Directed by Lau Kar-leung, The Shadow Boxer is also known as The Spiritual Boxer Part II.

Master Chen Wu (Chia-Yung Liu) and his apprentice Fan Chun Yuen (Yue Wong) are undertakers who have the rough job of getting the dead back in their graves. They must bring nine corpses from back to their home graves, an effort that Master Chen accomplishes by turning the dead bodies into jiangshi or, as more commonly known, hopping vampires. He does that by attaching spells to their foreheads which reanimate them, which allows the spiritual undertakers to avoid carrying coffins and just have the dead walk — or jump — home on their own.

Arriving before Mr. Vampire and Encounters of the Spooky Kind, this is one of the first appearances of these creatures, monsters that would soon show up in so many horror — and non-horror — movies.

One of the undead, Zhang Jie (Gordon Liu), just won’t listen. That’s because he may not be dead. They’re also hosts to Ah Fei (Cecilia Wong), who arrives just in time for things to start going wrong.

Fan Chun Yuen can only do martial arts when his master is chanting spells at him, so it’s a good thing that Zhang Jie is along. And it’s also great for the viewer, as Gordon Liu is always a welcome fighter in any film.

Also: Don’t be concerned that this is a sequel. It is one in name only and both movies have Yue Wong in them.

The 88 Films blu ray release of The Shadow Boxing has a limited edition slipcase with brand-new artwork by Mark Bell and four collectable artcards. You also get a trailer and a still gallery. Of all the 88 Films Shaw Brothers releases, this has the greatest looking cover art. I’m honored to have it as part of my collection.

Get this from MVD.

Directed by Adam Werth, who co-wrote the story with Victor V. Gelsomino, Devil’s Knight takes place in Veroka, where an elite group of global monster hunters known as The Lost Blades — played by an all star cast of direct to streaming actors — are hired by King Samuel (Kevin Hager) to destroy the Bone Devil, whose reign of terror threatens all of humanity.

The fighters include Sigurd (John Welles) and Mathias (Robert Stanley), who handily dispatch a minotaur early in the movie. They’re soon joined by the king’s daughter Princess Sabine (Sarah Nicklin) — who wants to fight like a man — and Captain Baldur (Kevin Sorbo) among many others.

This is packed with actors, including Angie Everhart, Eric Roberts, Daniel Baldwin, Mistress Harley and around a hundred others, as well as just as many associate and executive producers who may also be actors in this. That’s how movies get made these days, you know?

I played a lot of D&D and that means that I watched plenty of sword and sorcery movies in the 80s. This follows a lot of those themes and has huge battles where nearly everyone dies, which is how a hard campaign often goes. It also has some ren faire costuming, but at least the castle sets are nice. I’m telling you this because I am the audience for this movie, the kind of movie that you could never watch with your wife because she’d make fun of you for hours for knowing what terms like hook horror, critical hit and magic missiles mean.

Shout out to producers Michael and Sonny Mahal for making a movie that reminds me of the kind of films that I overdosed on in the 80s, back when my hometown had a video store on almost every corner.

This also has a possessed woman eat a man’s heart and that’s the kind of thing I look for in my movies.

Ryan Van Hill-Song (Nathan Hill) has come back from space a hero. However, his wife Sadie (Ira Chakraborty) wonders if her husband has been changed by his time in orbit. After all, he’s jogging all the time and somehow, he has a bigger penis than when he rocketed into space.

Hill, who wrote the film, claims that this was inspired by The Astronaut’s Wife, which may be a movie that you don’t remember. Working with director Simon Oliver and writer Simon Salamon, this has an Australian astronaut who is like a rock star and works for NASA, maybe because there’s no space program down under.

Once Sadie finds out that she’s pregnant, she starts to wonder if the fetus inside her is an alien being. Well, once she finds out that her hubby looks like something out of Alien Nation, you can just imagine how that’d knock her out. She’s pretty unflappable, however. When he cheats on her with a bartender, she drives him home and takes a nap on the couch instead of trying to murder him.

