Blu-ray release: ‘Furious Swords and Fantastic Warriors’
By Phil Mills | Jul 8, 2025
Eureka Entertainment are bringing a collection of ten martial arts classics from the legendary Chang Cheh to US and UK Blu-ray on September 22/23, 2025.
Distinguished by his penchant for bloodshed and a thematic concentration on the bonds of brotherhood and masculine sacrifice, Chang Cheh is one of the most prolific and accomplished directors ever to emerge from the Hong Kong film industry. Often hailed as the “Godfather of Hong Kong cinema,” he enjoyed a career spanning six decades and worked in a multitude of genres, from Chinese opera to kung fu films via wuxia pian, historical epics and tales of the supernatural.
Presented here are ten films that reveal the range and versatility of Chang’s career as a filmmaker. Traditional wuxia pian is represented by ‘King Eagle’, ‘The Trail of the Broken Blade‘ and ‘The Wandering Swordsman’; choreographed by Liu Chia-Liang, ‘Men from the Monastery‘ and ‘Shaolin Martial Arts’ are both drawn from Chang’s Shaolin cycle, included here alongside ‘The New Shaolin Boxers‘; ‘Iron Bodyguard‘, released at the dawn of the kung fu era, is representative of changing trends in Hong Kong cinema; and some of Chang’s more esoteric work is represented by the opera film ‘The Fantastic Magic Baby’ and the supernatural fantasy ‘The Weird Man’. Also included is the anthology film ‘Trilogy of Swordsmanship‘, to which Chang contributed a segment alongside his contemporaries Griffin Yueh Feng and Cheng Kang.
All produced during Chang Cheh’s tenure at Shaw Brothers, these ten films are a testament to the director’s distinct aesthetic style and his recurring thematic preoccupations.
Features:
• 1080p HD presentations of all 10 films on Blu-ray
• Optional English subtitles, newly revised for this release
• New audio commentaries by David West
• New audio commentaries by Mike Leeder and Arne Venema
• New audio commentaries by Frank Djeng and Michael Worth
• New interview with Wayne Wong on the life and work of Chang Cheh
• New video essay by Jonathan Clements on Iron Bodyguard
• New video essay by Jonathan Clements on Chang Cheh’s Shaolin film
• Limited edition double-walled slipcase [2000 copies]
• Limited edition collector’s booklet [2000 copies]
‘Furious Swords and Fantastic Warriors’ is available to pre-order now from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
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