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Shaw Brothers in 1971
After a few quiet years atop the box office Shaw Brothers had a tumultuous time in 1971. The year overturned the studio and became one of the most important in the studio’s entire history, and maybe one of the most important years in Hong Kong film.
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The Long Chase
Veteran director Ho Meng-Hua makes another breezy, fun wuxia a genre that he took to like a duck to water after wrapping up the Journey To The West films in 1968. His skills in special effects combined with over a decade of directorial experience made him the natural pick for movies like these.
more...The Deadly Duo
A fairly shameless copy & paste of The Rescue, with all of that film’s complicated plotting replaced by Chang Cheh-core speeches about how honorable it is to die for a cause and many, many shots of dudes putting those speeches into action by being impaled.
more...The Oath of Death
Pao Hsueh-Li becomes the 9th, and final, new Shaw Brothers director of 1971. Of those 9, only 3 (Pao, Chor Yuen and Chang Tseng-Chai) would stay for long. Pao had been with Shaw Brothers for about 4 years by this point, working as a cinematographer. Before that he worked in Taiwan shooting Hokkien films, including an early film for Joseph Kuo.
more...Come Haunt With Me
Sit Kwan is a bit of a mystery. Online sources provide almost no biographical details beyond the basics: born in China, moved to Hong Kong after the war, worked in Cantonese film in the 1950s and early 60s, joined Shaw Brothers in 1964, left Shaw Brothers in 1971, retired shortly there after. The Shaw Screen barely mentions him at all, saying only that his film The Knight of Knights didn’t make much money.
more...Sunset
Similar to previous entries in Shaw’s “tragic love” genre like A Place to Call Home and The Younger Generation it’s tempting to read the confusing mishmash of tones in Sunset as commentary, as if we’re supposed to draw some sort of deeper meaning from the whiplash between scenes of frothy youth romance and tragic death.
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