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Disciples of Shaolin
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - 88 Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (23rd January 2022). |
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The Film
 Country bumpkin Hsing Fa-Lung (Shaolin Temple's Alexander Fu Sheng) arrives in the city in search of his best friend Huang Han (Shaolin Tough Kid's Chi Kuan Chun) who is working at a textile factory owned by Ho (Boxer Rebellion's Lu Ti) in search of a job. Han gets his friend an apprenticeship position but Fa-Lung is impatient, criticizing the martial arts training of foreman Chen Cheng (Shou-Yi Fan) as being inferior to that of himself but Han demands that Fa-Lung keep secret their fighting abilities. When Fa-Lung intervenes in an attack on Ho ordered by rival boss Ha (Dynasty's Chiang Han) who has already used violence to poach men from the factory to his own in hopes of producing superior fabrics Ho rewards him by putting him in charge of the factory since he is more interested in his fighting crickets. Ho's hospitality, gifts of wine and women, and the chance to pay back his former superiors with humiliation change Fa-Lung to the point where he is no longer recognizable to potential love interest Ying (7 Man Army's Ming Li Chen) or best friend Han. When Han decides to quit the city and return home, Fa-Lung lets his guard down and is left vulnerable when Ha's vengeful chief henchman Ka (The Savage Five's Tao Chiang) crippled by Fa-Lung picks up a new deadly fighting style. Although he was once on the same tier of Hong Kong superstardom as the likes of Jackie Chan, Alexander Fu Sheng is as lesser-known to later generations as martial arts film fans as he is vaunted by others due to his tragic early death in a car accident at age twenty-eight during the filming of The Eight Diagram Pole Fighter. Compared to James Dean, the good-looking actor was molded by director Chang Cheh (The One-Armed Swordsman) in young charismatic upstart "kid" roles, with films bending the historical accuracy of their settings in favor of the actor's Chan-like bushy hairstyle. Sheng's protagonist is pretty annoying and arrogant from the start; however, once one realizes that the film is not a story of a protagonist with a redemption arc but of one seduced and ruined, mistaking gifts of luxury for good will on the part of the person who is really exploiting him (with the battered pair of shoes that he discards when his boss gives him new ones taking on a sort of "Rosebud" significance). While the exploitation of peasants by aristocrats has been in the background of a lot of martial arts films; the exploitation of workers is at the forefront here. Not only do we see Ho caring less about how Fa-Lung deals with Ha's attacks merely ordering his manager to reward the younger man when it is done flashbacks in which Han sees his former boss behaving similarly as his workers massacre each other explains why Han is content to keep his head down and orders his best friend to do the same. Before we realize where the story is ultimately going, it can drag a little between fight scenes; however, the climax which segues to black and white in the manner of the R-rated censorship measures to the "House of Leaves" sequence in Kill Bill: Vol. 1 is exhilarating in its choreography, coverage, and editing, and that is capped off with a shorter color finale that seems even more brutal not only because of the onscreen gore but also the rapidity of the sequence (with the character more concerned with avenging his friend than savoring the retribution visited upon the killers).
Video
Released stateside as "Invincible One", Disciples Of Shaolin reappeared under its better-known title when Image Entertainment put out several of Celestial Pictures' Shaw Brothers remasters in 2009. Celestial Pictures' more recent HD remaster first turned up on Blu-ray in 2013 in Germany with English subtitles but lossy audio France's Wild Side Video Blu-ray was apparently cancelled but 88 Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen Blu-ray looks virtually spotless with nicely saturated colors and good detail in facial features, hair, clothing, Shaw's studio sets and props, and the Taiwanese location exteriors. As with 88 Films' dual-territory edition of The Chinese Boxer, Disciples of Shaolin is Region A/B-coded so Region C-limited customers are out of luck (or limited to the German edition until the Shaws start turning up on an Asian label).
Audio
Audio options include lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono Mandarin and English dubs as well as an English subtitle track for the Mandarin dialogue. The Mandarin track sounds cleaner while the English dub is somewhat inferior possibly a cleaned-up video source and has the usual quirks of Asian exploitation English dub tracks of the period.
Extras
88 Films have dropped the few short extras Celestial Pictures produced including documentary pieces on the director and star, but they have included a trio of brand new extras. First up is an audio commentary by film journalist and author Samm Deighan who previously provided a track for 88 Films' edition of King Hu's Come Drink With Me. She notes that, in spite of the title, the film does not really belong to Chang's Shaolin series of films and that the Taiwanese title "The Hung Boxer Kid" is actually more appropriate (for Fu Sheng's fighting style and the "kid" personification), and that it was the last collaboration between Chang and action director Chia-Liang Liu who would begin his own directorial career with Shaw Brothers the same year including the Fu Sheng vehicles Boxer Rebellion, Cat vs. Rat, and the ill-fated The Eight Diagram Pole Figher (Chang would start to work more in Taiwan under his own company with his films still being distributed by Shaw Brothers). She observes that it is more of a working class drama disguised as a kung fu film, with a flawed protagonist and a lack of the usual good/evil divide in the rival clans; indeed, the machinations of the two bosses seem equally ruthless if one takes audience identification with Fa-Lung out of the equation. The second track is an audio commentary by Asian cinema experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema who not only note the relative obscurity of Fu Sheng for modern audiences but that in Hong Kong and mainland China several of the performers known to international martial arts film fans are virtually unknown for about two generations of Chinese audiences because roughly ninety-percent of the Shaw Brothers catalogue received no television play or video releases domestically. In addition to discussing Fu Sheng's popularity a shrine was left in his dressing room at the former Shaw Brothers studio that has since been vandalized by souvenir-seeking urban explorers they also shed light on the importance of Chang Cheh (whose "disciples" included John Woo and Godfrey Ho) as well as his action directors. In addition to speculating on whether the imagery of brotherhood in the Chang's filmography is more homoerotic than in the films of his contemporaries, they also note that Johnnie To remade the film in 1993 as THE BARE-FOOTED KID. Frιdιric Ambroisine provided several interviews with Shaw talent back at the turn of the century for Wild Side Video releases, but here he provides a brand new interview with actor/later director Jamie Luk (25:40) who recalls auditioning for Chang's studio which was recruiting both actors and stuntmen, the dorm-style living arrangement as the actors and stunt performers move back and forth between Taiwan and Hong Kong throughout the year sometimes shooting scenes for the same film in different countries, how Chang would have one action director remain in Hong Kong while he shot in Taiwan with local performers, and later he would work more and more with Taiwanese crew and performers. The disc also includes the film's Hong Kong Theatrical Trailer (2:52).
Packaging
The cover is reversible while the first pressing also includes a limited edition slipcover with brand-new artwork from R.P. "Kung Fu Bob" OBrien, a double-sided A3 foldout poster, and a booklet featuring "The Visceral Martial Arts Cinema of Chang Cheh" by Matthew Edwards, "International Bright Young Thing: A Look Back on The Disciples of Shaolin and its Charismatic Star Alexander Fu Sheng" by Andrew Graves, and an article by Kung Fu Bob.
Overall
Although he was once on the same tier of Hong Kong superstardom as the likes of Jackie Chan, the tragically short-lived Alexander Fu Sheng had similar charisma and was not afraid to come off badly as his character in Disciples of Shaolin.
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