Tulsa Terrors is all about the direct-to-video horror boom of the mid-1980s, which was sparked in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and led by United Entertainment (now VCI Entertainment, which released this) and its founder, Bill Blair.

Starting with Blood Cult, Blair’s idea to produce films exclusively for home video revolutionized the industry, leading to a wave of low-budget genre films that bypassed theatrical release. You know, SOV. And yes, I know that Boardinghouse was SOV first, but it was made for theaters, not video. Same as Sledgehammer, which was created for video, but not advertised as such, like Blood Cult.

This film features interviews with everyone who was there and covers many of the movies you know and love. You’ll learn how Blair approached Christopher and Linda Lewis with The Sorority House Murders and the idea to film on video, just like a soap opera. After all, he had two Betacams and Sony editing equipment. And you’ll get to see moments from the films, like The Ripper, Revenge, Toe Tags, Branded and The Stitcher.

If you have any love for SOV, consider this an essential watch.

You can get this from MVD.

Directed by Alex Cheung, this features Eden (James Yi Lui), a private eye, and Li Tien Zhen (Cherie Chung) meeting when they both decide to jump in front of a train. He’s depressed at where life has taken him, and she’s been kidnapped by a UFO and lost her virginity, which ruins her marriage to Mr. Kwok (David Lo). And then, it becomes a series of sketches, including car crashes and a scene that is totally Marilyn in The Seven Year Itch.

Wuxia and martial arts weren’t selling, so Shaw Brothers was looking for something to replace those types of movies, so they were co-producing movies like Inseminoid and Blade Runner. This is a bunch of things thrown in a pot: a werewolf, a food fight, Close Encounters, music videos, some aliens, romance, a Star Wars parody, comedy and martial arts. 

It doesn’t all work, but when the hero pulls his shirt open to reveal the Shaw Brothers logo, I laughed.

The Arrow Video release of this film, part of the Shaw Scope Volume 4 set, features a high-definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation, newly restored in 2K from the original negatives by Arrow Films. It has commentary by martial arts cinema expert Frank Djeng, an interview with director/co-writer Alex Cheung and a newly filmed appreciation by film scholar Victor Fan. You can get this set from MVD.

I think I’ve seen all the Shaw Brothers non-supernatural films, and the HK Database says that this is a drama, so…let’s just agree that it may have demons and magic, but it’s kind of its own thing.

Long Fei (Jason Piao Pai) left behind the world of martial arts fisticuffs and now lives in a secluded mountain studio, where he and his assistant, Fatty (Wong Chun), have spent five years carving a woman out of crystal. Long Fei wishes that his woman had a soul, so he adds some blood because, you know, nothing bad would happen, and of course, everything bad in this movie happens as the crystal woman (Yu-Po Liu) starts killing people.

Masked Poison Yama (Wei Hao Ting) and his son (Yu Hsiao) want to kill Long Fei, so they spend much of the movie inside a treehouse lab where they mix plants, snake venom — yes, the film shows us it being extracted, it’s a Shaw Brothers movie — and animals to make a poison that blows people up from inside their stomach. Yes, they show it. You know you want it.

Yet the son is soon killed by the crystal female, and Yama declares revenge on everyone, first using poison gas to kill everyone in the family of former fighter Prince Tian Di (Jung Wang). As this is all going on, he sends his men, White Judge and Black Judge, after Long Fei and Fatty, who are hiding out in an inn where the owner decapitates people and serves their flesh.

This movie is, well, absolutely wild. There are battles in a graveyard, a school of masked female assassins, wire-assisted swordplay and every character coming together for one final battle. I just realized that Hus Shan also directed Inframan, Kung Fu Zombie and Dynamo. Yeah, that makes sense even if this movie doesn’t — like, how is the crystal woman related to the assassin academy? — but who cares? It looks good, it moves fast, and it’s super weird.

The Arrow Video release of this film, part of the Shaw Scope Volume 4 set, has a high definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation, newly restored in 2K from the original negatives by Arrow Films. You can get this set from MVD.

A black magic sorcerer is just trying to dig up some bones for his latest spell when he’s chased by a group of angry citizens, right into the cab of our hero, Chau. He lives through getting hit by the car, but tells the cab driver that he’s about to go through some bad luck.

And just like that, Chau’s wife starts sleeping with a gambler who really doesn’t care about her, even leaving her in a bad part of town where she’s assaulted and killed, falling out a window to her death, her spirit calling to Chau via his CB radio.

That’s when Chau decides that it’s time to find that black magic dude and get some horrible, horrible revenge.

The spell that ensues is so powerful, it blows the lid off Chau’s wife Irene’s coffin. There’s also corpse sex and a monster baby sent to destroy the two villains who dared to ruin Chau’s life. And he also learns that the more magic he uses, the more his body pays the price.

Look, a ghost has sex with a reanimated corpse over a black magic altar, a tentacled demon baby runs around, and a toilet blows up real good. It’s not the best movie you’ve ever seen, but it may be the goopiest, the kind of film that tells The Thing, “Oh yeah? Hold my San Miguel.”

The Arrow Video release of this film, part of the Shaw Scope Volume 4 set, has a high definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation, newly restored in 2K from the original negatives by Arrow Films. It has commentary by critic James Mudge. You can get this set from MVD.

The first film by Lung Yi-sheng, this is the tale of Yuan Fei, the Flying Monkey (Chin Siu-ho), who takes on the challenge of finding a weapon that can defeat the Demon Lute, a weapon made from dinosaur muscles. In his journey, he meets swordswoman Feng Ling, the Rainbow Sword (Kara Wai), the drunken Old Naughty and his scissors, the Woodcutter and his son Doraemon, called that because he carries around a Doraemon doll.

They will battle  The Long Limb Evil, a demon who has an arm that can keep growing; the One Eyed Dragon, who has a crazy spider eyepatch; Red-Haired Devil, who can attack with his afro and the demonic lute itself, which becomes a transparent hand with six fingers that keeps grabbing for our heroes before they use the only weapon can stop it, a bow that was jammed into the stone wall of a cave.

There’s a dog-pulled chariot, a rainbow sword, gigantic axes, and wirework fights made for kids, all set to 80s guitar-driven music. There are some people online who have given this poor reviews, and what kind of heartless creep do you have to be to watch something so perfect and judge it that way?

The Arrow Video release of this film, part of the Shaw Scope Volume 4 set, has a high definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation, newly restored in 2K from the original negatives by Arrow Films. It has commentary by martial arts cinema expert Frank Djeng. You can get this set from MVD.

Made two years before Ghostbusters, this early Lau Kar-Wing supernatural comedy (one of two he did for Shaw Brothers) has Bao Tuo (Hsiao Ho) and his cousin Zhou Peng (Cheung Chin-Pang) scamming people as fake ghostbusters. As you can imagine, they end up fighting real apparitions. A screwed up exorcism leads to the death of a client and her haunting them…and that’s just the beginning.

This may be wackier than some like, and the script is totally all over the place, but hiding ghosts inside umbrellas, possessed gamblers using that supernatural event to cheat and win money, and supernatural spectral battles should keep you on board. Sure, Golden Harvest did these sorts of movies better — Mr. Vampire, Encounter of the Spooky Kind — but this should at the very least keep you interested.

The Arrow Video release of this film, part of the Shaw Scope Volume 4 set, features a high-definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation, newly restored in 2K from the original negatives by Arrow Films. You can get this set from MVD.