Man, Sadie goes through a lot in this, losing her nan, having an alien husband, having an alien cheating husband, having a baby with her alien cheating husband and the baby sending her flashing messages of its space child face, dealing with the Men In Black…I’d like to know what happens as the end, as Ryan gets beamed up while she eats blue taffy in the kitchen and cries. Does that cause her to lose her child? Or is she going to be a single mother of a space baby?

Alien Love is kind of confounding and I mean that as a compliment.

You can watch this on Tubi.

The Chi Sha Clan is made up of numerous killers and criminals who all know martial arts. No one knows who their leader is and efforts to stop them have been — up to know — futile. The Imperial Court charges Yang Zhen-Yu (Walter Tso Tat-Wah) with stopping them for good. To do that, he sends Fan Tao (Teng Wei Hao) to go undercover and become a member of the clan in the hopes that he can destroy it from within.

Directed by Sun Chung and written by Ni Kuang, this was a little seen Shaw Brothers film — until now. It doesn’t have the star power of other releases and has a lot of characters that don’t seem all that distinguishable, so maybe that’s why. It has a lot in common with Five Deadly Venoms but doesn’t have the wildness of that movie.

It does, however, have what all Shaw Brothers movies do. Great fights, horrific villains and no small amount of blood being spilled on all sides of the battle. I do love Sun Chung, however, and recommend that if you like his work here, you should track down Avenging Eagle, The Devil’s Mirror and Human Lanterns.

The 88 Films blu ray release of this movie has a slipcase with art by Sean Longmore and four collector’s art cards. I’m really excited that 88 Films has been releasing all of these Shaw Brothers films in the U.S., allowing me to have high quality copies of movies that were either once lost or that I’ve otherwise only seen on battered VHS tapes.

You can get it from MVD.

Frank Sharp (John Ozuna) had to leave America when he was charged with murder after him bouncing a drunk customer ended up with the man dead. He stays in touch with his sister Angie (Jackie Falcon), as his mother (Paloma Morales) is dying in a hospital. Frank’s trying to pay for it by working as a bouncer in Romania. The trouble is, he can’t avoid helping people, like Silvia (Rosmary Yaneva), who is being abused by sexual trafficker Kane (Costas Mandylor). Of course, his boss Carl (Simon Phillips) tries to warn him, but Frank just can’t help himself.

Watching the bad guy slap around a woman and threaten her with a knife is too much, so Frank beats the man into the ground, as well as his bodyguard before taking Silvia and stealing Kane’s car. If this seems like the worst idea ever, well, there wouldn’t be a movie otherwise.

Directed by Massimiliano Cerchi (The Penthouse) and written by Adrian Milnes, this has a cameo from Gerald Okamura, who is probably the best henchman in the history of action movies.

When this has fights happening, this is pretty solid. It takes too much time in between them, but if you grew up renting the levels below Seagal and Van Damme, venturing into the action films of Lundgren, Dudikoff and Rotchrock, then you’ll find a lot to enjoy here. Ozuna has some good moves and there’s a great fight with a hitwoman played by Tayah Kansik that makes up for any time that the movie drags, even if Frank basically chokes her to death while traffic drives by. Maybe life is cheap in Romania.

There’s also a moment where Kane stops two henchmen by basically squeezing their balls into bloody sacks. You have to appreciate that kind of brutality in a hero, even if he’s too dumb to realize that none of his friends are on his side. Or he was, until — as you’d expect — the bad guys kill him.

If this had a box that you were looking at it in a video store, it would let you know that Ozuna was a 2008 Guinness™ World Record Holder for Fastest Martial Arts Punch at 43.3 mph and Most Martial Arts Punches in a Minute of 713. That means that he can throw ten punches a second. More than ten. I can’t even figure that out.

Also: I can’t figure out why the climactic fight starts with stock footage of the sun coming up, but maybe they didn’t have coverage. I also can’t explain why Frank turns his head when someone has a gun on him. Then again, most of Frank’s martial arts concentrate on scrotum decimation, so there’s that, as he wins another fight handily.

This is a decent microbudget brawler. If you like discovering these movies as much as me, you’ll have a fine time.

