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■ Shaw Brothers
Golden Harvest, other otherwise known now as Orange Sky Golden Harvest (OSGH) is a Hong Kong film production company from 1970 to 2009. It dominated cinema box office sales from the 1970s to the 1980s, and played a major role in introducing Hong Kong action films to the world, especially those by Bruce Lee (Concord Production Inc.), Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Sammo Hung.

■ Shaw Brothers
Shaw Brothers was a legendary Hong Kong film studio, run by the Shaw family (especially Run Run Shaw), famous for its prolific output and pioneering the global popularity of martial arts (kung fu) films, operating like a factory with in-house stars and massive sets at its “Movietown” studio, creating iconic films like The One-Armed Swordsman and The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, influencing cinema worldwide from the 1960s to the 1980s before shifting focus to television

As you may already know, I am a huge Shaw Brothers fan, and one of my goals is to own all their movies that they produced from 1960 to 1989 (mostly interested in Kung-Fu movies). The company produced a little over 1,000 movies, which is a big task for me to track down and collect… but thanks to Shout Factory they’ve been releasing some really rare Shaw Brothers films via their Shaw Brothers Classic boxsets. Each set contains about 11 or 12 movies.

When it comes to their competitor, Golden Harvest, it’s a bit of a black hole for me. I do own some popular Golden Harvest films, such as all the Bruce Lee (all the Lee films were on Golden Harvest, except Enter the Dragon which was mostly Warner Bros.) and Police Story (Jackie Chan).

In the same vein as the Shaw Brothers Classic Boxsets, Shout Factory started releasing these Golden Harvest boxsets, starting in 2024, called Golden Harvest Volume 1: Supernatural Shockers, aka “Supernatural Knockers”. In this first collection, they’ve compiled six Category III (Adult) films from 1990 to 1992. As you would expect, these films are T&A focus. They’re tamer than soft porn (due to Hong Kong’s heavy censorship), but you know what you’re getting with these sleazy films.

I can’t say that I recommend any of these films. To me, these are low-budget, exploitive films. The story doesn’t matter, because the audience is only interested in the boobs. The second collection Golden Harvest Volume 2: Shining Stars collects unknown or rising Kung Fu films… which is probably to my liking.

Unlike the recent Shaw Brothers Classic boxsets, it seems there are some care and time put into this Golden Harvest set. They include commentaries, interviews, deleted scenes, image gallery, and more. Also, the boxset is about half the size of the Shaw Brothers boxset, due to fewer films (6 films vs 12 films). The retail price is also cheaper, retailing for $69 vs $139.

Having sort-of watched all the Erotic Ghost Story, via audio commentary, they are just not good films. The first film did so well that they released all those sequels, plus copycat films. If you were to get this set, the two shining titles are Doctor Vampire and Robotrix.

Although I am a fan of these Asian-genre films, the erotica films just aren’t my cup of tea. I recognize their importance in the overall Hong Kong umbrella, but I do have buyer’s remorse in owning this set. Since I already own it, I am happy to have it in my collection and have already purchased Volume 2 to support Shout Factory. Hopefully, if sales are good, the company will release other Golden Harvest titles.

Films in Golden Harvest Volume 1: Supernatural Shockers