In the past, I've written about the possibility of this ever happening and now it's indeed reality!! Someone in the UK owns a mega rare 35mm print of the original English dubbed version of Bruce Lee's THE BIG BOSS and they've put it up for purchase. Not as a hardcopy but only as download.
Like I've said before, I'm not particularly interested in English dubbed versions of Hong Kong films but with this one it's a different matter. The background makes it interesting! After the original Mandarin language print was made, an English dubbed print was made for export and distributed to certain Middle Eastern territories. When Bruce Lee watched this version he completely hated the dub, and when the film was bought for American distribution the Americans (I assume) thought the dub was too crappy and had a new one made.
This new dub is the one that was distributed to the rest of the world. The original English dubbed version quickly disappeared and was never released to any home-cinema format. A few years ago VideoAsia in the US (yes, the bootleg company VideoAsia!!) announced they were going to release this rare version on DVD but it never happened! It's widely believed by fans that "someone" "asked" the company not to release it. Well, anyway, it seems it's finally here!
I've got confirmation from a fan that the uploaded version is real and not bogus (he's got a copy!) and it's finally out now. Unfortunately, con-artists who claim to have lost/rare prints in the Kung Fu community isn't an unknown phenomenon! I must admit I had my doubts as to this ever being released (altho, of course, it's not a real release but you know what I mean).
Now we just need someone to dig out THE BIG BOSS, PART 2 (the Lo Lieh film) from the realm of lost Hong Kong films, and not to mention the fully uncut Mandarin print of THE BIG BOSS (including the mystical saw-in-head scene!). How awesome would that be!!!
If you're one of my international readers you may have wondered where my profile avatar comes from; Jack in a Halloween dress up? Jack at a normal day at home? Jack is a zombie for real? Nope, it's from my lousy 15 minutes of fame. Or rather three minutes of fame.
Eight years ago I was a zombie in the Danish amateur horror film RÅDDEN KÆRLIGHED (aka Raadden Kaerlighed) [lit. trans. "rotten love"]. The movie came and went, and would've been forgotten if I hadn't kept flogging the dead horse (yes I'm laughing my ass off here).
It had a quite limited VHS release but never made it to DVD. In fact the only way to get the film since the VHS sold out has been tru me and my blog for my underground publishing label where I've sold it on DVD-R for a couple bucks.
I'm only aware of two magazine/fanzine pieces on it; A review in my own Stay Sick! zine (reviewed by Jesper Moerch) and Henrik Larsen did an interview with yours truly in his mag Obskuriøst. As far as I know there are only three online reviews; Uncut.dk, Cinehound, and on Zombie Movie Data Base.
However, the probably coolest thing of all this was shortly after the VHS release when a friend of mine rang said "There's a poster of you on the door at 'Rock Uglen'!" Rock Uglen is a decade old legendary shop in Copenhagen that deals in heavy metal records and horror/gore films. And sure enough! The directors had made various different posters featuring the cast members but the one on the inside of the door at Rock Uglen was just me or rather my zombiefied self with the (fake) intestines of the unfortunate main actor in my hands.
The film's two directors, Kasper Marbjerg & Martin Forsbom, were interviewed here (in Danish).
Anyway, that's all well and done but it's old news so why flog the corpse once again? Well, cos my friend Fred Anderson just mentioned to me that the full film is now up on YouTube! That's why, LOL. The movie is divided into three parts, runs 27 minutes, and there's no subs. But then again you don't really need to capisce the dialogue (and some of it is so embarrassing that I wish I didn't understand it either!).
Like I mentioned at the beginning, I'm only in this for about three minutes but then again I got to devour the main character and get the last frame, PLUS the "zombie walk from the chapel" scene so I'm happy with that. Needless to say kudos goes to the other cast members, the directors (who I believe are completely out of film productions), and whoever else helped out.
