The MUST-HAVE reference guide for the very serious Hong Kong movie fan…
One for the nerds and hardcore fans. John Charles presents a guide to 1,100 films produced by British Hong Kong studios. Imagine a Halliwell or Leonard Maltin movie guide devoted entirely to Hong Kong products.
Now that, despite what the cover may claim, is still not ‘complete’ by any means. (For example, Tower Of Death is not featured.) It is, however, bloody comprehensive and you’d be hard pushed to find a lot of missing films from that time period. Charles writes with a great amount of authority, not restricting him self to a set length for any review but instead giving the appropriate amount to each film, dependent on how much there is to be written. Most films are given a quarter or more of an A4 page, some more than half. The reviews are informative, with a lot of background information on their making, sources for some of their unoriginal music (quite a regular occurrence), cast and crew listing. In fact, everything a real fan needs to know.
Charles is definitely pretty opinionated about his movies (as will anyone be that buys this book). Though one might sometimes disagree, often he give a reliable, balanced review to the films. There’s even a rating out of ten for each film. Notably of the very few films to receive ten out of ten, three of them are my top three Hong Kong movies of all time (See my guide to the Top Ten Hong Kong Movies). Occasionally throwing a wobbly – Ringo Lam, for instance, doesn’t get higher than an 8. Well I said you might disagree, but at least he gives you something to disagree with.
So Charles is pretty canny, by limiting the timeframe on the films reviewed he gets away with the major failing of nearly every book on Hong Kong movies – little to no knowledge of what came before Bruce Lee. However, he also excludes himself from being able to talk about many of the exciting movies since, such as The Stormriders, Beast Cop, The Longest Nite and Time and Tide. (This book was published in 2000.)
Fair enough, it does exactly what it says on the tin. The only real flaw is it’s price tag. At 75 dollars it’s only ever going to appeal to real fans, but it’s worth it!
