This film is an amusing insider’s look at the Hong Kong film industry and is based on Director Li Han Hsiang’s popular newspaper column recounting his work at Shaw Brothers. The collection of some of his funniest and most surreal film musings of the era, filled with behind-the-scene asides, this is a must-see for any Hong Kong cinema aficionado!
This sword-filled thriller centres on The Black Tavern – an inn where the down and dirty meet to plot nefarious doings. A bunch of villains are lured to the inn by a rumour about a valuable treasure being hidden there. After all the backstabbing and killings, they realise that it is a trap created to wipe them out once and for all…
Based on the classic Ming Dynasty novel The Water Margin, Three Sinners is a Huangmei Opera about love, betrayal, murder, and redemption. Starring Hong Kong's premiere movie couple, it is one of the grandest Eastmancolor-Shawscope costume musicals in the Shaw Brothers library.
Hua, a pretty fraud, steals a brilliant diamond ring from a shop in Hong Kong and escapes to Singapore. To smuggle the ring pass customs, Hua slips it into the pocket of a stranger, Yen, but then lost track of him. Hua finally spots Yen after searching for days and does everything to get close to him in order to take the ring back.
A young man, Chin, believes he is an orphan, until he meets three men and learns from them that his father was a great swordsman who was killed when he was trying to dispel rumors of a wrongdoing and return a lost sword to its rightful owner. Chin seeks out the men’s help to take vengeance on the wrongful death of his father.
The ingenious imperial scholar Liu Yung always embarrasses Emperor Chien Lung with his quick wit and gift of gab. The emperor purposely sets him up to solve the seemingly unsolvable. However, Liu Yung resolves it easily with wit and style and foils the emperor’s plot once again.
The Emperor Qianlong is not the legitimate successor to the throne at birth, but he only learns the truth when two senior members of a subversive anti-government secret organisation contact him years later. As it happens, the chef of this organisation is Qianlong’s younger brother and they must now confront each other in opposing roles…
The curious title in this Huangmei Opera romance refers to the two props that signal a happy beginning between a scholar and a local beauty. The scholar polishes mirrors so as to be closer to his love, who signals her approval by tossing him some lichees. From that point on the course of their love becomes rocky, complete with murder and suicide.
Hua is an upright and brave swordswoman who will stand up against villains and do anything for Luo, the man she loves. When Luo is sent to jail by the corrupted police, she sets out to free him and did not hesitate to chop off two bodyguards’ heads. In the process, she also stumbles across an old enemy of her father who is back seeking revenge.
Chiao Chiao, Chen Liang, Wang Hsieh, Ching Miao, Chang Pei-shan
Japanese director Inoue Umetsugu takes on the glitzy world of nightclub performers in The Yellow Muffler. The film depicts the struggle of two singing sisters, Ching-ping (Irene Chen I-ling) and Pai-hung (Betty Ting Pei) and ends when they are cast in a new movie.
Betty Ting Pei, Tsung Hua, Paul Chin Pei, Irene Chen
Inspired by “Drunken Master”, this kung fu comedy features a bumbling martial artist creating a cricket-style fighting arts to fight and defeat the different martial artists who have beaten him before.
The movie consists of four stories of the Mad Monk helping others, from saving a mother and daughter from crumbling walls, to helping hawkers deal with bullies, recovering stolen money for a young man and punishing a devious court official and his son.
The young Chen Chi-chin (Liu Yung) loses heavily to experienced gambler Hu Kuan-ten (Lo Lieh). His father loses at cards and dies of shock. Chen appeals to his uncle who summons seven fellow professional gamblers to carry out vengeance. Much more than a gambling film, this is a thrilling melting pot of martial arts stars, extortion, illicit love, poker-face vengeance, and all sorts of edge-of-your-seat gambling duels. Featuring two of the leading action stars of the era, Chen Kuen-tai and Lo Lieh, in a series of intense poker game standoffs. Famed director of the genre, Wong Jing, also has a guest appearance as one of the Notorious Eight.
Liu Yung, Chen Kuan-tai, Wong Jing, Lo Lieh, Linda Chu
