Blog Archives

Exploitations from the Far East (DVD box set) (1975)

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Posted on May 4, 2008 by Justin

As they did with their Wuxia box set, Siren Visual have put together a set of five films from the Shaw Brothers with similar themes, packaging them up in rather a nice-looking box set with new artwork and menus on all the discs. This one’s rather less high-minded than the tales of chivalry and heroism in the last one, though — it’s a box of Shaws’ less salubrious fare from the late 70s and early 80s, when they moved … (read more)

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Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan (1972)

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Posted on March 11, 2007 by Justin

Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan is one of Shaw Brothers’ more infamous and influential films, one that shocked audiences when it was released in 1972. It’s since been remade by the same director (as 1984’s Lust for Love of a Chinese Courtesan) and was apparently the inspiration for Clarence Fok’s Naked Killer. It’s garnered its reputation for its marriage of the kung-fu genre with eroticism, usually a recipe for thoroughly B-grade cinema. Intimate Confessions’ acting, production … (read more)

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Clans of Intrigue (1977)

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Posted on January 29, 2006 by Justin

Clans of Intrigue is a later (1977) wuxia/swordplay film from a specialist in this genre, Chu Yuan. And he was a specialist — according to the documentary on the disc, he was generally making seven or eight films at once at any given time for Shaw Brothers, and I can count at least thirty wuxia/swordplay films in his filmography from the mid-seventies to mid-eighties. A large number of these were adaptations from the work of novelist Ku Lung, and this … (read more)

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