Furious Swords Fantastic Warriors

Furious Swords And Fantastic Warriors, released by Eureka!, is a collection of ten martial arts films by the prolific Hong Kong director Chang Cheh. They are all presented in HD. Throughout his career he made somewhere in the region of a hundred films, pumping out as many as nine films over the course of a year. For many of those he also wrote the scripts. Thematically they tend to be about the struggle for good over evil and fraternal bonding. He was a master at directing action and the production company, Shaw Brothers, had a stable of highly talented martial artists to work in their films. If that is what you are looking for then these ten films give you moral certainty and some superb, if sometimes overlong, Kung Fu fights combined with physical stunt work that is truly impressive.

As a director, Chang Cheh has his faults. When making so many films, some of those films don't get the care and attention that they deserve. As a result they end up looking a bit scrappy. The sets look a bit fake and the camerawork can leave a lot to be desired. Sometimes there are things in shot that really shouldn't be there, a tree branch or an out of focus extra's hat in the foreground, right on the one third line. Cheh, in all his years as a director, never really learns how to frame a shot. He does have a particular style that is largely based on fast pans, tilts, pushes and pulls. By the early Seventies he is combining the flaws and his trademark style into a kind of self referential fan service. In Iron Bodyguard (1973), for example, the missed zoom and correcting pan is a consistent trope. It becomes a signature of his films.

His films are also inconsistent. In The Trail Of The Broken Blade (1967) the wire work is iconic and much copied by other film makers. You can see it in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. In King Eagle (1971), by contrast, it looks amateurish.

Another problem with the films is something no director can really do anything about. That is the acting talent. The actors are highly skilled martial artists. They have focused years of training to do what they do, and even with years of training very few can do what they do. They didn't train to be actors. The crossover between acting ability and martial prowess is rare. Over the course of their careers some of them do become better at acting.

By the time that he starred in The New Shaolin Boxers (AKA Demon Fists Of Kung Fu, Grand Master Of Kung Fu) (1976), Sheng Fu had significantly improved. He also acquires a knack for comic timing. If he hadn't died so young, a passenger in a crashed car, he would have gone far.

The selection of films in Furious Swords And Fantastic Warriors is varied: supernatural legend; historical epic, folktale, gangland thriller. The audio commentaries for these films are generally engaging and informative. There are a few special features on the first two discs that are informative, but some additional information about Chinese history and culture would help when it comes to understanding a couple of these films: the century of humiliation and The Boxer Rebellion; and the mythic Red Boy.

Whether you like Chang Cheh's films or not - personally, I do - depends on how appreciative you are of the fight choreography and stunt work. If you can watch them for that and ignore the problems then they are great entertainment.

Reviewed on: 20 Oct 2025