Shaw Brothers 2025

The last time I talked about Shaw Brothers (with the announcement of Shawscope Vol 3), I said that I was not very excited about this new volume and that I was really in no hurry to get it. I would wait for a sale or if I have the extra cash. My brother recently sold my toy collection for a grand, so I now have a little walking around money and I might look into getting some more Shaw stuff for my collection.

So let’s take a look at what’s coming, in the world of Kung Fu movies.

Eureka Video will be releasing a Chang Cheh film collection called Furious Swords and Fantastic Warriors: The Heroic Cinema Of Chang Cheh, retails for $100 and set for release on September 23, 2025.

It looks like Celestial Pictures has opened their Shaw Brothers licenses to Eureka Video. Previously, as far as I knew, only Arrow Videos, Shout Factory, and 88 Films (through their UK license opened to the US market) were releasing Shaw Brothers films to the USA market.

I have previously said that I love Cheh’s Kung Fu stuff, and while this collection does collect some of those films (New Shaolin Boxers and Iron Bodyguard), it also presents his wuxia (fantasy) films and supernatural Fantastic Magic Baby and The Weird Man… which I am not a fan of. For ten films, this works out to be $10 a film, so it’s not bad as a budget collection – but since I already own half the films (all the Kung Fu films) it’s a tough sell to me.

Another selling point will be six of the films have English dubs (which, funny enough, is my prefer way of watching these classic films), and most of the films will have audio commentary. Although I find that some commentaries on these Shaw Brothers are not very good, especially when they are ill-prepared.

Arrow Video released a similar Cheh collection called Four Films by Chang Cheh (which contains some of the best Venoms films: Five Venoms and Crippled Avengers), but since I already own them on the Shawscope boxsets, I didn’t bother picking up this solo release.

I may end up picking up this Furious Swords and Fantastic Warriors: The Heroic Cinema Of Chang Cheh release, just out of curiosity, but I’ll probably just wait for a sale. Usually, if you wait a year, they do drop in price, and I would pull the trigger if it fell below $60.

I am a big fan of these Shout Factory boxsets, with their latest Shaw Brothers Classics, Vol. 7 set to come out next week, August 5, 2025.

I already own the first four boxsets, and I confessed that Shout Factory is “aggressively released each boxset”, with four sets released within a six-month window (June to December). Each set contains 12 films, so it’s almost too much and too overwhelming! However, if you want to collect and see all the Shaw Brothers films, I would go with Shout Factory, as they tend to put out more obscure Shaw titles. While that might not mean I would love everything, it’s a good option for collectors. If you just want the mainline titles, Arrow Videos seemed to have acquired the best titles (in my opinion).

The one minor problem I have with Shaw Brothers Classics boxsets are their prices. Right now, the latest (Volume 7) retails for $170 (but on sale for $140). It’s still too much for me… especially if you see that Volume 1 is about $100. So, perhaps it’s better to wait it out for a lower price. I’m also missing Volume 5 and 6, so I have to try and get those before 7.