In my last post I wrote that Shaw Brother's second release was the Cantonese production, Sweet Girl in Terror (1958), starring Patricia Lam Fung. I was surprised to discover that it was a color film (according to the Hong Kong Film Archive's online catalog). At the time, all of Shaw's films were shot in black and white except for prestige productions like The Kingdom and the Beauty (1959), The Enchanting Shadow (1960), and Les Belles (1961), the first presented in the widescreen Shawscope format. After the completion of its film processing facilities in the fall of 1961, Shaw Brothers ramped up its color film production. That Sweet Girl in Terror was filmed in color in 1958 is proof of how big a star Lam Fung was. Indeed, she was so popular that she was known as "The Jewel of Shaw". All the more unfortunate then that Sweet Girl in Terror is the only one of Shaw's early color productions not available on DVD. I don't know why this is the case, since Sweet Girl in Terror was shown along with five other of Lam's films as part of the HKFA's "Shaws on Screen" retrospective in 2003. Whatever the reason, it's a huge loss for fans of Hong Kong cinema.
Stay tuned for more about Patricia Lam Fung in the coming weeks!
Further Reading
Shaw Studio, Hong Kong
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