Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

The Golden Buddha Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 7, 2024

Note: This film is available on Blu-ray as part of the Super Spies and Secret Lies: Three Undercover Classics from Shaw Brothers collection from Eureka! Entertainment.

The venerable Shaw Brothers may be best remembered for their glut of martial arts extravaganzas, a glut evidenced by the recent massive Shawscope Volume Three set among many others, evidenced at least in part by that Volume Three, which is not to suggest the Shawscope collections have been the only source for Shaw Brothers films on Blu-ray. But the studio was certainly not immune to various other crazes that subsumed the global film world, including the massive wake left by the first several James Bond films, seemingly even a bit before the Bond phenomenon had a new burst of Asian energy courtesy of You Only Live Twice. Eureka has aggregated three of these slightly wacky exploits together in an appealing set which if nothing else presents both regular Shaw Brothers performers and directors in a somewhat different genre context.

While Shaw Brothers may have attempted to market The Golden Buddha as a quasi-James Bond feature, it may actually have more in common with Alfred Hitchcock outings like North by Northwest or The Man Who Knew Too Much where a befuddled guy finds himself at the center of some kind of conspiracy. Paul Cheung (Paul Chang Chung) is an "ordinary" businessman on a trip where the time honored conceit of mixed up baggage ends up embroiling Cheung in all sorts of subterfuge and mayhem. The result is kind of curiously lethargic, with Chung having surprisingly little charisma in the role and with relatively few of the gimmicks and gizmos that helped to elevate the early Bond outings in particular.

The Golden Buddha Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Golden Buddha is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Eureka! Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. As usual, Eureka! provides no real technical information on the transfer, but one assumes all three of the films in this set are part of the massive restoration project undertaken by Celestial Pictures of the Shaw Brothers catalog. To my eyes, The Golden Buddha fares the best of the three, though there are still a few oddities to mention. The palette is reasonably suffused throughout the presentation, though it can tend to be just a tad dowdy and brown at times. Detail levels are generally very good in midrange and close-ups, though there are once again either lens deficiencies or outright focus pulling problems where things can look positively blurry, kind of weirdly toward the center of the frame a lot of the time.

The Golden Buddha Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Golden Buddha features LPCM 2.0 Mono audio in the original Mandarin. While there's nothing significant to cause worry, this track has a generally more boxy sound than The Singing Thief in particular, something that can affect both spoken material and scoring. That said, while things have a somewhat overly reverberant sound (part of that whole "boxy" presentation), there's a relatively energetic midrange. Minor background hiss can be heard in the few comparatively quiet sections. Dialgue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English subtitles are available.

The Golden Buddha Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Eureka! Entertainment has packaged The Golden Buddha and Angel with the Iron Fists together on one disc, with The Singing Thief on the other, with the following supplements:

Disc One

• Commentary on The Golden Buddha by Mike Leeder and Arne Venema


• Commentary on Angel with the Iron Fists by Mike Leeder and Arne Venema

Disc Two

• Commentary on The Singing Thief by Mike Leeder and Arne Venema


• From Hong Kong with Love (HD; 16:43) is an overview of spy films from the Shaw Brothers.


• International Super Spies (HD; 21:51) looks at the global Bond phenomenon.

Additionally, Eureka! provides a very nicely appointed insert booklet, with cast information on all three films and an essay by Iain Robert Smith. Packaging features a slipcover. The score above is for the set's supplements as a whole.

The Golden Buddha Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Golden Buddha has any number of referents which may spring to mind for various viewers, but the problem is most of the films being echoed are manifestly more interesting than this one. There are some fun moments here, and of the three films in this set, I'd rate the technical merits of this presentation to be the strongest, for anyone who may be considering making a purchase.