From Shaw to Snakes: The Venom and Violence of Early Chinese Language Horror Cinema (2023)

In the 1970s, the Shaw Brothers - famous for their martial arts classics - begin to produce increasingly more extreme horror films, such as Ghost Eyes (1974), The Killer Snakes (1974) and Fangs of the Cobra (1977). Meanwhile in Taiwan, largely used as a location during the early years of the Hong Kong action boom, enterprising producers begin to form their own exploitation cinema unit - leading to the emergence of one of the most notorious motion pictures of all time, the 1983 shocker Calamity of Snakes. For the release of Calamity of Snakes on Blu-ray in America, this feature-length documentary captures the thoughts of the leading actor, Yun-Peng Hsiang, for the first time, along with Chinese academic Dr Lin Feng, film critic Craig Lines, Hong Kong superstar Kwok-Leung Kam (from The Killer Snakes) and others to remember this unique and bizarre period.