Alexander Fu Sheng - The Chinese Cinema

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Alexander Fu Sheng

A collection of 5 posts

Chang Cheh Capsule Reviews

Chang Cheh Capsule Reviews

The Magnificent Trio (1966) — November 5, 2017 Chang Cheh’s second wuxia film, and the oldest one to survive. The first, Tiger Boy, was a low-budget black and white film for which he did the choreography himself. By all accounts it has been lost. The Magnificent Trio is in color

Ten Tigers of Kwangtung (Chang Cheh, 1980)

Ten Tigers of Kwangtung (Chang Cheh, 1980)

Well, there’s actually 15, if you count the five descendants of the Ten Tigers. Which could make this a bit confusing, but Chang Cheh gives us some friendly faces and nicely spaced exposition to emphasize that this is actually a very simple story. In the present, a guy and

Five Shaolin Masters and Shaolin Temple (Chang Cheh, 1974 and 1976)

Five Shaolin Masters and Shaolin Temple (Chang Cheh, 1974 and 1976)

Five Shaolin Masters circles back and starts at the beginning of another 1974 Chang Cheh film, Heroes Two, with the destruction of the Shaolin Temple, but then goes off in the other direction. A narrator helpfully informs us that the Chen Kuan-tai character in that film went south and met

Heroes Two (Chang Cheh, 1974)

Heroes Two (Chang Cheh, 1974)

Chang Cheh’s take on the Fong Sai-yuk character has Alexander Fu Sheng playing him as a good-hearted but dim-witted boob who is quite easily gulled into capturing one of the few survivors of the destruction of the Shaolin Temple, Chen Kuan-tai’s Hung Hsi-kuan, and handing him over to

Heroes Shed No Tears (Chor Yuen, 1980)

Heroes Shed No Tears (Chor Yuen, 1980)

I’ve only seen a few Chor Yuen films, so I don’t know how much this is a signature of his, but with this movie he seems to be exploring what would have happened had Josef von Sternberg made a wuxia film. Or at least Von Sternberg’s set