Gung-Ho:  This is a short parody of a Sammo Hung doing a Sprite commercial.  A woman is running from a group of thugs, and stumbles onto a man (Jeff Centauri) who defends her.  While he's fighting, the hero kicks a can of Sprite into the air, catches it, and drinks it down.  Fairly amusing.  Grade: B

Crouching Waiter, Hidden Chef:  Two guys enter a Chinese restraint and make fun of the waiter.  He brings them cold food, and when the pair refuse to pay, the chef comes out with a large knife, and a fight starts.  The movie contains some impressive flips and jumps, especially by the chef, but the rest of the fight looks too staged.  They are over rehearsed, so they do not appear natural.  The ending to the short left a lot of be desired also.  As for the video quality, the whites are too bright and tend to bloom slightly.  The audio also has some problems, there is a lot of distortion during high volume screams and yells.  Grade: C

Kung-Fu Legends: Turbo:  This is an amusing idea; the whole movie is a fighting video game, complete with life bars and superimposed scores for multiple hits.  There is a story that would do any video game proud, of a student who enters a martial arts contest to revenge his slain master.  He has to make it through a level with underlings before he makes it to the boss.  A funny spoof.  The special effects were very good in this, much better than I was expecting.  The CGI special attacks meshed well with the actors.  A good job.  The fighting was about average.  The movements were a little slow, and looked slightly mechanical.  Not a bad job on the fights, but average.  The audio on this short is a little boomy, but otherwise it sounds fine.  Obviously shot on digital video tape, the film has a lot of aliasing, and there are is a good amount of banding in the background scenes.  Not too bad overall.  Grade: B+

Prison Warz:  This short doesn't have much of a plot.  Some guards place prisoners in a warehouse to fight.  It starts out with the a two on two fight, and then the two survivors have to fight a master together.  The fight scenes in this short are the best on the disc.  It was very well choreographed and the actors looked like they knew what they were doing.  The punches and kicks looked real and spontaneous.  There wasn't any hesitation where one actor is waiting for the other to throw his punch.  A very impressive short.  The video was slightly grainy, but it wasn't too bad.  Grade: A

Dare:   This short was made by Jeff Centauri who also did Gung-Ho.  There wasn't much of a plot to this one.  An agent is sent to capture someone, and two reporters try to film the action but they get dragged into the fight too.  The villain then flees to a train yard where the hero fights him to the finish.  The part with the two reporters was a little stupid, but the two male fighters in this short did a very good job.  Their punches don't look like they are pulled, and the fight looks fairly real.  The downside to this film is the source.  It was filmed on S-VHS tape, and it looks it.  The images are blurry and there are all the video defects associated with tape.  Though the content was pretty good, but the presentation was horrible.  The commentary was interesting, and gave some good tips for filming on a nonexistent budget.  Grade: C-

Kaela:  This is a trailer for a nonexistent movie.  Kimberly Mirto, who bears a slight resemblance to Michelle Yeoh, stars as Kaela, a young Kung-Fu artist who has a gang after her.  Short and to the point, this was a fun short.  Grade: A

Cradle of the Blind:  This is a straight fight scene set in a marital arts dojo.  The fighting was nothing spectacular, and the defeat of the master was unconvincing.  Grade: C-

Teamwork 2:  Two brothers record some incriminating evidence, and some drug dealers go after them.  The video was misframed, possibly cropped from a widescreen source.  The video was also fairly grainy, especially in the dark scenes.  The commentary was rather hard to understand, the voices were not clear at all.  It was mainly the cast laughing and reminiscing about the shoot.  Grade:  C

Collection Agency:  This is episode three in the Kwoon series, a group of films about a the Kwoon marital arts school.  There is no need to see the previous parts to understand the film.  In this chapter, a gang lord orders 45 swords to equip his ninja army from the school, but doesn't pay for them. Three of the school's employees are sent to ask for the overdue funds.  They are set upon by the ninjas and get chased through a water park.  The fight scenes were okay, the fight with the master ninja was funny, but the ending didn't work. He went down much too easy.  The main problem with this short is that there is way too much dialog.  The stars of the show really could not act, and it was painful to watch them discussing what their next move should be.  There were some video glitches, but the video was not too bad.  For a soundtrack they chose to use classical music, presumable because it was in the public domain.  It just didn't work at all.  "The Barber of Seville" doesn't go well in an action flick.  The movie would have been a lot better if they had cut about half of it out. Grade: B-

The Disc:

The problem with a compilation of marital arts shorts is that it gets very repetitive after a while.  There are only the barest of plots in most of these, and the main focus, of course, is the fighting.  But watching fight after fight can get dull after a while.  I wouldn't recommend watching the whole disc in one sitting.

As for the DVD itself, there are some problems.  Unfortunately, you can not select an individual movie from the main menu.  They are presented running one after the other like a feature length movie.  Each film has its own chapter stop, but if you want to watch the fifth movie, you have to start the first one and skip to it.  Alternatively, you can select the creator profiles from the main menu, which brings up a list of the directors and groups that made each short.  From the individual creators page, you can select the shorts that they created.

Another problem is the way the films are strung together.  They all have their opening credits intact, but the ending credits are all lumped together at the end of the disc.  I can't see many people sitting through the eight minutes of credits at the end, but the cast and crew do deserve recognition.

Extras:

One great thing about this disc is that it is chocked full of extras.    The added material consists of:

Commentaries:  Every film (with the exception of Kaela) has a commentary track.  The most interesting ones (Prison Warz, Dare) talked about the trials of making a low budget film.

Battlefield Ultimate 100%:  a one minute short that was pretty funny.  Another videogame parody similar to Kung-Fu Legends:  Turbo.

Kung-Fu Fighting Game:  A game you can play with your remote. You can chose to play as either a male or female fighter.   At certain points during a filmed battle, you can select which move to perform.  If you win as both players, a third character is unlocked.  It was interesting, but it didn't really work for me.  There was no way to predict what the correct move was, and in any case, the game was very short.  One bit I enjoyed was that fighter who gave you the choice to attack or seppuku.

Fear of Speed Fight Scene:  A two minute battle from the movie.

Trailers:  Everyone is Kung-Fu Fighting, Shira:  The Vampire Samurai, Fear of Speed, and I.C.O.N.  There are also trailers for Kwoon 1, 2, and 4.

Outtakes:  There are outtake reels from the following shorts:  Gung-Ho, Cradle of the Blind, Teamwork 2, and Collection Agency.

Behind the Scenes:  If all that wasn't enough, there are also short making of reels for:  Gung-Ho, Dare, Kung-Fu Legends, and Crouching Waiter (this one was the most interesting.  It started with the location scouting, and included footage of the rehearsals and the actual filming.)

There are text biography pieces for each director, and a couple of stunt reels from some of the creators.   All in all, an excellent collection of extras.
 

Final Thoughts:

This disc had some interesting shorts, but most of them were not of a very high caliber.  The video and audio quality left a lot to be desired in a lot of places, and the acting was only average at best.  The fighting was okay in most of these, but only rarely was the combat inspired (Prison Warz) and too often it was wooden.  Fans of martial arts films may want to check a copy out before buying it.  Rent it.