Henrik Larsen was supposed to be in the film too but a fuck up on the day meant he waited for hours at a train station and nobody picked him up. They promised him an added end-scene but they screwed that up too. However, Henrik got his revenge in the movie DEN INTERGALAKTISKE GENVEJ [lit. trans:"The Intergalactic Short-cut"] (reviewed here) where he got to play a cool hit-man out to bump off innocent space aliens. The film is included on my DVD-R of RÅDDEN. RÅDDEN KÆRLIGHED was also shown on a local TV station in Copenhagen when it came out but as I mentioned earlier it has pretty much drifted into the abyss of obscure amateur films. Well, if nothing else it's on YouTube now. xD
The guy who played the main lead began making a new, bigger and better monster horror film a couple of years back that was going to be called PLANET HOLOCAUST (early title: THE MONSTER, THE GIRL, AND THE PROFESSOR) and everyone on the Danish underground film scene and the Copenhagen punk scene were to star in it.
Apparently, about everyone was filmed for the film (including me) but it's been two years now and altho these slow and lazy punks are known for being... well... slow and lazy, I doubt they'll ever manage to pull their shit together and finish the film. A great pity cos the footage I got to see on the day of my own shoots was great. I wrote about it here. Anyway, enough bable! Check the uploads!
How cool is this! Zuzelo jnr with my pile of "Essential The Tomb of Dracula" volume 1-4 (reprinting every issue of "The Tomb of Dracula" from the early 1970s + crossovers). Argh! This is where the original Blade character stems from! This is Marv Wolfman/Gene Colan's awesome series which I used to read in its Danish translated editions (printed in 1974 and then again in the early 80s). But these reprints (most likely) smoke the old Danish ones; Original text, complete, black & white, uncut. Oh, and the fact that Gene Colan is one of my all time fave artists certainly cranks up the awesomeness volume a notch or ten. Thanks heaps to David (junior's daddy who incidentally does another "tomb") for this awesome (and certainly in my favour) deal! Dude, you're the best! You and Paul (Cooke) are both awesome and I'm happy to have gotten to know ya!
"Make yourself familiar with the classics" [Henrik Larsen in an old issue of "Obskuriøst"]
- I agree. But even so I don't always live by it. Yes, shock! horror!! I mean I've watched horror movies for a long time but often it's the weird, the obscure, the unknown, the forgotten movies I've seeked out. I'll tell you the lowdown on DR SATAN VERSUS BLACK MAGIC but I still haven't seen THE OMEN 2-4. I know THE RAPE AFTER by heart but until last night I'd never watched John Carpenter's THE THING!! (more shock horror!). I read about it in an old issue of "Inferno" zine in the early 90s but I still didn't bother to watch it till last night! Well, needless to say that was a mistake, LOL. It's "pretty good" but 6 trillion reviewers have already said that in 6 trillion reviews so I don't need to explain that even further. Now I just need to watch the original version. :D
Darah tells the tale of a most horrifying night for 6 friends. Two newly weds Adjie and Astrid, along with 3 of their best mates decide to have an interstate road trip as a last attempt to reconcile Adjie with his estranged younger sister Ladya. Their drive is, however, cut abruptly when they run into Maya, a strange girl who wanders aimlessly out of nowhere into their path. "I've been robbed" is all she has to say. The friends unanimously decide to give her a ride to her isolated house in the deep of the woods. This is when the night turns into a crimson-hell for the 6 friends. They find themselves trapped and hunted by Dara and her three deadly protégés who have been born and raised to systematically eliminate unsuspecting passerbys for one nefarious reason. One by one they are slaughtered. Everybody will bleed. The dark of night has never looked so red.
Awards Leading actress Shareefa Daanish won the 2009 Best Actress award at the Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival (PiFan 2009) for her role.
Macabre, international title for Rumah Dara (Indonesian title), and in Singapore titled Darah) is an Indonesian horror/slasher film in 2010. The movie tells about a group who attempt to escape from a house that owned by mysterious lady named Dara and her family. And later is known that the family are killers and cannibal for getting immortality. The film was created based on Dara short film and character. This film cited by the directors as the long feature from the short film, and the short, will be the spin-off to this movie.
