as well.. The rest of this set is sold individually all over the net. That disc is generally *not*.

I couldn't recommend this set any less. There are only a few worth watching and even those have serious problems with the audio/video.

Stick to the legitimate Shaw Bros releases coming out of Hong Kong. Don't buy this poor-quality bootleg.

Some very rare films with all the former Shaw Bros. stars!

This is a budget pack that cost the same as if buying one Shaw film!

You get 10 rare,unseen films for the price of one.

The best films on the set are Beggar of no equal with Chi Kuan Chun,Invincible Super Guy with Chang Yi as well as a great spaghetti/kung fu Shaolin Quick Draw and Iron Fist Adventure with the awesome Jimmy Wang Yu.

You will not find these films elsewhere and for under twent dollars you get a couple weekends worth of films!

WHATS WITH ALL OF THESE PEOPLE COMPLAINING ABOUT QUALITY!? THERES NO HIGH QUALITY SPECIAL ANIVERSARY EDITIONS FOR RARE FILMS YOU IDIOTS! MOST MOVIES IN THIS SET DON'T EVEN HAVE AN IMDB PAGE! WHAT MAKES YOU THINK THERE GOING TO BE IN HIGH QUALITY!?