Water Outlaws

Hey pardner, you lookin' for something more from your 3-D first-person shooters than mindless action and unrelated levels that serve more as technological showcases than as settings for a coherent story? Maybe it's time you cinched your gun belt, strapped on your spurs, and entered the atmospheric world of Outlaws, a genuine classic of a game that thrusts players into a Wild West adventure with a spaghetti Western plot. You're a retired marshal recently coaxed out of retirement by the sinister, mustachioed bad guys that killed your wife, burned your farm, shot your dog, and stole your Bible.

In 2000, BGO released Merrimack County/Ladies Love Outlaws, which compiled two albums – Merrimack County (1972, originally released on Columbia) and Ladies Love Outlaws (1974, also originally on Columbia) – by Tom Rush on one compact disc.

Shaw Brothers’ swordplay movies in their heyday were known for their epic qualities, but The Water Margin ranks especially heavy on grandeur and magnificence. The studio spared no expense in allowing their star director Chang Cheh to adapt one of China’s greatest literary works for the jade screen. The film is an ensemble piece drawing together the bulk of the studio’s top stars, in addition to a couple of Japan’s finest for leading roles. The story of righteous martial brothers labeled outlaws is perfectly suited to Cheh’s brand of cinematic storytelling, known as heroic bloodshed. With expert choreography from his best action directors who draw inspiration directly from the original book, a cast of hundreds, and wonderful sets, the film is truly an impressive sight to behold.

The classic Chinese novel The Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan) tells the story of a band of outlaws in twelfth-century China and their insurrection against the corrupt imperial court. Imported into Japan in the early seventeenth century, it became a ubiquitous source of inspiration for translations, adaptations, parodies, and illustrated woodblock prints. There may be no work of Chinese fiction more important to both the development of early modern Japanese literature and the Japanese imagination of China than The Water Margin.