Before screened in Indonesia. This film had to screened in many festival and in 2009, Rumah Dara played in Singapore which got rating M18 (for Gore and Violence). Then, Rumah Dara played in Indonesia widely at January 22, 2010. The distribution to North America and Europe do by Overlook Entertainment.
In official twitter web for Rumah Dara, cited that this film is banned in Malaysia because its violence. The film is the first Indonesian film which banned in there
Cast: Ario Bayu ... Adjie Shareefa Daanish ... Dara Julie Estelle ... Ladya Ruly Lubis ... Armand Daniel Mananta ... Jimi Mike Muliadro ... Alam Arifin Putra ... Adam Dendy Subangil ... Eko Imelda Therinne ... Maya Sigi Wimala ... Astrid
Directors: (The Mo Brothers) Kimo Stamboel & Timo Tjahjanto Genre: Horror / Slasher Runtime: 95 mins
Language: Indonesian Subtitles: English / Chinese (idx/sub)
Argh!! I just discovered this live video by the mightily awesomeTHE CRAMPS on YouTube! It's awesome! It's their cover of that old Carl Perkins track "Her Love Rubbed Off". I remmeber Lux talking about the song in an interview many years back where he said Perkins recorded it one time he was drunk in the studio and that he was in total denial of the song, haha. You can see why THE CRAMPS had to record it!!!
The video is from a gig in Holland 1990. I actually saw them the same year at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark. Poison Ivy looks absolutely stunning here. I wonder how she's doing these days?
MORE CRAMPS
I just checked the uploader's account and here's more awesome stuff from that Dutch TV broadcast:
I love Arte! It's definitely one of my favourite TV channels. And it's not even a channel that some big ass film operator have decided you should pay big bucks to receive. It's free! All you need is a satellite dish (and to live in Europe, LOL).
I just secured Enzo G. Castellari's LIGHTBLAST from 1985 on Japanese VHS. Paul Cooke & David Z gave it 4 "Exploding Huts" out of 5 in their book "Tough to Kill" so I'm definitely looking forward to it. :D For some reason I was the only bidder and won it for a mere 10 bucks. Veery niiice!
Unfortunately I lost out on DANGEROUS SEDUCTRESS to ya can't will 'em all. Next time (or some other time, haha).
That's right, cabron! I got confirmation this afternoon that my good (and slow and über slack) gonif friends at the Dragon & Tiger eStore in downtown Austria have finally shipped their multo superb'o German DVD release of ZOMBIE 4: AFTER DEATH this way! (and they're gonifs cos they're charging me a whooping $32 for the disc and postage!). And what's so special about this DVD? Well, I'm glad you asked, paesano, cos watching this is probably gonna be more fun than an open casket funeral: This German DVD contains an otherwise never released (on DVD anyway) export print of the film running 80 minutes longer! And all 80 minutes filled with extra gory gore!!! ... ehh, I'm daydreaming slightly again there... actually it's only 8 minutes longer but, hey, 8 minutes is still quite a bit of extra gore, ay! Uhh, except we're actually talking dialogue scenes here (so I'm told). Oh well! In any case it's gonna be interesting to watch this longer export print. I wonder why the Italian version was exported instead of... well... the export version???
One more pretty cool thing about the DVD is the Italian version actually carries the Italian audio (along with the English and German dubs). Unfortunately, it's not subbed (not even in German) but it's still pretty cool. The export print doesn't carry an Italian track but at least it's English friendly.
The cover for the Japanese VHS which I'm posting here (and which is not mine, unfortunately) actually carries the longer export print. It seems the Japanese got all the good stuff on VHS while the rest of us were left with scraps.
Specs from D&T:
* Original unveröffentlichte 89min Exportversion in Englisch & Deutsch (im Matteformat 16:9 anamorph) * Italienische 81min ungekürzte Originalversion in Deutsch, Englisch & Italienisch (im 4:3 System Originalformat 1.55 openmatte) * Deutscher Trailer 1 und 2 * Englischer Trailer 1 und 2 * Italienischer Trailer * Beide Versionen habe einen verbesserten deutschen Synchronmix.
