I got my beautiful
Shawscope: Volume One boxset by
Arrow Video on New Year Eve, via
Amazon. The boxset officially came out on December 28, 2021, but I know, for a fact, that many fans got their orders in the mail early.
For those new to
Shaw Brothers,
Shawscope: Volume One is a good start. Arrow compiled 12 mostly-Kung Fu films, showcasing a variety of style and flavors.
According to the liner notes online, they lists six (
see side bar) of the twelve films had a brand new 2K restorations from the original camera negatives, exclusive to Arrow. The rest of the titles were from a 1080p Bluray source, probably from
Celestial Pictures (who originally restored about 700 films for DVDs).
It's also worth noting, that the other new item is a 2k transfer of a longer International cut of
Chinatown Kid from the original source. This is the film that made Alexander Fu Sheng an International icon. Like James Dean, the rising star died very young in a car accident.
Personally speaking, since I’m only viewing the discs on a 1080p screen, all the titles looked great on screen. Certainly, much better than old VHS or DVDs that I previously own. Plus, since the audio is taken from a pure source, including the hard-to-come-by “English Dub”, it looks and sounds good to me.
If you didn’t know, the Shaw Brothers (Run Run and Runme Shaw) started producing films so they can show them in all the theaters they own throughout Asia. For about three, or so, decades, they had produced over a thousand films. Everything was done at the Shaw Brothers Studio, in Clearwater Bay, in Hong Kong. Everything was also own by the Shaws: writers, directors, film production, housing, distribution, and, most importantly, the actors were all contracted exclusively to Shaw Brothers. Despite become stars, these actors could not make movies for other companies, due to the restrictive Shaw Brothers contracts. This is how this mega company cranked out so many films within such a short amount of time.
While the Shaws made many different film genre, such as drama and horror, their biggest money-maker was Kung Fu pictures. When they saw those Martial Arts films were well-received, they certainly gave what the audience wanted.
The two key directors that helped shaped Kung Fu cinema were
Chang Cheh and
Lau Kar-leung , who are well represented here in this
Shawscope set. Six titles are Cheh and four titles are Kar-leung. You can immediately tell who was in the director’s chair when you see the films. Most of Kar-leung’s films features Gordon Liu (with a little humor), while Cheh’s films had his so-called “Venom Mob” (and is starkly serious).
Speaking of which, the two key Venom films are collected here:
Five Venoms and
Crippled Avengers. Although the two films are unrelated, in America, they re-named the films
Five Deadly Venoms and
Return of the Five Deadly Venoms to suggest that they are sequels.
Overall, I’m very happy with this release of
Shawscope: Volume One by Arrow Video, I do have two small complaints. First, I think it’s expensive, retailing for $179. If you divide it is about $14 per title… even less if you get it on sale. While I like many of the titles, I know many people aren’t interested in half the titles – and for those fans, the value just isn’t there for them.
For those who only want certain titles, based on Arrow’s previous releases, they have gone back and broken up boxsets and released single titles. This is just speculation on my part… however, seeing as Arrow is going to be releasing
Come Drink With Me (which is not part of this
Shawscope collection), you can bet that it would make sense to release important titles as a single release.
Second, I’m not too thrilled about the packaging. I guess I’m just a sucker for putting things in uniform on my Bluray shelf. That is to say that I want all my Shaw Brothers collection in one area. With this oversized, extra long box, it just won’t sit correctly with the rest of my Shaw Brothers discs. The only way to display this is looking at the front cover.
I hope the boxset does well, and for
Volume Two, I’m hoping to see more Venoms, and, perhaps some wacky horror pictures. Since Arrow and 88 Films have the Shaw Brothers license, I would just love to get a trilogy boxset for the
36th Chambers of Shaolin,
Return to the 36th Chambers of Shaolin, and
Disciples of the 36th Chambers of Shaolin.
There is also a two-disc bonus soundtrack of some selected films. This is great for Kung Fu music fan. Now you can play your favorite Five Venoms funky tracks.
P.S. I’m so happy with my
Shawscope boxset that I will probably be ordering a few other boxsets from Arrow, after seeing what they’ve released on their website. They are pricey, but there’s a lot of love and effort put in that I appreciate.
UPDATE: Having had a chance to look at both the original Celestial Pictures Remaster from 2004 vs the new International 2k Version of
Chinatown Kid, you can see a difference in clarity. In the two side by side comparison, you can see facial blemish on Alexander Fu Sheng... however the new 2k transfer had a lot of spots and specks (they appear to be random). I have seen special features about remastering and the film editors would see these specks and manually remove them digitally (which apparently, they didn't do with this new transfer). You also see more film grain, compared to the brighter and smoothness of the 2004 version. This is a matter of taste, personally I don't mind film grain, but sometime it's too noisy for my taste. Finally, it appears that the 2k version is slightly zoomed in, so I feel like you're losing about 5% of the frame.
There is another matter, in the 2k version, it feels like the film is "jumpier" at random frames. To be fair, Arrow Video said that they got the 2k scan from the "original film elements" - meaning that they didn't handle the transfer themselves. While I welcome the longer cut and better details of the 2k picture (downsized to 1080p for Bluray presentation), I think the new 2k transfer isn't as good as the original Celestial Picture version (at least to my eyes). Maybe later on, if I have time, I will look at the new 2k transfer for
Five Venoms vs the Bluray version from Dragon Dynasty/Celestial Picture (which is basically the DVD transfer on Bluray).
♥
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