Director Chun-Ku Lu (Holy Flame of the Martial World) is here to tell us the story of Yun Fei Yang (Norman Chui), an orphan who is given the worst tasks at Wudang, a martial arts school. Every privileged student abuses him, but he remains there, studying and working on his kung fu when he isn’t being treated like trash. There’s a real problem, however, as the rival Wu Di school and their best fighter, Kung Suen Wang (Meng Lo), is coming back to duel the school’s master swordsman Qing Song (Jung Wang) after having already defeated him twice.

Yun Fei Yang also is in love with the daughter — Fang Er (Yeung Jing-Jing) — of the leader of the school, Chief Dugu (Alex Man Chi-Leung), who has left for two years. As Dugu rests as a tavern, he’s attacked by four killers — Wind (Yuen Tak), Thunder (Wong Lik), Rain (Yuen Qiu) and Lightning (Kwan Fung), in case you ever wondered if John Carpenter watched these movies — and is saved by Fu Yu Shu. Yet after he’s attacked a second time, Yun Fei Yang is blamed and the school starts to tear itself to pieces A new master shows up, Fu Yu Xue (Tony Liu), and he soon steals away the school.

Yun Fei Yang starts to train with a stranger — Shen Man Jiun (Chan Si-Gaai) — and begins to master the signature style of the school, the Silkworm, all while running for the law, who thinks that he is a murderer. Yet despite the odds being against this “bastard,” the only way the true Wudang style will live on is through him.

Don’t think that this movie is rooted in our world. After all, Yun Fei Yang soon learns how to spin himself into a cocoon and emerge as a silver armored superhero who can shoot webs and emit blasts of energy. By the end, the final battle takes place inside his cocoon and it ends with the bad guy turned into a skeleton.

Based on a TV series, Reincarnated or The Transformation of the Heavenly Silkworm, this would be followed by a sequel, Return of the Bastard Swordsman.

The Arrow Video Shaw Scope Volume Three box set has a brand new 2K restoration of The Bastard Swordsman as well as commentary by Frank Jeng and a trailer.

You can get this set from MVD.

“Flaming Cloud Devil” Ku Han-hun (Alex Man Chi-leung) has learned the Buddha’s Palm from his master and is challenged by four masters of the Evil Fire God power: “Unpredictable Dashing Ring” Sun Pi-ling (Shaw Yin-yin), “Heavenly Foot” Wai Chein Tien-chun, “Nine Roped Rings” Lui Piao-piao and “Thunderbolt Devil” Pi Li Shen-chun. He’s left for dead and twenty years later, his hiding place is found by Long Jian-fei (Tung Shing Yee), a cocky young fighter who has just been saved by Dameng, a giant flying bearded dragon. Having been trapped in a cave for two decades, Ku Han-hun is a bit insane, but he tells Long that he will teach him his secret art if he gets him the egg of a Golden Dragon. Our hero goes one further and also brings him a dagger that could just be a lightsaber. Pretty good for a guy who starts the movie thrown off a cliff by the new boyfriend of his former girlfriend.

Along the way, Long rescues sword sisters Chu Yu-hua (Yu An-an) and Chu Yu-chan (Hui Ying-hung), angering their master Sun- Pi-ling, who imprisons him. Wai Chein has also gone on to create an army including an acid spitting dwarf.

Based on Palm of a Thousand Buddhas, this is a shot in studio film that has — at times — simple special effects, such as an obvious costume for the dragon. But you know, who cares? It also has neon colors and near psychedelic flourishes as the martial arts skills go beyond punches and kicks and become energy radiating from the hands of the fighters, turning them into superheroes battling caves filled with monsters, looking for mysterious object after object. How can you not love a movie that announces its ripped-off Star Wars weapon with the sound of Vader’s labored breath?

Lieh Lo is awesome in this, a goofball hero who is smarter than he appears and who announces himself every time he shows up, saying “Bi Gu of East Island is here!” Have you ever seen a movie where a magic McGuffin heals the acne of an angry female martial arts master before? Nope. You never will again.

This was Taylor Wong’s second movie but man, he already had some magic.

The Arrow Video Shaw Scope Volume Three box set has a brand new 2K restoration of Buddha’s Palm as well as commentary by critic and translator Dylan Cheung, an alternate English title sequence for Buddha’s Palm as Raiders of the Magic Palm and a trailer.

You can get this set from MVD.