This is the trailer for Ole Bornedal's original Danish version of NATTEVAGTEN (aka Nightwatch) from 1994. He later remade it in the US (also entitled NIGHTWATCH). I haven't watched it for a few yrs but I remember it as being pretty good (altho some of the dialogue is pretty embarrassing, argh).
Yesterday, I found this video cover for the old horror/biker flick WEREWOLVES ON WHEELS on eBay UK. Wauw!! You certainly don't see DVD covers like that. The tape is a Betamax and the auction is running for a few more days in case you're interested. I already have the film on Dutch VHS but this cover is just awesome!
Gee, thanks to a link from Tim Paxton (once the editor of the VERY cool zine NAKED! SCREAMING! TERROR!) I discovered I'm on Zombie Movie Data base, haha. Kewl!! Go here(if you don't know what I quite look like just check my profile picture in the bar on the right).
VHS/Taiwan/fullscreen/Mandarin dub/English & Chinese subs
The other day I wrote about one of Yukari Oshima's most recent movies LETHAL COMBAT (from 1999) which is also released on DVD in Australia as Lethal Combat: Techno Warriors 2.
What I... in a deliberate and most cunning way... left out was that the original title of the film is... DIGITAL WARRIORS!!! I know what you're thinking. Why would my friend Jack J leave out vital info of the utmost high importance like this? O_O Doesn't he love me anymore?? O_O
Well, dry your tears little ones, I do love you (please send more free money and lollies) but everything has a reason. As I wrote in my first post the Thai DVD that I ordered from Thailand is dubbed into English (more on that later) and I simply didn't want you to try and find a copy of it on eBay cos you would undoubtedly discover that a seller in the UK was running an auction for A MANDARIN DUBBED VHS VERSION OF THE FILM FROM TAIWAN!!!!! Who wouldn't want to own such a tape!!! Who wouldn't want to rip off their own arms if it could help them get such a fabulous and fantastic VHS!!!
The irony is of course that some schmuck beat me on the finishing line so I didn't even get the fucker!!! .>_<.
However, like so many other things in life it all panned out in the end, haha. I received my DVD from Thailand today and, lo and behold, it turns out the seller misread the info on the cover! It doesn't say dubbed in English but SUBTITLED in English. The DVD carries BOTH the Mandarin AND the Cantones dub!!! In other words, this print is (most likely) the exact same print as on the Taiwan video tape and I got to save a big pile of cash! Awesome!!
It would have been nice to own the VHS but, hey, there's more to life than Yukari Oshima films (he says with quivering lips). Of course, the question is whether the film has an original audio track or not. Hmm, they could actually have shot it in English but knowing how cheap the films Phillip Ko did with Yukari Oshima (aka Cynthia Luster down 'Pino way) in the Philippines I would say they most likely didn't record sound on stage but made all dubs in the studio afterwards.
As I mentioned there's also a DVD release in OZ and it probably carries the English dub. If you can get it cheap then go for it. This isn't a HK film and neither Cantonese nor Mandarin is any more of a "real" dub than English would be. It all comes down to preference. Personally, I can't stand watching Hong Kong films dubbed into English (there are a few exceptions) but when it comes to Filipino films I have no problem with it (and if I did I would REALLY have a problem as I don't think I have one single old film from the Philippines that isn't dubbed into English!).
The screen grabs are from my ultra rare Danish ex-rental VHS. It's the only known copy (to make it even more rare my copy even has a censorship rating sticker from the Faeroe Island on the back!). xD
Yet another record (CD single) I bought when I live in Melbourne in the early to mid 90s. It's an awesome rendition of, well, I'm sure you'll recognise it. On the single there's also another cover; "Bedazzled" which you can listen to here and the original version (originally recorded by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore) is here.
