Shaw Brothers Presents: The Basher Box

At the dawn of the 1970s, a new kind of hard-hitting action film swept the Asian film industry: the kung fu movie, often known to Western audiences as ‘bashers’ for their emphasis on hand-to-hand combat. Shaw Brothers was one of the greatest producers of these eye-popping action spectaculars, revolutionizing the genre through the back-breaking work of top-shelf talent on both sides of the camera as well as unbeatable widescreen production value, much of it shot at ‘Movietown’, their huge studio on the outskirts of Hong Kong.

This triple bill of redemption and revenge kicks off in 1972 with Korean director Chung Chang-wha’s King Boxer, the film that established kung fu cinema as an international box office powerhouse. From there we see Chang Cheh, arguably Shaw’s most prolific director, helm the blood-soaked brutality of The Boxer from Shantung and Chinatown Kid, the latter set on the streets of San Francisco.

DISC 1: KING BOXER

• 2K restoration by Arrow Films from a 4K scan of the original negative

• High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation

• Restored uncompressed Mandarin and English original mono audio

• English subtitles for the Mandarin audio, plus English hard-of-hearing subtitles for the English dub

• Commentary by David Desser, co-editor of The Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema and The Cinema of Hong Kong

• Appreciation by film critic and historian Tony Rayns

• Interview with director Chung Chang-wha, filmed in 2003 and 2004

• Interview with star Wang Ping, filmed in 2007

• Interview with Korean cinema expert Cho Young-jung, author of Chung Chang-wha: Man of Action, filmed in 2005

• Cinema Hong Kong: Kung Fu, the first in a three-part documentary on Shaw Brothers’ place within the martial arts genre produced by Celestial Pictures in 2003, featuring interviews with Jackie Chan, Jet Li, John Woo, Sammo Hung, Gordon Liu, Lau Kar-leung, Cheng Pei-pei, David Chiang and many others

• Alternate opening credits from the American version titled Five Fingers of Death

• Trailers

DISC 2: THE BOXER FROM SHANTUNG

• 2K restoration by Arrow Films from a 4K scan of the original negative

• High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation

• Uncompressed Mandarin and English original mono audio

• English subtitles for the Mandarin audio, plus English hard-of-hearing subtitles for the English dub

• Interview with star Chen Kuan-tai, filmed in 2007

• Interview with assistant director John Woo, filmed in 2004

• Interview with star David Chiang, filmed in 2003

• Conversation between stars Chen Kuan-tai and Ku Feng, filmed at a Shaw Brothers reunion in 2007

• Trailers

DISC 3: CHINATOWN KID

• 2K restoration of the 115-minute International Version from original film elements

• High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation

• 90-minute Alternate Version

• Uncompressed original Cantonese audio for the International Version, with English subtitles

• Uncompressed original English audio for the International Version, with optional hard-of-hearing subtitles

• Uncompressed original Mandarin audio for the Alternate Version, with English subtitles

• Commentary on the International Version by Terrence J. Brady, author of Alexander Fu Sheng: Biography of the Chinatown Kid

• Select scene video commentary by co-star Susan Shaw from 2021

• Elegant Trails: Fu Sheng, a featurette on the actor produced by Celestial Pictures in 2005

• Trailers