Eureka has announced a new Shaw Brothers Blu-ray box set featuring 10 films from master director Chang Cheh.
Titled Furious Swords and Fantastic Warriors, this set will feature the following 10 films, all remastered.
Disc 1: Men from the Monastery & Shaolin Martial Arts
Disc 2: King Eagle & Iron Bodyguard
Disc 3: Fantastic Magic Baby & The Weird Man
Disc 4: Trail of the Broken Blade & Wandering Swordsman
Disc 5: Trilogy of Swordsmanship & New Shaolin Boxers
Featuring classic kung fu stars such as Fu Sheng, David Chiang, Ti Lung and Chen Kuan Tai the set features swordplay movies as well as empty-handed martial arts action.
Traditional wuxia pian is represented by King Eagle, Trail of the Broken Blade and Wandering Swordsman; choreographed by Lau Kar-leung, Men from the Monastery and Shaolin Martial Arts are both drawn from Chang’s Shaolin cycle, included here alongside New Shaolin Boxers; Iron Bodyguard, released at the dawn of the kung fu era, is representative of changing trends in Hong Kong cinema.
Some of Chang’s more esoteric work is represented by the opera film The Fantastic Magic Baby and the supernatural fantasy The Weird Man. Also included is the anthology film Trilogy of Swordsmanship, to which Chang contributed a segment alongside his contemporaries Yueh Feng and Cheng Kang.
The set will have the following special features –
- Limited edition double-walled slipcase, with 2 Amaray cases, featuring new artwork by Darren Wheeling [2000 copies]
- Limited edition collector’s booklet featuring new writing on all films in this set by film critic and writer James Oliver [2000 copies]
- 1080p HD presentations of all 10 films on Blu-ray
- Optional English subtitles, newly revised for this release
- New audio commentaries on Men from the Monastery, The Trail of the Broken Blade and The Weird Man by film critic David West
- New audio commentaries on King Eagle, The Wandering Swordsman, Trilogy of Swordsmanship and The Fantastic Magic Baby by action cinema experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema
- New audio commentaries on Shaolin Martial Arts, Iron Bodyguard and New Shaolin Boxers by East Asian film expert Frank Djeng (NY Asian Film Festival) and martial artist and filmmaker Michael Worth
- New audio commentary on The Fantastic Magic Baby by Frank Djeng
- New interview with Hong Kong cinema scholar Wayne Wong on the life and work of Chang Cheh
- New video essay by Jonathan Clements (author of A Brief History of China) on Iron Bodyguard
- New video essay by Jonathan Clements on Chang Cheh’s Shaolin film
- *All extras subject to change*