Ahhh, more cinematic goodies with everyone's fave Japanese Hong Kong darling, Yukari Oshima. This time (and like so often before) sharing the celluloid stage with another favourite from the "Girls kick ass and look cute" films from the ol'e crown colony's film production in the 1980s (damn you to Hell, Maggie, for having handed it back to China!); Moon Lee (aka Li Choi-Fung).
My "new" film is BEAUTY INVESTIGATOR which isn't really new as I've had the US Tai Seng VHS for quite some time. I was really pleased when I won the tape on eBay (at the bid of a "whooping" 8 dollars!!!) because in contradiction to Tai Seng's fullscreen and English dubbed DVD this tape is letterboxed and sports the original Cantonese dialogue with English subs. Only problem is... the picture quality looks as washed out as your favourite 10 year old Iron Maiden T-shirt!
Anyway, lucky for me a seller in Hong Kong (or Hongkong if you will) had the mega rare LD up for auction and even luckier for me that no one else wanted it (which is extremely weird since some of these films sell like cup-cakes whenever they hit the bay). The LD has Canto and Mandarin audio + English subs. I didn't bother to ask if it's lbx so I'll just have to leave that surprise for later! Even if it should turn out to be FS I'd say it's STILL an upgrade from the LESS THAN PERFECT video tape.
The same cover as on the LD was also used for the VCD release which I'm posting below and which incidentally is listed on eBay Hong Kong right now. The "buy now" price is HK$140 and as much as I'd love to buy that one too I think I'll restrain myself for now. LOL.
The cover for my Tai Seng VHS (lbx, canto, Eng subs)
And finally... the glorious poster for the film from Pakistan! Retitled "Armed For Action". xD
And finally (again) a clip (in really good quality) of Oshima as a cool leather clad hitman:
Trying to get hold of EVERY Yukari Oshima film ever made is more time consuming than trying to pick lice off a bum's bum. But last night I managed to get hold of one that I wasn't even really aware of (well, I was a bit; Someone told me about it but I looked out the window and said "yeah yeah"). I thiink it's one of the films she made in the Philippines with her hubby Phillip Ko. The title is LETHAL COMBAT, also released in Australia as Lethal Combat: Techno Warriors 2 (as an unrelated sequel to another Phillip Ko film called, well, TECHNO WARRIORS and also Computer Hero). The DVD I'll be getting is from Thailand (fullscreen + English dub).
Cast (from the seller's page): Darren Shahlavi, Kwang-su Lee, Yukari Ôshima, Monsour Del Rosario, Phillip Ko, Thorsten Nickel.
This used to be on TV all the time a few years back, it's pretty good. A lot of French rap is about life on the street instead of the pointless bling bling rap that American rap has turned into for a great part.
PS: I've never mentioned this to you before but I got (i.e. ripped off) the idea for my "Best pop song" posts from Todd's excellent Die, Danger, Die, Die, Kill! blog. If you only read one blog this ought to be the one. World-weird films galore!Go here.
I had another of those damn dreams that I remember for some reason. I was on my way to work (the employment situation is obviously better in the realm beyond the awaken state, I can barely remember the last time I had a job) but when I got there I discovered the ground in front of the building had gone. If I wanted to get in I would have had to try and climb in via a very narrow footpath. There were workers there and they were using the narrow footpath but I thought "No way!". I simply wasn't gonna risk falling down. So instead I went into the building thru a door at the other end. However, I discovered my work place wasn't there but instead it lead into a big second-hand market. Much better than going to work! So I looked around, and now my Dad was there too. I found an issue of an old Danish horror comic book called "Gru". Then we got into the car to go somewhere. Now there was a third man there as well, Benny. In real life Benny was my aunt's ex-husband from the 1980s. They lived in a house next to ours in the years before I moved away from home. I never liked Benny, he was crude, drank a lot, had prostitutes when he was away for work, farted, and smelled (well, back then I had the notion that he did but I'm not so sure anymore. Maybe it was just my main dislike of him that made me add that unpleasant feature to him subconsciously). But in any case, my aunt left him when he was away for work at some stage. She practically just got up and left (left the door open and all). Benny moved away many years ago and I never saw him again. I heard he died recently. Anyway, there we are in the car; me, my Dad, and Benny who in my dream more resembled the Danish sculpturer Ingvar Cronhammer, just with less beard (I watched a program on Cronhammer a couple of days ago). Outside the car it was a very grey day and the sky resembled something dark grey'ish that you would imagine Lars Von Trier had used in an early film he never finished. I checked out my issue of "Gru". It was worn (and there was a fairly big hole going thru the pages) and in my dream I thought I'd try and buy every duplicate issue I could find, then at some stage I would hopefully find one that was in a really good condition. These magazines came out in 1973-74 but I'm not sure the issue in my dream was a genuine issue or only existed there (the latter probably). I looked out the car window and saw two people just as they were about to walk into a supermarket. In my dream I felt they looked liked losers (i.e. not cool like me!) and I said "Look, those people are being attacked by birds". I think Benny said "Yeah, that's what happens around here". Actually they were just walking into the store, there were no birds and in my dream I probably made that up because I was under the "influence" of the horror comic book. I woke up, it was 2:00 in the morning. I went back to sleep and landed at home where I grew up. In front of the TV set (what a surprise). I was drinking coffee. From a couch at the other end of the lounge room my Mum (who also passed away fairly recently) asked if there was any more coffee in the coffee flask and I said yes. So she got up, came over, poured the last bit of coffee, and said "Do you want more coffee?" to which I said "Yes, please", and then she went back to from where she'd been sitting, got her own coffee flask and poured coffee into my mug! Why didn't she just pour herself coffee from her own flask in the first place? And why did I say yes to having more coffee poured into my already half full mug when I hate that in real life (why would I ruin a perfect mix of coffee and milk by pouring more coffee into it!). Then my Mum began walking towards the door, turned around and said "Aren't you going to bed soon?" I said "no" and that it was only half past 9:00 to which she asked why I wanted to stay up and I said "It's New Years Eve!". So she left and I stayed in front of the TV... and woke up.
Btw, it's kinda funny that I should wake up from sitting in front of the TV in a dream as I usually FALL ASLEEP in front of the telly! Haha.
I re-watched two old documentary films about hard-boiled crime writer James Ellroy the other day and in both films Ellroy said "Dead women rule my world". It seems dead people are hanging around in my dreams too.
Awesome cover! I'm positive this is how other lifeforms in outer space must look like (it's also how I picture certain members of certain message boards but that's a completely different matter). I found it on this cool blog.
Remind me to check my own links, goddammit! I did a full post the other day in reg. to another blog that celebrated their 3 yrs in Cyberspace and... I posted a wrong link. @_@
Hmm, I suppose the fact that no one said anything is cos, well let's face it, not a whole lot of you spend most of your time on girly fashion blogs. I wish you did tho cos that would mean you were probably girlies and we need more girly readers in the trashy film blog world, LOL. Søren has girl readers but then again he writes about teeny vampires. :D The right link.
Njuta Films in Sweden have announced they're releasing Sergio Martino's post-apocalypse HANDS OF STEEL (aka Queruak) and Umberto Lenzi's IRONMASTER on DVD within the next 6 months! Very exceiting news there! Neither of the two have been released on DVD before*.
The announcement comes from Njuta Films' own homepage so there's no speculation on my part. However, I will speculate in their also being release by Njuta Films' sister label in Denmark/Norway, Another World Entertainment. Also, Njuta Films are also releaseing Bruno Mattei's SS GIRLS, Sergio Martino's 2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK, and Joe D'Amato's PORNO HOLOCAUST. I'm confident we'll see them all from AWE also. Check more upcoming titles from Njuta Films here (Release inom ett halvår = Upcoming releases within the next 6 months).
*I really do not count reg. 1 public domain bootlegs sourced from video tapes as "releases"! .\_/.
